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Retail Design -
a fast and upcoming
vocation for young mind
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With the retail industry
booming and growing awareness of retail design, this
seemingly niche career is in demand with students across
the country. “Five years ago, there weren’t even 10
queries about this subject. Today, I have at least 200
students inquiring about growth opportunities in retail
design,” says a career counsellor.
Retail design is a combination of overall look and
insight into functionality of retail space, and
retailers today divert advertising and marketing budgets
to spend as much as 20-30 per cent on designing stores.
The combination of softer aspects of colour
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and
convenience and concepts of visual
merchandising and marketing makes a career in retail design
ideal for someone who wants to be in mainstream business
without relegating their creative bent to the status of a
hobby.
Students who take up this field today are those who
would have earlier either opted for fashion design and
started a boutique or taken up an MBA and pursued fine
arts in their spare time.
Educational institutes have seized the opportunity.
National Institute of Design (NID) has introduced a
course in Design for Retail Experiences - the first
specialised course
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tailored exclusively for retail design - at their R and
D campus in Bangalore.
Students of the Masters of Fashion Technology in Design
Space at Delhi’s National Institute of Fashion
Technology are eyed by the industry, as are those who
opt for the postgraduate programme in Visual
Communication at Bangalore’s National Institute for
Creative Communication.
Retail experience integrates
knowledge in various fields from architecture to visual
merchandising and lighting to new-age technology.
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Since
this
knowledge is relatively poor in India,
these students will be snapped up.Exotic examples can be of Valentino’s Milan showroom
which has ‘changing walls’ that use cutting-edge
technology. One of the reasons why food courts grab all
the attention in Indian malls leaving the
cash registers in shops running dry is because the vast dis-organised
spaces tire out a customer.
For design firms, this surge is manna from heaven. “We
hire anyone who has an interest in the subject with
backgrounds varying from visual arts to design to even
fashion. But there’s only so long you can pull through
without any specialised training,” says one of the
promoters of retail design firms. |
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A fresher could start in any firm or in in-house design
team of retailers like Tesco or the Landmark Group with
a starting annual CTC of Rs 4 lakh and scale up.
Entrepreneurship is another strong option with students
who could use their business acumen to
set up design firms, branch off as freelancers or even start
retail chains. |
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