March 2009
To commemorate fifty years of Barbie dolls, toy manufacturer Mattel has opened the world’s first dedicated store to the icon on Huai Hai road in Shanghai, China, one of the busiest shopping streets in cosmopolitan downtown Shanghai.
The new store sits in an eight-storey building, occupying six floors, which approximately add up to 40,000sqft of floor space. This is where the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of Barbie dolls and the widest assortment of licensed Barbie products will be housed in addition to a range of services and activities for fans and their families.
Mattel's Richard Dickson, SVP and GM of the Barbie brand and the visionary behind the store, explains the concept: "We see the store as a destination, a place where girls of all ages come to spend the entire day and walk out feeling thoroughly enamored with the Barbie experience."
For Mattel, defining "the Barbie experience" was a journey to the core of the brand. For that to be a success, Shanghai proved to be the place for it with a confirmation from pre-launch focus groups by the manufacturer that proved its popularity with girls and mothers, all recognizing Barbie as a role model for the accomplished and confident female.
Dickson adds, "Our ability to inspire girls to be anything they dream–from a mermaid to a movie star, a fairy to a fashionista, a princess to a president–and the experiences we defined and created in the store are a direct connection to our brand's DNA, and unmatchable by any other brand in the world."
Not just having Barbie as the focus, Dickson also wanted a store that conveyed the brand as a global lifestyle. He recognized Barbie’s unique position as a fashion brand in the toy world, and with its strong historical link to fashion, expands on that heritage.
For this vision, he turned to BIG, the strategic branding and design division of Ogilvy & Mather, to help develop the creative concept.
"We were very excited to be asked early on by Richard Dickson to help bring his vision for a Barbie retail experience to life. From the beginning, our goal was to create an activity-driven brand experience grounded in Barbie's heritage as a fashion doll," says Richard Bates, BIG's Executive Creative Director.
Being involved at the start gave BIG good leverage to act as Mattel’s brand steward, develop the overall store concept, explore feature activities, identify core creative partners and drive creative direction for the finish.
For the undertaking, BIG picked New York-based Slade Architecture for the building experience both inside and out; Chute Gerdeman Retail for the fashion experience; and Norman + Karen Design and David Laris Concept for developing exclusive experiential services like spas and cafés.
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