Retail Design Experts - Welcome to ARNO!

In an industry context, retail design refers to the strategic planning and design of physical retail environments. It encompasses the layout, spatial structure, fixtures, materials, lighting, colours, and sensory elements of a store, with the objective of supporting product presentation, customer orientation, and brand communication at the point of sale.

To ARNO, the term encompasses so much more – we think of retail design as the art of combining aesthetic vision, effective marketing and practical usability. We believe this comprehensive approach to be the key to success in an ever more competitive sales environment – and our more than 85 years of acclaimed work as a professional shopfitting company concurs.

Reception desk displaying products, surrounded by greenery, modern retail store

Modern retail shelves displaying beauty products in a stylish, well-lit store

Cosmetics displayed attractively in a modern store

Person designs makeup display, computer screen

What ARNO Can Do for Your Store Interior

Creativity, science and experience are the three qualities that define ARNO and allow our store fixture solutions to succeed within the retail environment in terms of design as well as marketing efficiency and usability. Though it might be natural to assume that these three qualities and the three aspects of successful retail design line up exactly, this is not entirely true in ARNO’s case – for us, all three qualities must be evident in each aspect of the retail design. Our graphic designers, marketing team and our manufacturing experts are all present throughout the design process. Together, they ask all-encompassing questions about the design of our retail fixtures, such as:

Which design is most eye-catching, entices customers to purchase a product but can be manufactured cost-efficiently and used conveniently in-store as well?
Where can a shop in shop concept system be placed to maximise its impact and how would it have to be built to allow for this placement option?
What type of layout would maximise the effectiveness of the visual marketing efforts without creating a noticeably inconvenient shopping experience?

As is evident from these questions, ARNO’s retail design concept works not only in small scale, such as when creating display elements using highly effective POP or point of sale design, but also when designing entire retail environments. This is why we also offer our services to design and fit the entire interior of your retail store. Regardless of whether you need a series of individual displays for a product launch, sophisticated shop in shop systems for use in stores all over the world or the entirety of a retail store’s interior to be designed and fitted from scratch with coordinated bespoke fixtures – ARNO will provide for design, manufacture, shipping and even on-site installation anywhere in the world. This service is one of the reasons why we are one of the most successful and acclaimed shopfitting companies in the UK, Germany, the US, China and Turkey.

How We Apply Retail Design and Visual Merchandising Concepts to Your Shop

Though working with us provides you with various practical benefits, retail design is still a discipline of design and marketing at heart – after all, how would our order picking and international shipping expertise be of use if our designs were not sound? And while feasibility and cost-efficiency are aspects which are considered at each and every stage in the process, the actual design of a retail store fixture needs to be attractive and effective. However, this is not limited to only visual design. Professional retail design of many scopes – from the individual fixture to the entire interior – is concerned with a number of aspects which might not be immediately obvious.

What matters in Retail Design?

Clear representation of brand identity: Retail design must translate a brand’s core values and character into a spatial experience that is immediately recognisable.
Consistent visual language: Colours, materials, and shapes should follow a coherent design logic to ensure a unified appearance across all fixtures and spaces.
Purposeful colour concepts: Colour choices influence perception and mood and should support the intended emotional response, whether calm, dynamic, premium, or approachable.
Deliberate use of forms and structures: Simple or complex shapes affect orientation, clarity, and visual impact and must align with both brand positioning and product presentation.
Multi-sensory elements: Olfactory, acoustic, or tactile elements can enhance the shopping experience and strengthen emotional brand connection.
Integration of digital media: Video displays and digital content support storytelling, product explanation, and dynamic communication at the point of sale.
Customer perception and guidance: Design must support intuitive orientation and ensure that key brand messages and products are perceived quickly and clearly.
Context within the retail environment: Retail design should differentiate the brand from surrounding products and competing visual impressions, especially in shared retail spaces.

Team collaborating around a computer in a modern office environment

How to Create Retail Fixtures for Everyday Use

In our over eight decades of experience in the shopfitting industry, we have noticed that all too often, a business planning to create bespoke fixtures for their products will have one team working on the design of the furniture and another team, perhaps even an independent company, trying to realise this design. More often than not, such designs have proven to be fundamentally infeasible, since the first team – only concerned with the aesthetic design – have failed to consider some of the most important practical aspects:

Weight-bearing capacity of the material
Weight of the fixtures themselves
Overall structural integrity of the display
Dimensions conducive to being moved
Possibility of modularisation

Benefits of modular shopfittig systems:

High flexibility: Modular shopfitting systems can be configured in different ways depending on store layout, available space, and product requirements.
Cost efficiency: A limited number of standardized modules enables multiple design variations while reducing development, production, and investment costs.
Scalability: Modular elements can be used for individual shop-in-shop solutions as well as complete store interiors and can be easily expanded or reduced.
Efficient adaptation to changing assortments: Product changes, seasonal updates, or new campaigns can be implemented without replacing the entire shopfitting system.
Consistent visual appearance: Despite flexible configurations, a coherent design and brand presence can be maintained across different locations.
Simplified logistics: Standardized modules facilitate picking, transport, and distribution to multiple retail locations.
Durability and reusability: High-quality modular systems are designed for repeated assembly and disassembly, enabling long-term use.

Four people discussing around a table in a modern conference room

Macro-Scale Retail Design – Fitting a Shop

While bespoke displays and shop in shop systems allow a business to effectively market its product in practically any environment, companies which market products in their own brand store benefit significantly from having the entire store interior built according to retail design principles. Marketing in such environments does not start at the display level – it starts with the very shape of the stores:

Zoning and shop layout
Avenues of movement and key thoroughfares
Interior lighting and climatic conditions
Background music and olfactory elements
Effective placement of products

In short: When fitting an entire retail store’s interior, what matters is not simply the look and feel of individual displays, but the way in which entire fixture systems interact with each other within the shop environment. Here, we work extensively with scientific customer behaviour studies. Some of the most well-known finding of these studies include the fact that customers move more slowly through a store interior when travelling in a counter-clockwise direction, the fact that customers pay significantly more attention to products positioned at eye level and the fact that lighting the back areas of a retail environment more brightly will instinctively entice customers to move there – meaning they will take in more of the store and potentially buy more products. When used to fit an entire shop, modular display systems are a real benefit for driving sales. The modular nature of the fixtures means that individual pieces can be easily exchanged without leaving unseemly gaps in shelving units and rows of wall displays – while the interior design is both consistent among individual fittings and employs effective branding from the very start.

Woman reviews floor plan, computer screen, office

Keeping Up With the Times – Keeping Retail Alive

In the age of digitisation, most stores cannot afford to be perceived as old-fashioned, especially not when the retail space is such a convenient way of influencing consumer behaviour. In our experience, the best interior retail design approach to allow physical stores to still compete with the e-commerce market is simply to turn the act of purchasing products into an experience in itself. Retail stores will never be able to beat e-commerce on the grounds of convenience or product availability. Today, a single click is enough to get almost any product sent to you by parcel post. Because of this, customers need to be made to desire the one thing that the internet cannot provide – a physical experience.

This is why ARNO’s interior retail design approach always considers the possibility of including interactive components such as touch screen displays or hands-on product try-out elements. Wherever useful, we can also include electronic elements which stimulate not only the visual senses (video displays), but also the sense of hearing (music or audio accompanying the video displays) and touch (rich display surface textures and interactive elements). When combined in an effective manner, the sheer number of senses being engaged by our displays can turn any shopping spree into an experience to remember.

Using ARNO Fixtures All Over the World

Thanks to the international nature of ARNO Group, we are able to offer our services in providing display system, shop in shop or store interior retail design solutions anywhere in the world. Our core team consists of native speakers of various international languages, allowing effective communication beyond language or cultural boundaries. Contact us with your design briefing documents and we will work hand in hand with you to build the fixtures you need or the store interior you wish for – cost-effectively and always on-time.

Let's Create Instore Success. Together.

Natascha Kaupp

Business Development

natascha.kaupp@arno.group