Enterprise IG had just nine months to translate Prague-based Oskar’s brand personality into a real life retail experience. There were many practical considerations surrounding the project – not least of which was the several hundred miles between the two companies.
Design development began with the four-strong Enterprise IG team spending three weeks working closely with the Oskar team from a hotel in central Prague. ‘Initially we thought we’d travel once in a while and do most of the work via phone and email,’ explains Steve Poulin at Oskar. ‘But this would have made the process too slow. After three weeks of total immersion, however, we were about 70 per cent complete on the basic bones of the design. It was a totally collaborative and evolutionary process.’
Crucially, Oskar decided not to carry out any initial consumer research on the chosen design, putting their complete faith in Enterprise IG. ‘We had a lot of confidence in them,’ says Poulin. ‘Because we knew what we were doing was so different, we knew customers would find it difficult to visualise without actually seeing it. So we fell back on intuition.’
Cost was a key issue throughout, not least because Oskar had no fixed budget for the redesign. ‘Until we had the prototype we didn’t know how much it would cost,’ explains Poulin, ‘which was a big hurdle to say the least.’ Enterprise IG worked with an external, independent project management team, responsible for costing and managing the roll-out as well as co-ordinating the tendering for contractors. This approach secured cost savings of 25 percent. ‘Despite this, costs were significantly higher than we hoped,’ says Poulin, ‘But we always had the support of our management team.’
After the initial design phase, the Enterprise IG team returned to London to develop a working prototype, which would be installed in the basement of Oskar’s headquarters. This was a vital part of the development process, enabling Oskar employees to receive training on how to interact with customers within the new environment. Three pilot stores were opened soon after, and following a few refinements, the first six new-look Oskar stores opened to the public.
