SugarSin London – a retail concept design and matching website by Barber

11th January 2013

One of our own favourite projects of last year was our store concept, branding and retail interior design for SugarSin – an amazing brand new sweet shop in one of London’s most prominent shopping locations – Covent Garden.

SugarSin London retail design

SugarSin is the brainchild of Scandinavian sisters Anna and Josefin who hail from Sweden, where sweets are a common treat for adults and children alike. As a nation, the Swedish eat more pick n mix sweets than anyone else in the world. The sisters were keen to bring these cultural concepts to the UK and following the demise of Woolworths hallowed pick n mix concession, they envisioned a niche in the UK market for a new brand of sophisticated confectionery retail store. Our job was to create a contemporary store design concept that was enticing, bright and fun which would appeal to all ages.

SugarSin London retail design

Our initial set of detailed retail concept designs helped the sisters to secure the prestigious location for the store before we went to work bringing the designs to fruition, supplying a detailed set of plans and specifications for the girls chosen shop fitting team to work from.

The furniture and fittings in the store are big, bold and brightly coloured, the candy coloured diamond patterned walls look good enough to eat, offset with brightly coloured tables and shelf upon shelf of delicious sweet treats displayed in glass jars. The sweets are mainly imported from Scandinavia and it was important for customers to be able to see everything on offer. The aim was to entice customers into the store with a window display consisting of exotic and interesting sweets that haven’t been on the sale in the UK before, alongside delicious old -skool classics which would appeal to the retro sweet-consuming nostalgia market.

SugarSin London retail design

Inside the shop, hundreds of glass ‘bubbles’ hang from the ceiling and items are framed by vibrantly coloured display fittings and recessed backlit shelves. Many of Covent Garden’s thousands of daily visitors are tourists, seeking unique purchases that can only be bought in London and as soon as the store opened customers were asking if they could buy any of the sweets online once they returned home.

SugarSin London retail design

Delighted with their store concept the SugarSin girls returned to Barber asking us to design a website which continued their strong visual merchandising and brand identity online. They wanted the same enticing, colourful designs combined with the familiar features of the store which would let visitors to the new website know that they had come to the right place.

The result is the new sugarsin.co.uk site which went live last month. The website includes many of the design elements from the SugarSin store, including the bubbles and the pink and white harlequin wallpaper. The easy to use e-commerce section of the site features it’s own pick n mix section and is perfect for visitors who wish they’d brought an extra packet of strawberry mushrooms when they were in the store or who have become addicted to some of the sister’s exclusive Scandinavian treats including liquorice pipes and intriguingly titled Plopp bars.

SugarSin London website design

If you can’t make it down to Covent Garden to check out the store any time soon, you can drop by the online shop and try some of SugarSin’s delicious sugary treats at sugarsin.co.uk.