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Sweet Shoppe
'Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch-ripple' - Willy Wonka
The Experience
A hyper-real, technology-enabled vision of the future of retail
Brand innovation and trends consultancy The Future Laboratory and retail specialist Campaign Design combined
their consumer insights, innovation specialisms and design expertise to create Sweet Shoppe.
93% insight, 6% intuition, 4% elbow grease and 2% Laurent-Perrier champagne
Guests journeyed to the historic heart of Spitalfields to experience the future of retail at Sweet Shoppe.
Behind a magic door they found a hyper-real, personalised, technology-enabled installation that let them see,
smell, touch and taste the future.
Magical and fantastical, each journey through Sweet Shoppe was designed to be memorable and personal. Singly,
or in groups of two, guests met our Shoppe-keeper and were taken on a tour that combined the mega-choice
of the internet with the curated, customised selection of the concierge.
Through our tech-enabled approach to personalisation, we uncovered the best sweet for each guest, and in so doing,
revealed how the world of retail is changing to become highly niche, bespoke, social and a one-on-one
relationship — from high street to high-end.
The space
Campaign worked with the constraints of the existing spaces at The Future Laboratory's
18th-century Spitalfields headquarters to create a series of magical and transformative environments
designed to heighten the senses, create anticipation, aid relaxation, encourage focus and allow for
engagement. All the senses were considered – specially designed scents by Australian skincare brand
Aesop helped the guests to relax in the first environment, and aided concentration in others.
Visual semioticians Sign Salad were consulted to create a robust filtering and empathic choice
architecture matrix to carefully profile each guest. Sound architects The Golden Filter
created site-specific aural landscapes, while Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winner Stephen Woodhams
created a Wonkaesque garden to stimulate the soul. The Sweet Shoppe
itself offered a tasting experience in which assistants narrowed down the choice of the
perfect sweet with each guest.
Packaging
The Future Laboratory's in-house design and brand innovation teams worked together to produce
three distinct packaging solutions for Andrew Stellitano's nostalgic, crafted and future-facing
confectionery collections, and three diverse branding identities to reflect how each guest could be
delivered their sweet in a style most suited to them. Each range had a choice of three flavours,
which meant a total selection of 27 flavoured and packaged sweets the Shoppe-keeper could choose
from for each guest.
Insight
The meeting with The Shoppe-keeper was followed by a visit to The Future Laboratory's Insight
chamber, a vision of the future of retail was explained, and the presentation of each sweet
became magical as digital design experts Holition created an Augmented Reality moment of drama,
surprise and revelation, as each guest was delivered a profile of their customer type.