Avolta continues to pride itself on delivering stores that respond to an individual sense of place and truly understanding the needs of its customers in increasingly challenging environments, supported by our expertise in identifying and responding to these with our creative delivery.
With a global reach, operating in 75 countries and with over 5,500 locations worldwide, the retailer has recently opened a new 750sq m duty free airside store in the newly expanded Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport. The store will operate alongside their existing 340sq m duty free shop, which has been operating since 2011.
The new walk-through store features some distinctive customer touchpoints such as a central eye-catching rum tasting bar, central to an extensive celebration of the island’s rum-making tradition, and presenting a unique selection of high-quality rums from leading and local producers. Also showcasing local culture and products is the ‘Hit-the-Beach’ corner, which bears testimony to the island’s heritage and strong beach culture.
The retail space also enables the inclusion of a larger product mix of the expected duty-free items from global brands, such as perfume and cosmetics, confectionery, tobacco, spirits, jewellery and travel accessories, all of which are infused with an assortment of local produce, gifts and food available to purchase to enhance the product offering and provide a distinctive Sense of Place for this tropical island.
Having helped deliver a great variety of stores for Avolta, ranging from large format, that offer the full range of duty free goods, to localised boutiques and concepts that address specific geographic offers and markets, rpa:group was well placed to provide a full range of design services for the Martinique store from concept to technical package.
The project was not without its challenges. Being a small island, there was a limit to the range of materials and skills available and additionally, as the entire airport was being updated, there was continuous change as the build was optimised. Having an adaptable approach to design process, enabled the focus to be on local available skills in the store’s construction, to allow for its successful completion.
