First Look: Adidas unveils new enhanced London flagship

Sportswear giant Adidas has unveiled its most digitally enhanced retail experience with its new Adidas LDN store on Oxford Street, London, as it looks to reimagine its retail offering by combining digital innovation, unique shopping experiences and a focus on in-store experts.

Located at 425 Oxford Street, the 26,909 square foot space sits across four floors of retail space, offering lines from the breadth of the Adidas brand, with style and performance products for men, women and kids, including the widest range of football apparel and footwear, the latest Originals designs and collaborations including Adidas Yeezy, alongside Adidas by Stella McCartney and Y-3 specific areas.

Chris Walsh, vice president brand, Adidas North Europe said in a statement: “The new Adidas LDN store is more than a retail experience of the brand, it’s going to be a beacon for us in the city. Whether it’s designing in the MakerLab, finding the perfect footwear in the Running Lab or competing in The Base, this is a place where communities from all corners of London and beyond can come together and create.”

The flagship has been designed to act as a “hyper-local hub” for consumers, explained Adidas, providing a platform for activations, events and artist collaborations throughout, while embracing London’s creativity by featuring installations and artwork from London artists and locally-inspired products exclusive to the Adidas LDN store.

One such artistic installation is made from 30 partially overlapping semi-transparent LED screens that sits across the first and second floors of the store, visible from inside and outside, where the screens alternate between Adidas products and campaigns to specially created London-inspired content.

Adidas reimagining the retail experience with digitally enhanced London flagship

The aim is for the London flagship to create a new benchmark in retail, especially with its digital innovation, with the store featuring more than 100 digital touchpoints, all 100 percent powered by green energy, which have been used to offer a “clear focus on improving consumer experience” as well as “inspiring creativity” from visitors to the store.

The new store design also includes embedding bespoke innovations into the Adidas app, ‘Bring It To Me’, which uses in-store geolocation tracking to provide an uninterrupted browsing experience to “innovate the customer journey to provide an unrivalled in-store experience”.

Shoppers can scan products, check stock, request their size and purchase on the spot as they shop, using the app, without the need for queues or designated collection spaces. In addition, the app Sneakerheads will be able to book in reminders for upcoming releases by interacting with a Hype Wall digital display on the ground floor.

Other digital innovations include ‘In The Base’ where visitors will be able to take part in product experiences, activations and interactive challenges in an immersive environment made from LED screens and flooring that can change mood and purpose at the click of a button. It features interactive agility games related to football, tennis and basketball that use real movement patterns from each sport.

The space also features an interactive creation game, ‘The Creators Court’ that enables customers to create a movement pattern and then download it and have it heat pressed on to a T-shirt in the Maker Lab customisation lab, which has been created to "bring creativity back to the heart of Oxford Street”.

While in the changing rooms on the first and second floor, each one features RFID-enabled mirrors, which will activate further information on the products tagged using RFID technology on the mirrors, and allow consumers to ask for different sizes and colours to be brought to them without leaving the space. For those who can’t quite find the right fit, on-site seamstresses are available to make tweaks.

In addition, on the first-floor football area, an immersive changing room mirror allows users to put themselves into a number of different scenes, including Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, and take a selfie of themselves in that environment.

New Adidas LDN flagship offers a bespoke line-up of in-store services

The store’s digital innovations are augmented by a range of bespoke services that bring the best of boutique shopping to Oxford Street, such as allowing consumers to use the Adidas app to book a slot with Crep Protect, the in-store trainer cleaning service to help prolong the life of consumers footwear.

While on the women’s floor, appointments can be booked for bra-fittings from specially trained staff, and in the Running Lab, consumers can arrange a product tests using the treadmills showing a London backdrop, which moves faster when the participant runs faster. Participants will also be given an automatically generated digital takeaway from their run that they can post on social media.

The MakerLab will also offer a number of events, with 15 set to take place in the first month of opening, including include running and training sessions from the Adidas runners LDN club and Adidas Women’s Studio team takeovers, as well as appearances from Adidas athletes and entertainment stars, and workshops on topics including sustainability and design.

Other highlights of the flagship include a whole floor dedicated to Adidas Originals featuring a new concept ‘The Collection’ inspired by the Adidas archive housed in the brand’s Herzogenaurach HQ. Archival racking has been used to enable a flexible space for events, showcases and activations, as well as showcase Adidas archive pieces.

In addition, there is a special section dedicated to product inspired by London with apparel featuring ‘Adidas LDN’ on it.

Also, throughout the whole store, consideration has also been given to respecting and protecting the environment by using a large range of sustainable and responsibly sourced materials including recycled plastic, foam and textiles.

Commenting on the new flagship, Roland Auschel, Adidas executive board member, responsible for global sales, added: “We’re confident with the new Adidas LDN store we have created an unrivalled experience for shoppers, our most digital store ever, a hub of creativity and innovation for the city and the very best expression of our brand all in one amazing blockbuster destination.”

Images: courtesy of Adidas