After a £600 million renovation, Birmingham New Street station – the UK’s busiest railway station outside of London – officially opened its doors this weekend and will be followed this Thursday September 24 by the gleaming new Grand Central shopping centre above the station.
Among the 60 retailers in the £150 million mall will be independent jewellers TH Baker. Sitting on a key corner site on one of the main thoroughfares, this family owned retailer will add its individual sparkle to this impressive new mall.
“With 50,000,000 shoppers expected to pass through Grand Central in the next twelve months, we were obviously delighted to acquire this site. Together with Innovare Design I think we have delivered an outstanding, contemporary store to showcase our collections of prestigious and designer brand name jewellery and watches. I’m confident that shoppers will love not only the wide choice on offer but our new environment too.” Phil Higgs, Director at TH Baker
The working partnership with Innovare Design stems from a recent and successful refurbishment of TH Baker’s Merry Hill store. “Of course this new project required close collaboration not only with our client but with the centre management design team at Grand Central,” says Lloyd Blakey, Creative Director at Innovare Design.
Innovare’s retail design solution for TH Baker obviously had to satisfy some exacting parameters from the centre management team to ensure that all stores sat comfortably in the aspirational and iconic interior architecture of the atrium.
“For instance,” says Blakey “with the building’s many architectural idiosyncrasies, we needed to design a unique and stimulating shop front to ensure the very best prominence, even from a distance. As for inside, the store exudes a warm, luxurious and stylish feel, in keeping with the rich and vibrant mall environment. Stained ash, high gloss white and chrome finishes and furniture all reinforce the premium TH Baker brand quality. Specially designed feature lights highlight tempting jewellery display tables, and the dramatic bronze fretwork graphic in the window display, is also incorporated into a glazed wall at the rear of the store to create privacy and intrigue to the workshop.”
Phil Higgs commented, “As you can imagine it has been an extremely busy build up to this week but we are all very excited about the opening on Thursday and look forward to reporting some great trading results in the coming weeks.”