Firmly established as one of Ireland’s leading independent jewellers, Rocks is a family business renowned for its quality of service and excellent craftsmanship. Their flagship store in Grafton Street – Dublin city’s premier shopping district – draws customers from across Ireland and beyond, while their nearby Stillorgan store, has been serving a loyal fan base for over 40 years.
“We’ve a well-established and successful business”, says Rocks MD, Robert Rock, “ and we’ve achieved this through a genuine love for what we do and by listening to what our customers want. But we are in a highly competitive and challenging retail market so when the new owners of the Stillorgan Shopping Centre told us about their plans to redevelop the site, we took the opportunity to invest in the expansion of our store and a full redesign of not only our Stillorgan store but our central Dublin flagship.”
Rocks Jewellers secured Innovare Design to help them with an initial design review and feasibility study of their stores. “As the owners you are so close to the business that you can’t always see the potential improvements that can be made.” Robert Rock continues, “but the team at Innovare Design quickly understood our aspirations for Rocks and the needs of our staff and customer base. They worked with us in a very collaborative way, helping us to explore all the opportunities and kept us closely involved in the design and development journey. We found it an enjoyable and productive way to focus our decision-making and it has also helped us to re-focus our overall brand development in store.”
Initially Innovare Design helped Rocks to formulate and prioritise their brief. This then gave them and us a clear set of guidelines to keep everyone on track as the project developed. Our creative goal has been to build on the Rocks heritage and their great brand story and to express these more clearly in store for both their established and new customers. The team at Rocks wanted us to create a more contemporary retail experience for their customers without losing their renowned welcome and relaxed atmosphere. When you’ve been in business as long as Rocks, it is absolutely critical not to alienate your core customer base so creative development has to be carefully balanced and totally customer-focussed.