Studio Gascoigne’s retail design service covers the full physical translation of a retail brand into store space: layout planning, fixture and merchandising design, materials and lighting, and the documentation needed to roll a format out across multiple locations. We are an Auckland-based studio working to the belief that design sells, and for retail clients that means every decision in the store, from the width of an aisle to the finish on a shelf edge, is made with sales performance in mind.
Store Layout, Fixtures and Merchandising Flow
Retail design starts with how people move through a space. We plan layouts around sightlines, entry sequence and product adjacency, then design the fixtures that carry the merchandising: shelving, joinery, mannequin zones, point-of-sale counters, feature tables. The goal is a floor that reads clearly from the door, guides shoppers past key stock, and still feels easy to browse rather than directed. Our work with Hallensteins is a good example of this in practice. It’s a national fashion retailer where fixture design and floor flow had to work as hard in a small-format store as in a flagship. We’ve written more on the thinking behind this in our article on retail store design ideas that boost sales and brand identity, which covers layout, fixtures and merchandising in more depth than a single project can show.
Translating Brand Identity Into Built Space
A store has to look and feel like the brand behind it, not just carry its logo on the fascia. That’s where the interior/retail design side of our team comes in, reading a brand’s existing identity, materials palette and customer, then working out how that translates into finishes, joinery detailing, signage and lighting on a real shopfloor with real budgets and real building constraints. Our project for Wright’s Jewellers shows this end of the work clearly. It’s a category where display, security and finish quality all have to sit inside one cohesive design language. It’s a different brief again from a fashion chain or a homeware retailer, and that range is part of what a retail design studio needs to handle well.
National Roll-Out for Multi-Store Retail Chains
Much of our retail work isn’t a single store. It’s a format built to repeat. We’ve delivered retail design for national chains including Glassons, Number One Shoes, Smiths City, Chateau Dressmart, Wall Street, Wild Pair and Westfield 277, alongside long-running work with Carpet Court. Roll-out work is a different discipline to a one-off fit-out: the design has to hold up across different tenancies, floor plates and store sizes while staying recognisably one brand, with documentation tight enough that every location in the chain comes out consistent.
That capability sits with a multi-disciplinary team of registered architects, interior and retail designers, and technicians working together under principal Mark Gascoigne, backed by more than 170 design awards across the studio’s history. If you’re planning a new store, a refit, or a format to take national, you can see more of this work across our full portfolio or get in touch to talk through your brief.