Photo: Eat Gallery

Located in the historic downtown of Maysville, Kentucky Eat Gallery strives to bring the beauty of nature to it’s customers. From unique hand crafted, to hand carved gemstones, mineral specimens, butterflies, and fossils Eat Gallery presents the customer with a one of kind experience not unlike one might have at a museum. Customers range from people wanting custom jewelry made by one of the craftsmen the Gallery works with, to children who stare in wonder and never leave without getting a free mineral or crystal.

The owners, Simon and Laurie Watt, are gem dealers and started the business to help revitalize the downtown district and to spread the passion they have for all things naturally beautiful. The building was a diner for fifty years and to keep the flavor of the downtown the neonsign „EAT“ was renovated and used to name the gallery, representing Exquiste Art Treasures.

The gallery was created to show how to utilise beautiful old buildings that were left unused in the traditional shopping area of the town. This area has been devastated by the Big Box stores on the outskirts of town.

Eat Gallery partners with all the local artistic groups and historic preservation groups and believes strongly that „local“ is the way of the future for sustainable business and care for the environment.

Photo: Eat Gallery

Eat Gallery, 46 W 2^nd St. Maysville, KY. 41056, USA   

The Slowretail movement is a topic of “You & Yours“, broadcasted at BBC-Radio 4 on Thursday July 14th, 2011 at 12.00 a.m. (UK time). A stream should be available.

Imagined by the Melbourne-based architect studio Edwards Moore, the Arnsdorf temporary store in Fitzroy, a Melbourne suburb, created a brand new shopping experience inspired by the elegance of the Arnsdorf collection. Pieces of stretched pastel-colored materials transformed the store into a nest-like environment, communications a contrasting feeling of fragile lightness and casual elegance.

The store was only a short-lived experience, but definitely set the tone for what can be done with a pop-up store.

Spending a few days in NYC doing store research and stumbled upon a gem today: Le Labo, on the corner of Elizabeth and Prince. Unique by its extremely interactive concept, Le Labo is a fragrance store that aims to disrupt the traditional fragrance market by proposing only exclusif and hand-made fragrances. The store carries no inventory; instead, the floor staff will mix up the perfumes in front of you once you’ve chosen your scents from a selection made by famous “noses”.

Le Labo presents itself as a “playground for your nose”; in reality, Le Labo is really more of a playground for your senses. By virtue of it being a fragrance store, your olfactory senses are immersed in the mix of soft scents as soon as you step into the door; the music consistently plays low key french songs, in line with the general atmosphere of the store; the vintage design of the store, achieved through vintage furniture and objects found throughout the store, a silver-gray embossed wallpaper and a high “worn-out” metallic bar create an original and consistent visual experience. The display of fragrances and candles in bell-shaped containers only add to the authentic feel of the store.

Most importantly, however, your senses of touch and smell are consistently appealed to. Since Le Labo made its mission to educate the public on fragrances, visitors can not only smell each scent that they own, but also touch and smell plants and flowers that are made to create those fragrances. This is one of the first stores I see that make the consumer not just a reactor, but also an actor in the shopping and learning process.

Le Labo, 233 Elizabeth Street, NY 10012

Le Labo also opened a new store in London: 28a Devonshire Street, London W1G 6PS

(all photos: Le Labo)

The innovative retail concept LN-CC opened their stunning new store in East London. It’s 5,000 sq ft  and, in their own words, “more of an installation piece than a traditional shop fit”. Comprised of three concept rooms stocked with their latest collections from both high-end and avantgarde designers, a book and record store, a club space and a photographic studio, the store, designed by Gary Card, is one of the most original concepts that we’ve seen. Most impressive? The indoor tunnels that link all the rooms are constructed in raw wood and orange acrylic and resemble an indoor forest. More information here.

To access the store, you have to email appointments@ln-cc.com and make an appointment.

(All photos by LN-CC)

The Blackmarket Group is a collective of designers for media and art. They develop “unexpected concepts from ordinary ideas” in the fields of broadcast, illustration, branding, fine art, fashion, literature, interactive media and music. They also run The Blackmarket Concept Store that promotes local and regional designers, helping them to market their creations both domestically and globally.

Blackmarket, 19 Jalan Pisang/Victoria Street, 199084 Singapore

all photos: Blackmarket

photo: tafelhaus-hamburg.de

You can’t call him slow: Christian Rach, star cook from Hamburg, toured in recent years relentlessly in the German province of the country and helped restaurant owners to flavor their daily business again. With new recipes for food and marketing, often á la (last) minute before the business-soufflé fell apart. With his new initiative he seems to slow down at least geographically: Yesterday his new, weekly TV soap “Rachs Restaurant School” started on RTL Germany, the set is located in the Hamburg Chilehaus. This historic monument was financed by the shipowner Henry B. Sloman in 1920′s. The soap-restaurant is called Slowman – here Rach offers a dozen job-seekers his boiling hands. This to give people a new perspective, bring them back to a productive and motivated life. As a side effect, highly commercial TV-station RTL enters the next tiny step to slow down as well.

photo: hamburg.germanblogs.de

All the stores mentioned here in this blog since it’s start in 2007 are now easy to explore with the Slowretail worldmap. You’ll find blue pins for the concept stores listed in the concept store list and yellow pins for all Slowretail heroes presented in the blog posts, even on the German version of this blog. To be continued…

The Slowretail blog exists more than two years now  (by the way: also in German with even more content). The increasing click rates and the positive feedback on the initiative from around the world give us right: There is life beyond entrenched retail concepts and globally consistent store chains. We stand for the preservation of valuable examples in trade and promote traditional and innovative merchants as a communications platform. Now we are about to push our activities,  not ‘fast’ but always gently and appreciatively to our real Slowretail main actors.

We are looking for substantive supporters, Slowretailers, to overwhelm us with examples of exciting retail from all over the world. You can tell us your favorite shops around the corner, traditional markets, kiosks, etc. Tell us about dealers eligible initiatives, advertising communities in the cities and municipalities, district festivals. From related books, studies, dissertations. Or you can sketch your ideal store of the future, as if it already existed, and what is unique about it.

As an aid for the collection of the facts of a Slowretail hero to be presented in the blog, you can download a simple checklist and submit it to us. If desired, you are mentioned in the post as “Slowretail scout” – or concealed. And if you like we can also talk about how you can become active as a guest author on the blog.

We love good retail and look forward to your support, that it no longer remains the exception in front of our doors.

photo: Rajboori

An exciting example of linking traditional craftsmanship with modern lifestyle is the Indo-Canadian home-textile label Rajboori. Now, the industry experienced founder of the brand, Mitun Chakrabarti, wants to attract the European market and presents the collection at the trade fair Maison&Objet in Paris, Sept. 4th to 8th, 2009.

photo: Rajboori

Rajboori stands for traditional silk handicrafts from India.The colorful bedspreads, quilts and pillow covers are made from organic Peace Silk in small factories in India, manufactured all by hand. The design, which combines traditional designs with modern aspects, is unique and created by New York-based designer Stephen Burks.

Rajboori currently seeks for distribution partners and fairtrade-affine stores in Germany and neighboring countries. Here you’ll find the exhibition invitation Rajboori @ MaisonObjet for download, follow this link to the Rajboori blog.

Good luck & success, Mitun!

photo: Rajboori