Living above the shop – optimising incremental space in retail

Houses and gardens have been built on top of the eight-storey Jiutian International Plaza in the densely populated Chinese city of Zhuzhou, where residential space is scarce at ground level.

In Brazil, false ceilings within reach of shoppers are used to merchandise Easter-eggs  with shoppers helping themselves (and paying!) during trips in the run-up to Easter.

Making chewing gum more Six-siting 
On a more mundane but equally creative level, unfazed by a dual-siting tradition, Adams gum were able to secure six separate sitings of their medicated chewing gum in Loblaws of Canada  by creating incremental space via blister-packs on walls and columns throughout the store near dental, confectionery, medicine, kids lunch and strong-tasting food categories, each site separately coded to check ROI per location.

In other words, when pressed for space in retail, creating incremental space can be the answer…

Application in the High Street
In the same way, incremental restoration of the living space above the shop could be a way of reviving UK high streets (see High Street revival recipe )

The online space-threat
However, for the truely creative thinker, the real use/threat of incremental space in retail has to be the growth of online in a flat-line market means that with a 13% share and growing at 14%, physical retail space in the UK is already 13% over capacity….
This means that retailers have to be increasingly open to ideas for optimisation of existing and incremental space by imaginative NAMs…

Couldn’t work here?
Perhaps these initiatives need to be forced a little, in these unprecedented times?