My Store: Lord Coconut

STORe: LORD COCONUT
 

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Name: Mark Boldiston

Position: Owner

When was the renovated space completed?

We renovated our new store in December 2015.

Who is the target market and how did they influence the store design?

We have a pretty broad target market in that we cater for people who are looking for handcrafted masculine jewellery not usually found in a high-street store, those who want something unique and Australian made. We wanted to create an environment that guys in particular, felt comfortable in. We didn’t want it to be ritzy or intimidating and it had to be interesting so that even if the jewellery wasn’t right, the customer enjoyed the experience of coming to Lord Coconut.

With the relationship between store ambience and consumer purchasing in mind, which features in the store encourage sales?

The whole ethos and ambience of the store is based around making the average person feel comfortable shopping. We think we’ve got it pretty right when we have some customers who will spend up to 50 minutes in the store. We’ve turned down the lights, removed most of the mirrors, stopped any notion of the hard sell and generated a space where anyone feels comfortable. We believe this has assisted in the ‘linger factor’ so that any purchasing decision is made on the customer’s terms in their own time.

What is the store design’s ‘wow factor’?

I’d like to think that our wow factor was replicating the look and ambience of a 19th century natural history museum where the jewellery takes the place of all those little gems or specimens found hidden away in draws, under glass domes and in dusty corners of such museums. The reality is that we are based in Mitchell House, one of Melbourne’s Art Deco gems, a view we have highlighted through our steel framed windows.