The first two decades of his career were spent creating revolutionary store designs. Curved exteriors with innovative art deco motifs drew shoppers inside. Lapidus was one of the first to create storefronts with wide glass facades through which customers could view the actual store. His designs eliminated the system where clerks stood behind counters guarding the merchandise, instead allowing customers to wander and handle the goods.
It sounds like Lapidus was involved in developing what might be called the late-capitalist shopping style. The aKa storefront strikes me as a not very extreme example of a shop that holds onto the old style, though it may also relate to the cramped urban situation. Sometimes this style has the door set even deeper, so that there is actually more window space than selling floor. All the browsing is from outside, and you can’t touch the merchandise. In the new style the customer is encouraged to come in, wander around, and even fondle the goods. I guess you might say that the deep-set entrance funnels the customer into the store, but I think the main point in these designs is to maximize display window space, at the expense of interior space. These were exactly the sorts of stores where you had to ask a clerk to pull the merchandise out of a drawer or from a stockroom. It sounds to me like Lapidus was working on another track, and took more of an interest in the interior ambience. It was certainly an era of merchandising change: Piggly Wiggly, the first supermarket, started in 1926 and employed the same idea of letting the customer roam through the inventory and then bring their selections to a checkout, instead of taking a list to a counter where a clerk would fetch the items from storage.
Most of us grew up with the liberal browsing style of shopping. I always found those old-style stores intimidating, and today’s merchants keep looking for ways to make the shopping experience “friendly” or “entertaining.” By now it’s gotten positively post-modern, with stores offering all sorts of amenities like restaurants. It creeps me out that Barnes & Noble lets people read the books while eating and lounging around. We’ve reached a complete inversion of the old system where the merchant combined business place with residence; now it’s the customer who is invited to virtually live in the store. That’s taking brand loyalty a bit too far if you ask me.
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It sounds like Lapidus was involved in developing what might be called the late-capitalist shopping style. The aKa storefront strikes me as a not very extreme example of a shop that holds onto the old style, though it may also relate to the cramped urban situation. Sometimes this style has the door set even deeper, so that there is actually more window space than selling floor. All the browsing is from outside, and you can’t touch the merchandise. In the new style the customer is encouraged to come in, wander around, and even fondle the goods. I guess you might say that the deep-set entrance funnels the customer into the store, but I think the main point in these designs is to maximize display window space, at the expense of interior space. These were exactly the sorts of stores where you had to ask a clerk to pull the merchandise out of a drawer or from a stockroom. It sounds to me like Lapidus was working on another track, and took more of an interest in the interior ambience. It was certainly an era of merchandising change: Piggly Wiggly, the first supermarket, started in 1926 and employed the same idea of letting the customer roam through the inventory and then bring their selections to a checkout, instead of taking a list to a counter where a clerk would fetch the items from storage.
Most of us grew up with the liberal browsing style of shopping. I always found those old-style stores intimidating, and today’s merchants keep looking for ways to make the shopping experience “friendly” or “entertaining.” By now it’s gotten positively post-modern, with stores offering all sorts of amenities like restaurants. It creeps me out that Barnes & Noble lets people read the books while eating and lounging around. We’ve reached a complete inversion of the old system where the merchant combined business place with residence; now it’s the customer who is invited to virtually live in the store. That’s taking brand loyalty a bit too far if you ask me.
- alex 7-09-2004 9:06 pm