On today’s episode Mark Landini, Creative Director at Landini Associates, joins us to discuss how design in the retail space is ideally invisible, the impact of design on human behavior, and the importance of “the barbecue test”.
There once was a time when the brick-and-mortar retail space served as more than just a place to buy goods, but as an opportunity for the community to flourish. Our guest today designs with that in mind.
This episode features an interview with Mark Landini, Creative Director at Landini Associates. Landini Associates designs places for people. Based in Sydney, working globally, they are a design and brand consultancy specializing in the creation of profitable retail and hospitality formats for their global clients all over the world.
On today’s episode Mark joins us to discuss how design in the retail space is ideally invisible, the impact of design on human behavior, and the importance of “the barbecue test.”
Guest Bio:
Mark Landini is the creative director of Landini Associates, a multidisciplinary design and brand consultancy working globally from its Sydney base. Since 1993, Landini Associates has created and evolved retail brands, including McDonald's, T2, ALDI, Glassons, Sass & Bide, Jurlique and Coles. The firm’s new ALDI Corner Store, designed by Landini Associates, debuted in September 2021.
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Guest Quote
“I don't believe design should actually, particularly in retail, be that visible. It should be a support system. And the thing that should be visible is the stuff that you're buying. That's why I think markets, old-fashioned street markets, are one of the best forms of an expression of design, where really all you see and smell and touch and interact and bang into is the huge amount of, you know, wonderful displays that have been sort of just thrown together almost on the spot and then dismantled later on. Now that's a hugely sophisticated machine of which there is an enormous amount of design involved.” - Mark Landini
Time Stamps
*(03:31) - Designing spaces for people
*(12:26) - Industries that are ahead of the curve
*(21:57) - Mark’s examples of well-aligned design
*(26:54) - This is how we do it…
*(32:38) - Greener pastures
*(36:41) - How to create an omnichannel business
*(43:40) - The past and future of design
*(49:57) - The Barbecue Test
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Sponsor:
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Links
Narrator: Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar, a podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance. On today's episode, Mark Landini, creative director of Landini Associates, a global multidisciplinary design and brand consultancy, joins us to talk about how design in the retail space is ideally invisible,
the impact of design on human behavior and the importance of the barbecue test. But first, a word from our sponsors. Want to rest easy knowing? Your brick and mortar locations are offering the best possible guest experience. Partner with Service Channel for peak facilities performance. Check out service channel.com today to learn more.
Now, here's your host FM technology, thought leader and chief business officer at Service Channel, Sid Shetty.
Sid: Hello everyone. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Really appreciate it Today. I have with me Mark Landini. Mark, welcome. How
Mark: are you? I'm good. Thanks Sid. Very good.
Sid: Thanks for being here.
All right, so let's dive right in. Mark, what is your role and, uh, what are you responsible for? What
Mark: do you. Well, I'm responsible for four children and a group of designers. The way I earn money is, uh, I have a design company called Landini Associates. We're based in Sydney. About 85% of our work is actually not in Australia.
It's actually outside in the larger world. Okay. Which makes Australia a particularly stupid place to live pre Covid, at least when we had to travel. But, uh, since Covid, it's been wonderful. We wa we live on the beach and, uh, watch the ocean and occasionally have conversations like this using technology.
That's
Sid: perfect. So Mark. How did you end
Mark: up in design? I was a failed musician, um, and so I had to, had to do something my mother suggested I might consider art school, and so I applied a couple of weeks after the course had started and was fortunate enough that a couple of people had already dropped out and, um, that was the beginning of it.
But I, I think probably my interest in design. Started when I grew up on the farm and I watched and helped with the sort of process of farming. There was a lot of machinery involved. There was a lot of systems and processes. There was a lot of day to day creativity, I suppose, to, to fix problems and to deal with issues.
And so perhaps that was, uh, was one of one of the early reasons why I, I started. An early interest in problem solving because I, I, I don't think actually it should be called design, It's a very poor, or rather the word has been misused. It, it tends to, people tend to believe that design deals with the superficiality of what something looks like.
In fact, you know, that is a very small slice of its cake. For us, design is a, is a cognitive problem solving exercise. And so it goes much deeper than what something looks like.
Sid: We're gonna talk a lot about, about that today because, you know, part of what we wanna understand is the impact of design on, on human behavior, and what kind of outcomes are you hoping to drive with design.
Before we get into that though, part of your pitch at Landini Associates is designing spaces for people. Can you explain that? Well, whilst
Mark: we increasingly live in a virtual world, I believe that as a race, uh, we are becoming increasingly separated from each other, um, as a consequence of our probably poor choice of how we use technology.
I'm half Italian. I grew up in Italy. I'm a strong advocate of community, and consequently, I believe that, that our job is to create places where people can commune. And that's one of the reasons why I like food so much because I think it's, uh, one of the most primor al Primor. Ways of doing that and, um, and celebrating human existence and allowing people to, to talk and tell stories and share insights and experiences around the, the hunting, the gathering, the cooking and preparation and, and consuming of food.
So, yeah, I think we should design places for people. We design lots of virtual. Spaces, Uh, too, but, uh, largely speaking, they're driven or supported by physical interaction.
Sid: Yeah. I love that. Nothing gives us better insight into a culture than the food and I guess the, the architecture of people, right? That, that makes a lot of sense.
So let's jump into our, our next segment where we talk about big picture objectives and the way teams can move them across the goal line. We're gonna go inside, we're
Mark: gonna go outside, inside and outside. We're gonna get him on the run, boys. Once we get 'em on the run, we're gonna keep him on the run. And then we're gonna go, go, go, go, go, go.
And we're not gonna stop till we get Busack. Go lie.
Sid: So, Mark, when you think of design, what is the scope of what you take into consideration? How does that design affect customer experience?
Mark: I don't think about design generally speaking as having, um, sort of off the shelf scope every, as I said earlier, design is a, a, a problem solving exercise.
So in the first instance, we are presented with problems by our clients and, um, we set about trying to, um, to help them resolve them in some way that, in part of that might be to create a better experience for people. Sometimes it's actually the opposite. It's to create a, a terrible experience for people so that they don't use it.
It really just depends on the brief. So the first thing that we do whenever we are given a design, Task is to firstly examine whether the task is correct or whether it can be improved. And, and one of the only pieces of jargon that we use is, uh, an expression called reinventing normal. And what reinventing normal is, is essentially the challenging and questioning of whether the starting point which you'll presented with.
Is necessarily the right place to start a journey of design. I think a good example of that might be that, um, in 19 19 0 6, uh, Piggly Wiggly was invented in Memphis, Tennessee. Piggly Wiggly was the first self-service grower. That model really hasn't been challenged or changed since its inception, but what it did was allow people to choose their own products.
And the implications of that on space have been, uh, significant. And the implications on the businesses that control those spaces have been even more significant because what, what it allowed people to do was actually choose things for themselves as opposed to have things selected for them by the gross.
That actually changed society completely rather than actually going to the corner shop and asking for some shampoo. We're now presented with, with acres of a variance around the same product, um, that requires space, that creates waste, that creates, um, the requirement for the retailer to stock more than they might have originally chosen back in 1906.
And the implications of that on a business are, are enormous. So even still though, supermarkets still use the same model as their starting point. So what we did with reinventing normal is to say, Well, is yesterday's starting point correct? Or is there a better way that is more appropriate to the way that we've evolved to this point that might inform a better.
not to just assume that where we're at is the right place. We may have actually got somewhere. We may have got to a better place if we'd started, uh, a different, a different journey previously, a hundred years ago. So there's no reason why we have to improve that poor choice by evolving it. Sometimes we have to, We can improve that poor choice by radically rethinking.
Sid: It's very interesting. So do most businesses understand that design is not just about aesthetics and there's actually some outcomes you can drive? Um, like you said, like reinventing normal, Right? Do businesses get what kind of normal they, they want to drive or get?
Mark: Is design used superficially by most businesses, possibly not by all businesses, but by a lot of businesses.
It's used, uh, decoratively and as a consequence, that's why I'm having to answer this question because. I'd hate using the expression in the industry, but the design industry has actually grown up around that presumption. It's very easy to be a decorator under any other name. You might call yourself an experiential designer.
That's the latest jargon, which by the way, I hate. So I find that, uh, the need to actually. Glamorize a profession that is essentially a commercially driven problem solving exercise with superfluous titles. Um, slightly worrying, and it's why I'm now having to explain to you what designers, because use properly design crosses all the silos that organizations have set up in order to run themselves efficient.
And integrates those silos into a singular solution. Now we work in retail and retailers are, they tend to be split into people who source the goods and then the mechanisms of getting those goods that they source from A to B. Supply chain, then putting them somewhere and then transporting them from that point to, to the retail sport store.
And then there's the operational team that actually have the job of running that store. And sometimes there's visual merchandisers that help them do that. They often argue, Then there's the marketing team that actually has to tell the world about it and often tells the world about it outside of the store, but also increasingly inside the store.
Then there's the people who are responsible for building and running the stores. Then of course, there's a management team that employs all these people and puts 'em together, and I'm sure I've missed out a few. But largely speaking, what I'm talking about is that there are a number of different disciplines that often operate in individually of each other and only seldomly.
Do they come? In doing so often they trip themselves up or they don't allow themselves to see the bigger picture because they're all, they've all got KPIs and they all have to perform to a certain predetermined criteria. Our job is to understand all of those things and all of their needs and all of their requirements, and all of their skills, and all of their abilities, and all of the things that they can and also can't do within their current structure, and to integrate them into a singular vision.
Creates a benefit for the business, and the only way of doing that is by creating nice places for people to visit, because that's, otherwise they won't come. So design for retail is very complicated if you do it well. If you choose not to, to take that path, and a lot of designers can't because they don't have that experience, then you do tend to get stuck in the superfluous, decorative side of design.
And sadly, we at Landia Associates find ourselves competing with that, not just with those designers, but with what those designers offer in the mind of the clients that we are compet. Uh, for mind share of, and consequently, uh, not many retailers, unless they work with us for some period of time or are intuitive or insightful enough to realize that we.
Do have a different approach. You know, they don't use us. So we're very grateful for having a number of clients that, that do have those insights and do have the trust in allowing us to cross those silos and to hope, help them glue the businesses together in perhaps a different way and, and therefore reinvent their normal.
Sid: That's great. Are there any industries that you. Are ahead of the curve in terms of how they utilize design. There's retail, there's grocery stores, there might be airports. There's different sorts of industries that touch consumers in different ways. Any, any particular industry that you think. Understood the relation between good design and desired outcomes.
You know, before everybody else,
Mark: I think the ones that do best are probably the more organic ones where design is just a part of the day to day breathing of a business. I think there is probably too much visible design in the. And, and for that reason it has become fashionable and attracts people who want to be, be fashionable.
Um, I don't believe design should actually, particularly in retail, be that visible. It should be a support system. And the thing that should be visible is the stuff that you're buying. And that's why I think markets are. Old fashioned street markets are one of the best forms of an expression design where really all you see and smell and touch and interact and bang into and are banged into buyers is the huge amount of, you know, wonderful displays that have been sort of just thrown together almost on the spot and then dismantled data on.
Now that, that's a hugely sophisticated machine of which there is an enormous amount of design involved. The design can sometimes be system driven. How do you get it there? How do you get it, How do you get it away? But often the design is, is, is taught through generations in terms of how do you best display product?
How do you, when do you best source it to display it? How do you mark it down and at what point during the day do you create excitement and continue to create excitement? All of those things are about design. You mentioned airports. Airports are a really good example of, I mean, essentially they are operationally driven machines.
but they're an example where the silos never talk to each other. And as a consequence, it's very difficult to design an op, uh, an airport in any way other than operationally with the criteria that has been predetermined. Take for, for example, the amount of space that is allocated to the gate at which you board a plane and then multiply that by the number of gates, and then think about how that space, or whether that space is being used effectively for anything else other than boarding and disembarking and what it could be useful for the time in between when that happens or doesn't.
You can't break that down in an airport because uh, there is someone responsible for that operation and rightly so, and that person does never talk to the people who are responsible for providing nourishment or food or retail experiences or security or any of those other things. It's very rare that those things actually, those silos actually talk to each other, which is a great shame because if they did or could be encouraged to, then you could probably.
Into a less, uh, systemized, Well, no, you wouldn't wanna make them less systemized, but their expression would be less of system and processing and more about the pleasure of what you're about to experience, which is well travel and the wonders of, uh, the wonders of, of all of that. I mean, my great belief at the moment, and something that I've been toying with in my own mind is as, as the world seeks to, uh, heal itself, you know, and its carbon footprint, the silos actually exist within businesses as well.
It's almost nonexistent. But one business will actually collaborate with another business other than to perhaps lease them some space in their business to help generate traffic. But if you think about, you know, covid and what's happened in terms of home deliver, the amount of energy, physical energy and, and actual fuel that is being thrown away needlessly to get something to my house on multiple occasions when perhaps it could happen on, on one.
The other day I was driving home from, from a meeting and my son texted me and asked me to pick him up, a hamburger, and my wife texted me and asked, asked me to pick up some chicken. And as I was driving I was thinking, Wouldn't it be great if I. Go to one place and actually get both at the same point without actually having to get outta my car.
Yeah. Consumers
Sid: want choices,
Mark: right? That would require two businesses to actually talk to each other and try and solve the greater problem collectively. And, and well, of course that doesn't happen because we, you know, we're all defending margins. We're all, we're all thinking in our silos, but essentially what I'm trying to demonstrate to you through these silly ideas is that really.
Good design does when it starts, is to explore the absurd in order to see whether or not through that exploration there may be a better way of doing something. And often, of course, you throw away all of those ideas, as I'm sure your listeners will have done already, um, to the ones that I've suggested to you.
Um, but it is a process that we find very useful, uh, if you want to create a differential between you and and, and what your competitors. Right
Sid: now, that's an interesting idea, right? Because the example you just said about food, I mean, that's kind of what cloud kitchens are, right? I mean, if you look at cloud kitchens, they're taking the brands that have high frequency orders and probably hit a large demographic and a lot of cross-functional or other demographic that overlaps.
And they're putting them into one space and then basically making it easier for the delivery person to. Have, you know, food from multiple brands, I guess.
Mark: But, um, yeah, but you see, but that's, that's a very good example of short term thinking. Sure. Because whilst that solves the problem of getting stuff to customers and I'm, you know, my family, I have a vegan, I have a vegetarian, and I'm a pesto, and cooking is a nightmare.
Right. Cause I've got to actually cook multiple meals. So, I mean, what you've just suggested is a good solution for that kind of particular problem. What it does, however, is it actually commoditizes the. So if you don't experience that brand firsthand, if your only experience of that brand becomes a virtual one through ordering on an app, and that someone who doesn't represent that brand but represents the delivery service, delivers and hands that to you, the only experience you have with that brand is the taste.
And that therefore reduces the impact that that brand can have on your life and the control that it has on the experience that you have. So whilst it's a perfectly functional solution, um, it's and is the direction that the world is going in, it will increasingly commoditize brands. And when you turn a brand into a commodity, it loses the magic that it's spent lots of years investing in and has no gold in the.
That's right.
Sid: That's, that's a great point, right, because that's exactly why a lot of brands we know won't participate in cloud kitchens because you kind of lose control of the brand experience and you, you almost have a single threaded, I guess, interaction with the consumer. Whereas brands, I think want to have all sorts of avenues in which they can delight the customer, whether it is in the re.
In their physical spaces on their website and so on and so forth. So absolutely, I completely agree. There's pros and cons to, to both. But building a brand, It's something that a, a company does over years and years, and that's not something they should take lightly. And, and sometimes you see a brand can spiral a lot of control and you're, and you wonder like, how did that ever happen?
And I'd a series of missteps, right? And I, and I think that that's the one thing which a company should really, really pay attention to, which is how do they want their brand to be receiv? And how do they continuously delight their customers? I
Mark: think it's an, uh, a result of, of, um, the amount of time that the businesses are enabled to think long term.
Um, I'd be very interested to see exactly how much time most chief executives get. Of large businesses get to actually sit down quietly and ly think, um, about the future of the decisions that they make and the impact that they might have. Um, often people are so busy running an organization machine that they've already set up that they don't get the time to contemplate the consequences of those decisions that they make on a day to day basis.
I wonder whether or not, you know, we shouldn't actively create more time for that kind of, let's call it blue sky thinking. That's right.
Sid: That's right. I mean, most, you know, I think most folks are so busy in the day to day doing, and the emails and, and the phone calls and the, and the Zoom conferences that you don't take an hour to just think and actually, you know, Plan and strategize about what you should be doing or what's good for the business.
It's a very, very valid and interesting point. Before we jump onto the next section, Mark, I wanted to ask you, do you have examples or any good anecdotes where you'd say a certain type of brick and mortar space has used design? In a way that kind of aligns with what, how you see design and, um, what did that do?
Like what kind of outcomes did you see
Mark: that have? I was in my early thirties and I was running a, one of the world's largest public design companies that I actually had been promoted well beyond my skill set or actually my desire. So when I started this company, I decided that my wife and I had started, We both decided that we would first and foremost, only, Projects that we wanted to and not build a business that actually required turnover to feed the machine.
So by being the size that we are, we believe that we can, we can work on anything. But we don't work on everything. We're in a fortunate position to be able to, in some way, and the some part, attract and choose the kind of people and the kind of problems and the kind of design briefs that we wanna work on.
But you'd be surprised how often the briefs are limited by the expectations of what. Clients think they can design or, or can achieve. It's very rare that you get a brief that says, Help us invent the best food store on the planet. You'd think you'd get that every day, but I've only had had it once in my life, and that was about 13 years ago when I was approached by Galen Weston Junior from Loblaws in Canada, who was, I think at the time, in his very early thirties and was taking over the business from his father who subsequently passed away.
Sadly, is tremendous. And he needed to prove to the world that he, in his youth, was able to help reinvigorate and reinvent this business and run it indeed and have a vision for it. So we landed the job to, to help him do that. And we created the thing in Maple leaf gardens of all places. We put a supermarket there, which was a, an expression of.
Of his vision for the business. And, um, it was possibly one of the most, uh, visited things that I've ever done. I mean, we've ever done. I mean, I know for a fact that pretty much every supermarket retailer on the planet has flown their board business class to their several times, and that people still talk about it has been the best supermarket on the planet.
The satisfaction that I get from it mainly was a tweet I remember. It was, uh, it went up a few days after it opened, and I, I don't even remember the name of the person. It was just someone who lived nearby and he said, Loblaw's, Maple Leaf Gardens has significantly improved the quality of my life. What else do you need?
That that was it. Um, and in doing that, I mean, it's improved the, you know, the, the quality of the business and, and the reputation it achieved, all the objectives that, um, that we set out to do, we were challenged and tasked to do. It has become and still is the most visited supermarket by that their competitive sets around the.
But it only really achieved that by making it a great experience. Uh, the other, the other interesting, an uh, uh, story about that was they surely, after the open, they actually had to, although most people, it was an urban supermarket, most people walk there. They did have a large car park underneath, and they had to, by multiple requests, increase the free parking from, from one hour to two.
Not because it was a big supermarket and took a long time to work your way around it, but because people actually wanted to stay there and it became a place where people communed and said, Well, I'll meet you at Maple of Gardens. We'll have dinner together, or we'll have lunch, or, We'll, what? You know, whatever.
It became a place of commune. Unfortunately, um, most supermarkets have been driven by their function, and so they've become machines for selling things, and in doing so, you forget the human element. And, uh, I always tell the story far too many times, but my, I, I grew up with my aunt in Rome and she's to go to the market three times a day.
And one day I said to her, Zoom, Maria, why do you, why do you go three times a day? You've got a fridge? Um, surely it would be more efficient to go once. And she, she slapped me on the head and said, You're a stupid boy. I don't go to the market to buy food. I go to the market to gossip. I go to the market to flirt.
I go to the market to to have a coffee with my friends. I go to the market because I'm no longer married and my husband doesn't keep me at home. I can dress up and not wear a head scarf any longer. I. It's fun. That's why I go shopping three times a day. But unfortunately, um, you know, we've sanitized the world, we've systemized it and we've forgotten that actually fun is something that you can get out of socializing and shopping is a very, very important way of socializing.
I love that.
Sid: So let's, let's jump to our next section where we talk about how we do it. This is how
Mark: we do, how we do it.
Sid: And Mark, you spoke about a lot about like design and the kind of outcomes it can drive with, with, with human behavior or designing for humans. You know, when you have conversations with brands, Do you help them see the larger picture and the potential that design has to influence behavior?
Or do you want them, or do they usually come to you with a high level goal and then you design to that? .
Mark: Oh, look, I mean, you know, there is, I don't think I've ever had one brief that's the same as the next. I mean, some of them are very well put together and consists of very, very long documents. Mainly you don't ever read them.
Others ask, other times they, they give us some vague objective and we, we help them write the brief. The best brief I ever wrote was one. And, um, I think actually, uh, Amazon have a very good structure for those people who are in the business of writing briefs. So they should Google the Amazon press release, which I think is an extraordinary, clever piece of structural thinking or a way of structuring or thinking.
It's about three paragraphs. There's a structure to how you put it together, but essentially it's meant to Ben, uh, describe the benefit of the. From a customer's point of view, and in some part therefore a business point of view, but it's no on three paragraphs, you have to spend a lot of time writing it.
You then have to read it to Jeff Bezos, who spends 20 or 30 minutes thinking about it and rereading it. And then if he likes it, many billions of dollars are invested in developing it. I'd like to go simple on that. I like to go to one word. If you can do it, because then people engage with it, right? And they'll read it, and it's called an executive summary.
No one ever reads the report. They just go straight to the executive summary. No one ever reads a fee puzzle. They go straight to the back page and look at what it's gonna cost. So people do have. Requirements of information and the best brief I wrote was Dimi, which is Italian for, Show me. Well, tell me Dimi.
It's kind of like Johnny. It's Dimi and Dimi. Dimi. Dimi, which means tell me something. And normally it, it's the start of a conversation. When we were working with SE Longa in, in, in Italy, we, as we start all our projects, we spent time with them and we looked at their operations and we looked at their competitors and we understood the environment and so on and so forth.
But what we noticed was that whilst they were the cheapest supermarket in Italy, they're also, their quality of their food was exceptional. And we realized this was, cuz they made a lot of it on site. They had bakeries and they had deli counters, and they had kitchens and everything, but they're all hidden.
No one could see them. And they were also all in different parts of the building, which required them to actually run different kitchens and different fan tractors, very costly. And the labor costs were being multiplied as well. So what we suggested to them was that the project should be called Dimmy, which is show me or tell me, and that we should turn the checkouts through 90 degrees from the Piggly Wiggly bottle.
And put them in the cheap space, which required us to change the direction of the aisles. No less or fewer product in there. No longer journey for the customers, but we replaced the checkouts with a glass building with all this production. On show it was more efficient because people could share tasks.
It was cheaper to run because there was only one extract, tax extract system and shared kitchens and ovens. And it was a visible expression in the front of the store as you entered an exit of what they, their key point of difference in their product offering was, was that they make great food. Uh, now that's reinventing.
You know, a good expression I think of, of what we do, but the brief was one word. We agreed that we should just tell people about stuff. So sometimes organizations do things that are so remarkable that they, and they, but they're so busy doing them that they don't actually see them, You know, they're blinded by the activity.
So sometimes it's good to come in from the outside and see things with a fresh pair of eyes and then, but then create a singular vision. Because often things are actually created by so many different people that, um, they become multifaceted and multi personality. So I think Terrence Conran, who I used to work for in VA in Habitat, he only had one or two expressions, or one or two lessons that I, I took from working with him and he said, just do things as though they're created with a single pair of eyes.
And in order to achieve great results, you actually have to get a lot of people working to a singular vision. And if you can, if you. Enunciate that vision as briefly cuz the actual clue is in the word right. The brief, make it brief or keep it simple, stupid or any of the expressions that are built up around it.
Then people can actually, um, come together around it. And I think as Richard Branson once said, My customers are less important to me than my. If I don't have a great team and I don't treat that team really well and they don't all get it, then how do I expect my customers to enjoy that vision?
Sid: That's right.
I love that. That's right. How, you know, you mentioned something earlier about the world healing itself, right? And art least trying to today. Sustainability thankfully, is on the radar of a lot of companies and brands. How do you factor. Sustainability and being environmentally conscious into your designs, and are you seeing a lot of companies.
Gravitate towards that
Mark: idea. Now, a lot of companies have been working in that, in that area for a long time without even the need to feel the need to, to express that. I've been fortunate enough to work with a number of those kind of companies that don't, don't use it as a, you know, greenwashing or as a marketing vice or an edge, uh, but are genuinely kind of, um, interested in it and have.
You know, spending a lot of energy working on it, but not necessarily promoting it. I think Aldi's a very good one. Uh, we do a lot of work with Aldi in Australia and they, you know, they already are a hundred percent green renewable energy. So one of the, one of the driving factors in, in what we involve ourselves in is embedded energy, which is actually making things that last because so much of design is throwaway.
And, um, so much of design, uh, consumes huge amounts of power. If the power has already been engaged to u and use to create the environment, then find a way that most economically uses that environment in an efficient manner. That can better serve that community. So, um, you know, it's a very interesting, again, it's very interesting intellectual challenge and one that we're very much enjoying and requires us to think about the where, where the world is going.
I mean, I don't believe that I would want to be invested in a shopping center right now, not just because Covid has actually shut many of them down, but because we are increasingly buying things online, and I don't think that will change. So, You have to think about how you use space in a different way.
The two largest retailers of fashion are, are Amazon then followed by Walmart. Amazon sells 20% more fashion than than Walmart. Walmart pretty much sells most of their fashion from physical spaces and don't suffer from the problem of things being return. , whereas Amazon delivers all their fashion and they have about, I think depending on who you read and what estimates, somewhere between 14 60% of the deliveries are return.
Because no one has yet invented the, uh, all size fits all app. Right, Right. So people will order multiple things and try them on a home. That's right. That's right. It's much better if you actually get people to try them on in your store. And so Amazon have realized that and just opened a, a store, I believe, called Amazon Style, where you are encouraged to come in and, and your service from the me, uh, from.
From the changing room. You, you shop the shop on, on your app before you get there or whilst you're there. And then all these things are brought to this change room. I hope it's a nice experience cuz I like go shopping and meet people, not just sit on a stool in a, in a room, but nonetheless, they're, they're trying to solve that problem.
Sid: Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, I, you bring up an interesting point, right? I, I, . You know, part of what we do is have a lot of conversations with a lot of different brands, and I think that what we're seeing is that retail is here to stay. Right. However, I think it's changing, right? I think that online retailers are now opening new locations and the ones that we're primarily.
Just brick and mortar are finding that they have to adapt and change maybe the layout, the experience that their, that their physical spaces have and how they interact with their consumer. And that can't be the only way they interact with the consumer. They have to do more things, and so they're getting in more digital experiences and so on and so forth.
So I think that they're going through a, a, a metamorphosis as to how, you know, brands. Interact with their consumer. And so everyone's trying to figure out the right, the right mix.
Mark: I think you touched on a really interesting point, which is actually how do you create a kind of, you know, omnichannel business?
You know, the physical side of that I've already discussed in terms of does something fit me and how do you resolve that problem? That's just one of the problems what a lot of, uh, retailers are doing. The, that were fundamentally in bricks and mortar are trying to get into delivery and realiz. , it's enormously complex and difficult, and then they're also at the same time, or sometimes independently, um, thinking, Well, we should make our experiences more digital.
I don't necessarily believe that, that either of those solutions are the right one. What is interesting or what we've observed is that in the 10 years we've had a smartphone in our pocket, we've become much more intolerant of poor and slow service. that's made some very fundamental changes to our psyches.
So the response to that is, well, let's, And I, my earlier point about experiential designers, you know, we've seen the, the, the, you know, the floodgate open to pop up stores, let's make pop up experience. They're very expensive to put, build enormously expensive to run, and they get in the way of business, right.
and if you're in a high, high margin business that's, you know, like high fashion, that's fine. But if you're in a low margin business, Like it's, you can't do it. So stop trying to put all these experiences into Kmart, cuz that's not the way to go. And by the way, no one wants to use a computer in the store unless it fulfills some particular function because we're on them all the time.
We go shopping to do something different. But this intolerance of not being able to find something because we've got Google search. Has affected the way we shop and actually the most successful fashion brand that exists in Australia now, right? If you were to qualify it by Sales Per Square Meter, is a business that we reinvented here a few years ago called Glassons.
And we were given a brief to, to create as most mass market fashion brands do, flexible mid floor displays. And we said, why? Who's using this flexibility? The sales team who should be better employed to sell, uh, because they have an opinion about something or where it should go, How helpful is that to the customer when they're trying to find it?
So we actually laid the store out completely differently. We gave them moment. Mid full of flexibility. We created walls, which launched product in the front and moved it to the bank, which is a classic way of doing it. We created 150% more density of merchandise, which looked a lot better because it was all front facing and displayed and well lit, and the lighting that were changed cuz there was no flexibility.
And the sales per square meter, our 500% higher than any other brand in existence in a. And we laid it out according to being able to find it and being able to operate it easily and being able to update it easily. All of the things that you would expect to do online, whether you were running an online store or shopping an online store,
So really, yeah. I mean, all I was saying was that I think one of the benefits of running a small business is that I only have a few things to think about. And my team, right, only work on a few projects at a time, and that buys us space to think, um, and to solve problems in a way that perhaps they're not normally thought about.
And so this solution that we came up with for Glassons, I mean, I love the quote that we have on our website. You can find it. It says, From the Chief Executive Officer, it says something like, We had to be brave to adopt land's designs. But the effects on our business, both financial and aesthetic, have been enormous.
You know, I've actually got a small team of highly intelligent people who I don't overload. With briefs and allow them to actually have the space to actually create and to share those ideas with clients and spend a lot of time actually talking about whether or not they could ma make them work and whether or not as a consequence of testing them.
And it is the testing that often is forgotten. By a lot of businesses, oftentimes people will change things before they're tested, after they've been agreed or not test them at all. And I think, you know, again, I mean, I mentioned Amazon earlier, but my understanding of their culture is that they test and evaluate a lot of stuff, but before they even launch it, and I, you know, I applaud that kind of culture.
Because only through experimentation can you move forward. And only through challenging the norm can you move forward. And sometimes the decision you make to move forward might not be the right one. And you have to have the bravery to first make the decision and then the bravery to actually decide that it was the wrong decision.
Ilan Bezels once said, Who does? He was also, you know, who, what are the, what's the kind of character person that you like to employ? And he said, Well, people who change their minds. Interesting ,
Sid: you know, you're, you're right. I mean, if people don't try out things, you're not gonna know how much to push, push the envelope, and if you're gonna fail, fail quickly.
Find out the best way to pivot and pivot.
Mark: Right. But don't change the idea after you've agreed to try it. Right. Oftentimes, um, ideas, I mean, you know, one of my biggest frustrations is that after agreeing an idea, it is tested and in the testing, additional modifications are made. Before it's tested in its purity and, and sometimes the smallest thing can, um, you know, upset the apple cart.
So, um, so that requires us to have very trusting relationships with our, with our clients. Um, we tend to have very long term ones where, you know, we literally become friends, um, or at least allies. Um, and, um, We have a degree of honesty, which allows us to, to, to talk openly and often that talk involves a lot of swearing and sometimes, you know, um, it involves a lot of silliness.
Um, but only by playing can you, um, you know, invent new games. Yeah,
Sid: I love that. You gotta have fun, right? I mean,
Mark: you gotta have fun. Otherwise, what's the point, right? I mean, generally, I mean, more philosophically, yeah. What is the point if you're not doing something you enjoy?
Sid: Yeah, for sure. All right. With, with that, let's, let's jump into our final segment, which is, you know, future forward, The future,
Mark: the future, the future.
Sid: But before we talk about the future, uh, let's talk about the past. Right? Mark, you've been in this space for a long time. You know, how do you think the, in the industry has evolved? How do you think its, its use of design has evolved and, and then I'd love to understand like, where do you see, you know, it going in the next 10
Mark: years?
Well, there's two questions there. One is, how has the design business evolved and how has the use of the design business evolved? Okay, so when I was growing up in England, working in London, the design business that I most admired, uh, was a company called Pentagram. I'm happy to plug them because I think they're are probably good business structurally.
And it was called Pentagram because it was, there were five partners that started it. They were all graphic designers and they all decided one day to, to share space because they'd all been working from their kitchens and had done the best work on their kitchen tables cuz they were all craftspeople.
But they decided that their wives didn't like them in their kitchens or their husbands didn't like in their kitchen. So they got together. So, Rent a space together. So they shared an overhead and then they shared people to help them run the overhead, but they kept that really. But in D, in building this business, they decided that they did their best work with very small teams of people.
So pentagram is made up of a series of partners that still run the businesses that they run, which are very small businesses, that they work in a larger collective. So they share space, they share overheads, they share a lean support system, but most importantly, They give the space to the knowledge bank to continue to practice.
So really what I've done is I've built a culture of, of very experienced people who are still doing what they're, what they love and what they're best at, which is designing. And we have a very lean management support system for that. Now, many businesses around the world do not do that, and I think that's a shame because I think it takes a long time to mature in any profession.
I think experience is a good thing. I also think it's a bad thing. You know it, I think a balance between naivety and information is a good thing. I think you should enable your brain to continue to be naive and playful, and if you can balance that with knowledge that you have that doesn't have a negative impact on your decision making.
Like for example, the old one is, we tried that 10 years ago and it didn't work then, so we're not gonna try it. Well, that's a really stupid thing to say because 10 years ago was the wrong time and it was a different planet. That's right. That's right. It might have been a brilliant idea. So try it again cuz the times might have changed.
That's right. Um, so if you can balance naive and experience brilliant and, but you can only do that by actually allowing senior people to continue to. And use their knowledge and use their experience and use their skills and to grow those skills and that experience, uh, not to stop doing something at a point in their lives where they're only just beginning to get quite good at it.
That's the structure of how I think design should be run. I think it should be run by people who are still on the tools. As many of my team know, we on the tools, uh, have a great deal of experience, but are not engulfed by. They work in the business, not on the business. That's
Sid: very interesting. All right.
Do, do you think consumer expectations have changed, you know, as it pertains to design and the kind of physical spaces they would like to enter into, or?
Mark: I think consumer expectation has changed by consumer's experience more than anything else. The other day I was talking to someone about convenience and um, they're a millennial.
They're a client of mine. They're much younger than me. They're a millennial. And they said, Well, us millennials, we just want convenience. And I said, Well, that's probably, They said, We hate going to supermarkets, for example. They're horrible places and bright lights down bloody aisles. He said, I'd rather pay someone to do that for me.
And I said, Well, and I thought about it for, for a long time, and about a week later I said to him, Tell me, did your mother used to take your supermarket shopping, put her in the, in the trolley when you were a kid? And he said, Yeah. How did you out? I don't know. Just a guess. And did you like that? No, she always used to placate me with sugar.
I used to scream. I got quite bad at, good at it actually. I scream very loud and I always get some sugar at the checkout, so I don't really like supermarkets. And then he grew up and supermarkets didn't get any better. In fact, they got worse. Um, so I don't blame him for not for having that kind of.
So do people expect more? I don't know. I think in many cases they probably expect less. So when you give them more, they're. Or they experience something new, but ask them if they like something or they think of a way of improving it. They, they, their context is that experience. But things that become so sanitized that that experiences are now judged by, you know, things that happen online.
You know, because cuz day to day life is so boring. Yeah. that it's much easier to dissolve into a game platform. All right, so, So
Sid: Mark, what, what advice would you give to folks that are running, design, architecture, construction, facilities, teams at these major brands? Any advice that you'd share and what they should be thinking of and what questions they should
Mark: be asking?
I do try and simplify things and everyone's got a version of this, but cuz we're in Australia, we call it the barbecue test. And, and the barbecue test is never employ anyone, work with anyone or work for anyone that you. Or bring into your team, anyone that doesn't pass the barbecue test. And that means would I actually have a barbecue sober, has to be sober with this person, or would I, if I found myself in that situation, be looking either for a beer or for someone else to talk to?
It's the most important criteria in any in. Any business. Surround yourself with people that you like and respect, and whether those people work directly for you or whether they work indirectly for you, or whether they are your employers or your employees, or your clients or the consultants that you work with to actually, you know, solve a problem.
Make sure you like them and and respect them. Uh, and that's really the only bit of advice I have for anyone. Make sure you surround yourself with people who you like. Or admire, and if you do that, it doesn't really matter how talented they are. I don't employ designers by talent, by the way. I can look at the most brilliant portfolio and within two or three minutes know that this person doesn't pass the barbecue test.
I don't care what they're showing me. I don't employ them. But I can make someone who within two or three minutes, I feel very strong empathy for and look at their poorly portfolio and go well. I reckon in two or three years time this guy or person and women could be really great and um, give him a chance and, and work.
Cause I like them. Lots of people think, you know, make sure that you are working across silos where people pass the barbecue test and then you never know, they might come to your barbecue. . Yeah, I'm gonna help you cook a Hamburg.
Sid: That's right. That's right. Well, Mark, can you tell our audience where they can look you up or find your work?
Um,
Mark: sure. I mean, we're online and we have a website, um, landini associates.com, I think it is. Um, they can see what we do there. Um, many of them may have experienced it. I mean, we, as I say, 85% of our work is global a. Of it is in North and South America. Um, well all over the world really. That's
Sid: great. Well, Mark, this has been a fascinating conversation.
Um, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I really appreciate you being here. Um, and for everyone, uh, who's joined us today, Thank you for being here. I really appreciate it, and we'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar and for subscribing to our podcast. We truly appreciate it.
If you enjoyed this conversation and have thoughts, comments, or questions, be sure to follow Service Channel on LinkedIn so you can be part of our community of like-minded folks as well as have access to a lot of other great content. Feel free to also connect and follow me on LinkedIn. I'm your host, Sid Shetty, and I'll see you on our next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar
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