A VISUAL VOCABULARY
A STRING OF STRATEGIES AND DESIGN OUTCOMES FOR GS|RETAIL, SEOUL.
Acting as design consultants to Callison|Architecture, as well as the LG & GS|Retail team, GIRVIN worked with the brand managers and retail leaders to support the Koo family and Jo Hur Seung’s leadership to develop a brand strategy for this entire retail grouping, as familial assets from GS Holdings Corp. GIRVIN’s team acted as designers, signing consultants and participated in the interior design strategy for this store concept.
The proposition paid off in award-winning acknowledgments in the market. The GS|25 convenience store concept has been defined by Korean analysts as ranked first place in KCSI in the Korean Customer Satisfaction Index. GS|25 won the first Best Franchise Brand Award and the Brand Power Award three years in a row. For Korean retail, it was named a Super Brand in the convenience store category in 2008. GS|25 won the Distribution Award by Minister soon after, and the 5000th GS|25 store opened in 2010.
THE LOOM OF DESIGN
GIRVIN built branding discussion workshops (our BrandQuest® team-building and query modeling) to work with the teams on both sides of the equation to magnetize aligned intention, which led to a script-based outcome as a threading throughout numerous properties—particularly in the convenience store concept GS|25, although the perky slogans of freshness and friendliness found their design circulated through multiple properties.
“GIRVIN’s team traveled to Seoul to work directly with the brand team at GS|Retail to support innovation in the development of concepts using their workshopping methodology—BrandQuest®. It was that hands-on, closely connected collaboration, on-site, that made this whole idea of a GS|Convenience store and Supermarket concept come to life—and surprisingly—one that is still in play after years of expansion.”
Dawn Clark | Former Design Principal | International Design | Callison Architecture