LANE CRAWFORD HAS spent millions in the past two years setting up its flagship store in Two IFC and upgrading its look from one of department store to 'speciality luxury retailer'. Making sure the stores' facades are alluringly glossy is Bartley Ingram and his team of 24 visual merchandisers. Mr Ingram, 40, has been pulling the strings and tweaking the fixtures at Lane Crawford for just over a year.
A visual merchandising veteran, he has been in the business for more than 20 years, starting in a store in Virginia, where he worked while studying for a degree in fashion merchandising and art history at night school. His passion for retail inspired him to move to New York, where he landed a job with upmarket store Barney's.
Ten years later, he resigned as Barney's senior display director to take up the visual merchandising helm at Lane Crawford, where he is responsible for the look of the four stores in Hong Kong and one in Shanghai. He talks about being the visual director of a firm that is a big fan of creativity on the shop floor.
What is visual merchandising?
There's a very basic kind of science to it in that if it weren't to generate sales, a company wouldn't need a visual merchandising department. Our livelihood is dependent on increasing sales, otherwise they don't need us. Our job is to make the store attractive. We have to use our creativity and the space we've got to grab customers and get the sales momentum going. In Two IFC, for example, we have the luxury of transforming the areas around our central escalator because we have no windows and they are our main entry point.
How would you define the role of the visual merchandiser?