Over the years, fixtures have evolved from blocky shelving and functional hanging racks with dense merchandise capacity to elements of design and marvels of engineering.

But announcing and telling the brand story is a whole new role for the cabinetry, shelving, tables, racks and furniture that comprise a fixture collection. And today, they often tell that story while presenting minimal merchandise.

Nixon, a California lifestyle retailer best known for its surf watches, recently debuted in Paris with fixtures designed and manufactured by Checkland Kindleysides. The Leicester, U.K.-based design firm won this year’s Fixture of the Year award from the Association for Retail Environments (A.R.E.) in March.

The slick fixture package for Nixon’s Paris location includes a display table in the center and a perimeter rear-wall system, representing a departure from traditional watch merchandising.

The emphasis of the uncluttered Nixon “wave” table is not necessarily merchandise. It has not been designed to show all variations of the line. There are no drawers or cabinets for backup stock. Nor was it designed with cases and locks for the items, which can range from $100 to $2000.

Rather than a workhorse of merchandising, it’s a symbolic reference to beach life. As such, it tells the Nixon story, a Southern California brand showcasing “surfer cool.”

White blocks protruding from the glass base undulate in a way that suggests ocean swells, and surfers waiting for the next big wave to roll in. Each block is equipped with a cuff holding a single watch, but it’s the overall effect of the waving motion that supports the Nixon story.

“The design was meant to emphasize informality and accessibility,” says Charlie Ellis, design principal at Checkland Kindleysides. “The retailer wanted to break down barriers. Shoppers shouldn’t feel like they have to ask to touch a watch, or be stopped by intimidating barriers.”

As the brand has gained a following in Europe, Nixon is rolling out its own stores, starting with this one in Paris’s edgy Le Marais district. And this being Paris, Nixon wanted to transition from a sports retailer to a fashion brand.

“Over the years, every retailer has undergone every permutation to get the right level of stock per square foot, but we’re in a different era and people want to shop differently,” says Jeff Kindleysides, founder of the design firm. “Shoppers know that if they don’t see the product on display, the retailer can deliver it to their home by the end of the day. But they want fun and information, a hands-on experience, a reason to come into the store.”

The other fixtures recognized by A.R.E. this year have a similar story to tell.

A SENSE OF TILE
Improvements in digital large-format printing have created merchandising issues for retailers that sell decorative residential tiles for floors, walls and countertops.

The wide assortments of shades, tones, colors, patterns, textures and grains require presentations that give a sense of all available choices. With the technology, a 12-by-12-inch tile is no longer the standard. A 24-by-24-inch tile is not a special order anymore, and some tiles can be made as large as 48-by-48 inches.

“A traditional facing panel of thumbnail-sized swatches does not convey the power of today’s designs,” says Robert Ruscio, president and principal designer of Ruscio Studio Inc. (Montreal). “But if you line the samples up like soldiers, with only their edges showing, you have to count on the consumer to pull them out, which can be daunting.”

When the high-end Canadian retailer Euro Tile & Stone moved into a new location in Ottawa, it asked Ruscio Studio to come up with a fixture that could showcase its large-format tiles without being too unwieldy to operate. (This showroom won a store fixture award from A.R.E. in March.)

“We created what we call a double-sided angled slider, 4 feet high and 17 feet long,” says Ruscio. “The consumers still see the edges of the tiles as [they] approach, but the system of handles and casters allows [them] to slide the tile out easily, and then glide it back and slide another one out.”

To attract the shopper, Ruscio built in opportunities to display promotional graphics of the product in action – some are traditional household settings and some are surprising, like the floor showing up in the Palace of Versailles. Though the various manufacturers will be providing these graphics, the retailer will be controlling what is shown, and how.

“Most people don’t shop this [kind of] product by brand names,” Ruscio says. “The operative brand here is Euro Tile & Stone. These are all high-quality, high-design products from Italy and Spain, and shoppers rely on Euro Tile to edit the collection and carry the best of the best.”

So in the end, he says, it’s the retailer controlling the message and the fixture doing the storytelling.

SOUTHERN COMFORT
When Belk Inc., the Charlotte, N.C.-based chain of department stores throughout the South, moved into a new location in the Dallas Galleria, it hired BHDP Architecture (Cincinnati) to fulfill its tagline: “Modern. Southern. Style.”

Working closely with Andy Hoffman, Belk’s director of store planning and architecture, BHDP created an envelope of sleek and fashionable visual elements meant to surprise the eye.

In March, A.R.E. presented a store fixture award to a fixture set BHDP and Belk designed for the store’s shoe department: Part of the package is a pair of Mondrian-inspired towers of polished steel and glass that twist around columns at the entrance to the department. The companion pieces on the focal wall in the back of the space are eye-catching elements at the end of the main aisle.

“Most women shop the fixtures for shoes,” says Andrew McQuilkin, BHDP’s retail market leader. “They come across shoes off the aisle that they like, and they often don’t even approach the perimeter wall.”

Armed with research about the Belk shopper in Dallas, the retailer and designer sought the environment of a Southern home. “What’s special about every home is its personality, and that often comes from the artwork,” says McQuilkin. “These sculptural fixtures provide that personality, as well as some modern bling.”

But in a department like fine shoes, which contains an assortment of well-known brands, the fixtures are unmistakably Belk.

“The brand story here is Belk,” says McQuilkin. “Belk is the brand that delivers the brands.”

As retail brands continue to coexist with consumer brands, something beyond merchandise has to tell their stories. It once was left purely to visual merchandising – but  today, the store fixtures are being designed to tell that story.