In order to succeed in today’s competitive retail environment, it helps for store outlets to serve as an embodiment of the brand they represent in order to truly create a definitive impact on consumers.
In this way, interior designers have played a key role in supporting the industry, which faces a growing threat from the online shopping experience.
While the embodiment of a brand is often undertaken through purely aesthetic means, major retailer Target has committed to major, across the board store retrofits in order to convey their modernized company agenda. According to Target Canada president Tony Fisher, the major international retailer will aim to update all of their 100-plus stores across the country to match up to LEED environmental standards.
“We take our role as good corporate citizen very seriously, and we’re proud that Target is making a firm commitment to sustainability in Canada,” he said. “Striving for LEED certification at our 124 stores opening in 2013 is important as we seek to use our resources responsibly and maintain the health of our communities.”
Fisher said sustainability is a key part of the Target ideology, and for that reason everything from the built spaces to the business model and the products themselves will be guided by environmentally sustainable ideals.
The major delivery of the retailers will become a crucial part of the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC’s) LEED Volume Program. The program encourages this kind of mass streamlining of brands, or similar-type retailers. Not only will the retailer become a major part of the program, but they will be one of the first key Canadian company’s to enter into it, offering them a key leadership position in this sector nationally.
According to USGBC CEO and founding Chair Rick Fedrizzi, in undertaking this major green commitment, the retailers will stand as positive an industry example.
“By seeking to transform its portfolio to high-performing, LEED-certified sustainable buildings, Target is setting an important, positive example for the retail industry,” says Fedrizzi, “Target will improve environmental performance and achieve operational and utility savings. In addition, the educational materials that Target has developed for its partners are outstanding resources for teaching field teams how to implement LEED across a large portfolio of building projects.”
The retrofits will take place over a period of six to nine months and come in at more that $10 million.
