5 Creative Ways Design Brands Are Getting Product Out There, From Mobile Showrooms to Neighbors’ Backyards

The days of asprawling design showroomdisplaying every SKU are, well, numbered. The pandemic has many manufacturers rethinking how they debut products, and those considering nixingtraditional distributionmodels (see: trade show appearances and even permanent showrooms) for more creative endeavors can learn from those that have already reimagined retail. From by-appointment sleepovers to real estate exhibitions, these manufacturers, galleries, and retailers are proving that how you market your products shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all.

Maker&Son’s Mobile Showroom

Portable design showrooms are gaining momentum among industry brands, textile house Kravet and upholstered seating manufacturerMaker&Sonamong them. The latter, which was founded in 2018 in the U.K., debuted its fleet Mercedes and Ford vans in the U.S. and beyond earlier this year to make house calls to prospective buyers. Today, the maker credits the traveling showrooms with cultivating tremendous product awareness in new markets.

The company has two brick-and-mortar locations (on the premises of the family’s 17th-century country estate in West Sussex, England, as well as in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood), but for cofounder Alex Willcock, the decision to grow by hitting the road was simply the best fit for business. “There was no way I wanted thisdigitally native brandto be hooked into retail spaces,” he tells AD PRO. “Our prices would be 50 or 60 percent higher.”

Theroving enterprisehas since grown to hosting vans in Australia (where singer Troye Sivan quicklybecame a brand fan) and 11 cities (and growing) in the U.S. Following an appointment booking made online or via phone, the van, typically decked out with one of the brand’s armchairs or love seats and an accompanying footstool, makes a visit. Invariably, says Willcock, “a group of people—or at times, a whole street—piles in.” Guests settle into the furniture, comb through the upholstery samples, and often snap a pic for social media. On occasion, a driver has even been invited inside a potential customer’s house for dinner.

That direct personal connection is exactly the point, says Willcock. “For a predominantly digital brand, the ability to be there, to be that human face and have those bonds, is key. This is more than a van with a sofa and a random driver. It’s a very personal interaction a store can never replicate.”

Outer’s Community-Driven Showrooms

When Terry Lin and Jiake Liu established direct-to-consumer outdoor furniture brandOuterin 2019, they had neither the resources nor the desire to open a retail flagship. “How ironic is it to go to an indoor showroom for outdoor products? It’s not an authentic way of showing them,” says Liu.

Inspired in part by Airbnb’s commitment to local experiences, Lin and Liu came up with a quirkier, more impactful alternative: the neighborhood showroom, situated in an Outer customer’s backyard or patio. On Outer’s website, interested buyers can scroll through images of showroom sites near them, then schedule appointments to become acquainted with the furniture firsthand, ask candid questions, and experience the pieces as a reflection of the host’s personal style. Outer doesn’t pay hosts on commission, so “it’s just like visiting a friend,” explains Liu. “They are not there to incentivize but to be a good neighbor.” (Hosts do receive payments per visit and exclusive product offers, according to the brand’s website.)

The company launched the “spur-of-the-moment idea,” as Liu puts it, in its home base of Los Angeles, with a post on the neighborhood networking app Nextdoor. Within a month, Outer had 100 neighbor-led outdoor showrooms. Recently, the company celebrated its 1,000th showroom location across the country. Says Liu, “We’ve been fortunate that we grew during the pandemic with more people treating their backyards as outdoor living rooms.”

Zanotta's Liveable Showroom

Some three years ago, Italian brandZanottawas seeking a New York showroom on Madison Avenue. “But we weren’t happy. Is this really what the industry needs?” Francesco Secchiaroli, head of sales for Zanotta America, remembers thinking. “It’s no longer about showing things but living with things.”

Fueled by that instinct, they scratched the original plans, with Tecno Zanotta Group opting to unveil an experimental design hub in the West Village instead. When a 1912-built Cornelia Street carriage house originally designed by Charles B. Meyers became available, the company knew it was the right setting for its venture. “It’s made of history,” says Secchiaroli of the brick façade structure (which supposedly most recently belonged to singer Taylor Swift). Local firm Tihany Design stepped in to bring Zanotta House New York to life.

According to Secciaroli, there are plenty of design showrooms that hint at a room’s potential, but Zanotta wanted to go deeper to truly embrace the brand’s lifestyle. Guests who are invited to Zanotta House for breakfast, lunch, or dinner—and soon, to spend the night—will be exposed to the manufacturer’s furniture, but sales aren’t conducted here. The priority is on allowing guests to savor the interplay between the objects assembled in the abode, including artwork by French street artist Mr. Brainwash and Magniflex mattresses.

“We needed a lot that we didn’t manufacture, from lighting to carpets to curtains,” Secchiaroli elaborates, noting partnerships with such brands as Viabizzuno, CC-Tapis, and Kvadrat to produce a more thoughtfully layered environment. Altogether, they create “a home, a real place, not a vignette,” explains Secchiaroli. “This is not a showroom, but life.”

Philia Interiors by Galerie Philia

当涉及到重新思考公司的分布model, it isn’t so much a question of what works so much as it is what worksfor us. That thinking was at the heart ofGalerie Philia’s newly debuted interior design and staging program,Philia Interiors, where the gallery’s contemporary art and design decorate luxury real estate in a way in which “the synergy between our designers and the architecture just reaches its maximum potential,” says Alban Roger, partner at Philia Interiors alongside Jorge Brown.

An antidote to the stark, bare bones of traditional galleries, the new program allows “for diversity, reinvention, and a constant momentum through the immersive aspect,” Roger continues. “It is also a way for us to keep the creativity always flowing and to introduce new pieces constantly, or show the versatility of others by using them differently.” An enjoyable challenge, surely, with a gallery roster that includes Rick Owens, Alain Ellouz, and newcomer Evan Fay.

The company expansion was a natural progression, Roger explains. For years, the gallery has been advising clients on their interior design, and when the opportunity arose this fall to stage its first project in New York’s Walker Tower, inside a 4,800-square-foot unit with sprawling views of the skyline, the extension felt like a no-brainer. “The result was an exhibition that not only helped sublimate our pieces but also elevated the listing to another level, all of this providing an immersive and enchanting experience for our collectors,” says Rogers.

Special gallery exhibitions will be viewable in each staging project on an appointment-only basis. The goal, says Roger, is to have multiple projects each year within style-varying architectures. The program’s geography is also not limited: Following this fall’s U.S. launch, Philia Interiors will debut in the Latin market in February with the opening of Transatlantico, a Latin American design-focused exhibition in Mexico City, and plans to expand into European real estate markets as well.

Soho House’s Soho Home Studio

This fall marked the opening of Soho Home’s first U.S. storefront, which made its well-edited homeware collections—oft featured in thehospitality firm的社交俱乐部worldwide-available零售stateside. Always one for creating an experience, the company sought a richer, more elevated way to market its endearing in-house anddesigner collections.

Housed in the ground level of a warehouse in New York’s Meatpacking District, the retail space hones in on the club’s community ethos in three prongs: A Members Market section features for-sale creative works by Soho House members from across the world; the brand’sin-house collectionsinvite consumers to bring home a piece of a Soho House location, as if it’s a well-designed souvenir; and the public is welcome to stop in for a drink or a meeting—no membership required.

The company’s new in-house design service Soho Home Design is also stationed at a workspace in the rear of the storefront, ready to take on consumers’ room-styling questions or larger project leads (starting at $400 for one room). Other vignettes, namely the green marble-topped bar and adjacent DJ booth, hint at the space’s multipurpose functions. Says Aalish Yorke-Long, retail managing director at Soho House: “This is set to become a destination not just for our Soho Home collections, but a revolving space inspired by Soho House where people will be able to see exclusive products and designs by our members.”