comparative shop for commercial designer

1. Comparative Shop Report
Comparing Luxury and Value in the Interior Market.
We decided to visit Leeds to do our comparative shop because it’s a substantial shopping
destination with a wide variety of shops for us to compare.
We focused on looking at interior products from high end luxury to low value.
To carry out our comparative shop we looked in the following stores:
• The White Company
• Cath Kidston
• Debenhams
• TK Maxx
We chose to narrow it down to these 4 shops as we felt it was a good comparable range of
luxury and value stores.

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Debenhams
TK Maxx
Cath Kidston
The White Company

3. Shop Price Range Colour and Pattern Layout Promotions
The White
Company
£10 - £2,500 white,
Grey
creams
Home interior displays
Inspiration
Spaced out only certain
numbers of products on
shelves
Not as many promos
apparent.
More focused on quality
than value for money
Cath Kidston
£3 - £120
Floral
Colourful
Bold and Distinctive
Patterns
A lot of matching products
put together to encourage
you to buy.
Home interior inspiration
There are some but
mainly on lower priced
products.
Popular brand
customers willing to pay
for the brand
Debenhams
£5 - £250
Various collections Layouts often by
brand/designer
Collections put together
on display stands
Noticed some stands
had ‘2 for £25’ on
cushions for example.
TK Maxx
£5 - £100
Mismatched
No particular colour
scheme or themes
Displays are very
overcrowded can be hard
to reach products.
Aisle by aisle layout
Clearance Stands
Lots of promotions of
various different
products

4. Things that we noticed in particular were :
The White Company – Everything is neutral colours – whites, creams, beiges, browns, golds and silvers.
Very tidy, tasteful Christmas themes with gold and silver décor, sparkles and fairy lights.
Cath Kidston – lots of different trademark pattern designs, displayed neatly. Parts of the shop floor are set
up like rooms in a house, with a bed and wardrobe etc. The shop floor is highly maintained.
Debenhams – not a whole lot of order to things, in a few places signage was incorrect, eg. a celebrity
designer label above products that were not part of that designers range. Also the shop floor wasn’t very
tidy, it was obvious that customers had rifled through products and these hadn’t yet been put back
correctly. Displays set up on beds, but these had been allowed to get messy. Christmas décor is much
brighter and more ‘in your face’ than The White Company.
TK Maxx – again, the shop floor is quite messy, due to the nature of the products TK Maxx sells, there is
often only one of each item, and these are jumbled amongst each other. The products are high end items
at low end costs, for reasons such as being from last season or minor faults etc.