Under Armour's Chicago flagship store, designed by Big Red Rooster, a JLL company, won the coveted Store of the Year Award at the A.R.E. Design Awards ceremony held at the Four Seasons Hotel Ballroom in Las Vegas.
The 30,000-square foot store in the heart of Chicago's Magnificent Mile had fierce competition. A description of the store is here. A full list of award winners is here.
Other winners in the sports and outdoors space included a Timberland Flagship in Seoul, South Korea; the Sport Chek: Digital Interactive Experience in Toronto; the Merrell Outlet Store at Tanger Outlet, Byron Center, MI; and a Lolstore on Ste-Catherine Street in Montr.
A record 75 awards were presented this year, honoring all aspects of retail store design, with winners representing eight countries, including Vietnam and South Korea. The A.R.E. Design Awards.€"the industry's largest and most prestigious retail store design awards program”is in its 45th year.
Twenty-one Gold Awards and the Store of the Year were presented, along with the Visual Presentation of the Year, Fixture of the Year, Individual Element Awards, and the Merriman Above & Beyond Award.
LEGO Shopper Marketing Agency of Denmark won Visual Presentation of the Year for its display in the new Hamleys Lubyanka toy store in Moscow's Central Children's Mall, Lubyanka Square.
The Store Fixture of the Year was awarded to Giorgio Borruso Design for their Shapeshifter Wall in the Chicago installation of ShopWithMe, a mobile, interactive retail store.
The 2016 A.R.E. Design Awards were judged by an independent panel of retailers, designers and industry journalists: Diane Archibald, Vice President, Store Design & Development, Reitmans Canada; Eric Boulden, President, LEED Green Associate, Jump Branding & Design Inc.; Robert Ceretti, AIA LEED AP, TPG Architecture, LLP; Alison Embrey Medina, Executive Editor, design:retail magazine; Angela Gearhart, Senior Director Store Experience, Sleep Number; Carly Hagedon, Managing Editor, VMSD magazine; Susan Morton, Store Design, Architecture and Construction Design Manager, Nordstrom; Jo Rossman, Editor, LEED AP ID+C, Retail Environments magazine; and Marianne Wilson, Editor-in-Chief, Chain Store Age.
Industry First: Two winners announced for Merriman Above & Beyond Award
Two customer service responses were so great this year that judges couldn't decide which was more outstanding than the other. So they didn't. In a surprise announcement, both Design Fabrications (D|Fab) and Nashville Display were recognized with the 2016 Merriman Above & Beyond Award. Named in honor of former executive director Klein Merriman, the award recognizes A.R.E. | POPAI members that deliver exceptional service to retail or brand customers. This marks the first year the award has been given to more than one company.
"The service provided by both of these A.R.E. | POPAI members was so far above and beyond the norm that we felt compelled to award both companies," said judge Elizabeth George, CMM Director of Membership Development & Engagement.
D|Fab won for exhaustive research and creative design for a complex column wrap in an Orchard Supply Hardware store. While the design firm has won 12 industry design awards since 2005, this is D|Fab's first win for this prestigious customer service award.
Nashville Display won for a short-turnaround rack repair project for Nestle Purina in which the fixture provider's Jeremy Wong personally drove the rack from Nashville to St. Louis to meet the deadline. This is Nashville Display's second win.
Two finalists for the award, Holiday Image and JPMA Global, also were recognized in the ceremony.
