Le Vigne Wine Shop: A Recession-Ready Reality

Here's a story that might lift your day. Sommelier Carlo Orrico just opened a "cute as a button" wine shop in New York's Greenwich Village--a 600-sq.-ft. space next to Jonathan Adler's boutique, which he found in an ad on Craigslist.com. After signing the lease for "Le Vigne," he hired architecture firm MADLAB LLC with the goal of breaking the mold of traditional wine shopping.

As the design process went underway, the price tag quickly went up. Orrico's dreams of custom features and design elements pushed the cost higher than the novice shop owner had imagined. Lucky for him, MADLAB brought in the artist collective Spurse and came up with a turnkey solution that would compress the design process into a simple, to-the-heart-of-it solution: three client meetings, three design drawings and three weeks of installation. No problem, right?

Armed with "tools, truckloads of thrift shop furniture and a knack for experiential carpentry," the design team decided to leave the excavated space as is and used recycled and repurposed second-hand furniture as the primary design approach.

The result is a 25-ft.-long massive assemblage of tables, drawers, lids and chair legs--all painted white in the center aisle and along the side wall--that allows an abundance of surfaces, nooks and clusters to display the shop's collection of artisanal wines in a unique and clever way. Cheap. Brilliant.

Design creativity rules!

--Alison Embrey Medina

Comments

[Petia Morozov]

Thanks for the story, Alison. With this uncertain economy, there are more first-time entrepreneurs coming into the retail world, and we find that a flexible design approach is key to cooperatively building both confidence AND brand. This is not only a story about how design doesn't need to be sacrificed, but how shoppers' experiences don't need to be diluted with generic retail environments.

As a small shop owner, Carlo has the right hands-on retail style for this West Village neighborhood, and his store is designed to compliment him. I really appreciate your focus on this part of the story. I would only add that MADLAB shifted strategies at the point of our proposal, and not later into the design process. It was only after Carlo accepted our MADLAB+SPURSE turnkey strategy that we got underway on actual design work.

Petia Morozov, Design Partner
MADLAB LLC
http://www.madlabllc.com

[Jerry Birnbach]

Having designed several wine stores, I have to disagree with the comment "design rules". The philosophy of RDD Associates Inc.,a nationally recognized Store Planning Firm,is "design with merchandise in mind."

I have not visited the store so this might be the way that the photo is coming off, but all I see is display and a minimal amount of product. I am assuming that the consumer picks a bottle and if a larger quantity is required there is a back stock position to go to.
What rules is any retail business is staying in business. If the capacity of the inventory is limited because the displays are over sized the yearly volume of the store could be diminished greatly.
Retail is about inventory,turns, gross profit,paying all your store related bills and going home with some profit at the end of the week.
I appreciate the unique approach to the solution, however the visual presentation is not strong,wine needs to be romanced with story lines about the grape,about the region and this aspect seems to be lacking. (again at least from the photo that appears to be so)

What makes a good store design is the ability to juggle good design, with good retail business practice to insure a profitable store that stays in business. Just looking good does not insure that! Ask any Store Planning firm that won a design award, why did the retail go out of business the following year?

Jerry Birnbach F.I.S.P.
RDD Associates Inc
Jerry@rddassociatesinc.com
www.rddassocatiesinc.com