Fortunoff
Watch Boutique

For this 4,000 sq ft store selling mid-price watches, we built a retail environment that breaks down the “wall” of storefronts typically found in malls and uses innovative means of display to create a more interactive shopping experience.

Fortunoff commissioned us to design a 4,000 sq ft store adjacent to their main outlet at “The Source” shopping mall in Westbury, Long Island. As the demand for inexpensive sports and fashion watches continues to grow, Fortunoff displays and sells a variety of competing brands in the under-$500 range at this satellite store. Located in the mall court itself, the store has the casual feeling of a marketplace and makes the popular merchandise more accessible to shoppers. (The main Fortunoff store continues to sell fine watches, jewelry, and other items).

We designed the store’s façade as a colorful zigzag wall built of gridded cabinets inlaid with bright blue, red, green and orange display doors. No glass storefront window keeps “just browsing” shoppers away from the merchandise; rather, the storefront itself becomes a point-of-purchase display. The mall dissolves into store space through this wall, drawing customers in.

Inside the store, hundreds of hanging watches are openly displayed on a curved, slightly tilted cork wall. Secured by a system of padlocked rings, the watches may be handled by customers without assistance from sales associates; display models are quickly changed on the wall, and the amount of space given over to different brands is infinitely flexible.

In another selling area, tall garage doors double as large-scale point-of-purchase advertising space for individual brands, each door fronted by a counter case selling that brand’s watches. Reminiscent of market vendors’ stalls, the garage doors lead to secure storage for each brand’s stock, while also referencing the watches’ mechanical nature.

Sales at the store have exceeded expectations and it has managed to attract its target audience: men. Higher-priced watch sales continue in the main store, but this store has become the “fun” alternative to watches as jewelry. In a very competitive market, design has made the difference.