Exito Del Este El Tesoro, Columbia

With more than 86 hypermarket locations in Colombia, Exito is one of the largest retail chains in Latin America. Working alongside the Exito design team, the store design pros from Watt International Inc., developed a retail format that is a tangible expression of the store's brand positioning: fresh, gourmet, surprising and innovative.

A concept store in every sense, the 46,000-square-foot Exito del Este compact hypermarket is designed to improve operating productivity while offering customers an unmatched shopping experience. Inspiring destination zones include an upscale fresh market showcasing seasonal offerings, fashion, electronics and housewares, along with cooking demonstrations led by professional chefs preparing gourmet meals for customers. Electronic signage throughout the store increases shopper dwell time by delivering targeted messages to customers, such as product information, pricing and recipes.

Throughout the design process, many steps were taken to ensure the new store would be environmentally friendly, foremost being LED lights installed throughout the store, non-pollutant and fume-free paints for the food gondolas, eco-friendly refrigeration systems with energy-saving regulating valves, and biodegradable packaging for all prepared foods.

The new store, located in a shopping mall within a wealthy neighborhood, was conceptualized to be the “store of the future” and function as the flagship store for Exito with a format that offers solutions, as opposed to products, vis-à-vis an innovative hub.

Within the alcoholic beverage section, touchscreens highlight wine and meal pairings, as well as suggest recipes that pair well with specific beverages. Additionally, all cash wraps have two screens installed: one for the cashier and one for the customer, to round out the interactivity of the entire store experience.

Designed to stay as true to its forerunning 100,000-sqaure-foot format as possible, the new store format had a main objective of helping Exito align its stores with a recent brand refresh at the same time as the unveiling of the new upscale compact supermarket.

Wood paneling that wraps from the floor up to the ceiling is used throughout the store to highlight the various service points and help customers navigate around departments.The merchandise displays throughout the store showcase Exito's gourmet offering; for example, fruits and vegetables are cut open on shelf so customers can see the insides of the products. Vivid in-store graphics help impart excitement for its target higher-deomgraphic Colombian customers, who are in turn vigorously embracing Exito's new format. Cognizant that a novel, fresh design for an exciting small-format store launch was essential in courting higher end shoppers, the store design team found that simply paring down the amount of merchandise would have likely otherwise greatly hampered the desired result of the design project.

Additionally, Exito del Este's fresh foods, which comprise 19 percent of sales for the entire store, vs. 13 percent of sales for the larger hypermarket format, have also well exceeded expectations, adding another winning touch to this impressive international showstopper.