Design only
We design and document the store to fabrication level, coordinate MEP, produce the BOQ and submission drawings, and stay on call through construction. You appoint and hold the contractor. Suited to brands with an existing project management team or a national contractor already in place.
Design and build
Everything above, plus the construction, procurement and commissioning under a single contract. There is no handover between the designer and the builder, because there is no second party. Suited to a fixed opening date, a site far from the brand's own team, or a first store in a new city.
Format and rollout
We author the store format once, to construction level, with the variation rules written in. Each subsequent site is adapted against that standard rather than redesigned. The twelfth store costs less to draw than the second. Held on retainer, and it can sit above either of the two above.
We design the store, and we can build it too.
Most of our work is retail and food service interiors for brands opening more than one store. Some clients take the drawings and appoint their own contractor. Others hand us the whole thing. Both are normal, and the design work is identical either way.
What changes is who carries the risk between the drawing and the finished store, and how many conversations that takes.
The brand reads the same in Chennai as in London. The building of it is local.
Most of our work begins as an international manual and ends as an Indian building. The translation, material, craft, climate and the people who make it, is the part we hold.
Every material has a lead time. The opening date does not move.
- 01Nothing enters the schedule with a lead time longer than the float it sits on. A finish that lands in week ten of an eleven week programme is a finish we did not specify.
- 02Two approved equivalents are named at specification stage, so a shortage at the depot is a substitution decided in an hour, not a stoppage argued over for a week.
- 03Stocked in Chennai in three days beats imported in nine weeks, and beats it again in year two when a customer puts a trolley through a panel.
- 04Long lead items are ordered against the programme at award, not when the drawing is approved.
A jewellery vitrine and a fryer line share nothing but the word interior.
- 01Jewellery: neutral, low reflectance surfaces near the cases. A warm laminate will tint stones under 3000K, and no amount of lighting design recovers it.
- 02Food service: compact laminate, stainless and epoxy at the line, specified for grease, cleaning chemistry and eighteen hours of trading a day.
- 03Apparel: substrates that take repeated fixing, because the wall is re-drilled every time the fixture plan changes with the season.
- 04Bakery and confectionery: counter faces that survive sugar, humidity and a daily wash down without swelling at the edge.
A maker works to a drawing, or to a memory. We supply the drawing.
- 01Shop drawings are issued to the fabricator before the first cut, with tolerances stated rather than assumed.
- 02A mock up is approved on site before a production run, so the second store does not relearn what the first one did.
- 03Craft held to a drawing is repeatable. Craft held to a memory is one good store and eleven approximations.
Specified against the conditions the store actually runs in.
- 01Monsoon humidity on veneer and MDF, and a mall service corridor that runs at forty degrees.
- 02Dust load on light fittings, hard water on chrome and glass, load shedding on refrigeration.
- 03Substrate, adhesive, finish and fixing chosen for this climate, not lifted from a temperate pack.
The same makers, on every project, for years.
- 01A vendor who has built the detail before does not need to be taught it, which is where the programme is actually saved.
- 02Paid on agreed terms, so capacity is held for us when a rollout compresses.
- 03A chain has a weakest link. An ecosystem has a second workshop that can take the joinery this week.
The brand reads identical. The build is local and serviceable.
- 01A European laminate matched to a locally pressed equivalent, tested to the same abrasion class.
- 02A joint detail redrawn for material available in eight foot sheets.
- 03A lighting specification re lamped to Indian supply, without changing the lit effect.
Enquiry
Send us the shell and the date.
Tell us which of the three routes fits, or ask us and we will say which one we would take.