House of Barbie

House of Barbie
Mattel creates a flagship dreamhouse in Shanghai aimed at bringing out the little girl in women of all ages

By Alison Embrey Medina, Executive Editor
August 01, 2009

Iwan Baan

Barbie, adored by girls the world over, has landed herself the dreamhouse of all dreamhouses. Celebrating her 50th birthday earlier this year, the beloved doll brand took its international popularity to a new level, with parent company Mattel Inc. launching a global flagship for Barbie in Shanghai, China, in early March. Thanks to some of the delays that come with building in China, the project opened more than a year later than anticipated, perfect to coincide with the leading lady’s gold anniversary.

Looking to expand its store portfolio into the international market, Mattel began its exploration process more than five years ago. The success of the company’s American Girl stores within the United States has been off the charts, but international expansion was limited with a brand so rooted in American culture. Barbie, however, has quite an international following—especially in the Chinese market—and Mattel saw the potential a Shanghai store might have for a destination retail experience. “The beauty of the Shanghai market is that mothers saw this concept as much for themselves as for their daughters,” says Gene Murtha, senior vice president international market development, Mattel. “The bottom line is—it’s fun. It’s not going to a museum, it’s not going to an amusement park—it’s a combination of the two.”

Mattel teamed up with BIG, the branding unit of Ogilvy & Mathers, Barbie’s longtime ad agency of record, to come up with the overall concept for the first Barbie store. Mattel then later hired New York-based husband-and-wife team Slade Architecture, run by James and Hayes Slade, for the design and concept of the multilevel 35,000-sq.-ft. space. “When BIG and Mattel were coming up with the concept, they decided that design should be a central component of the store,” says Hayes Slade, principal, Slade Architecture. “They are trying to establish Barbie as a fashion and design icon, so the design was an integral component of their vision.”

Part of the challenge in creating the first Barbie flagship was helping customers understand the full breadth of offering a store called “Barbie” might entail. Mattel wanted customers to understand that this is not just a toy store—it is an immersive, fashion-conscious destination, James Slade says. “The store is all about the girl,” he adds. “We don’t mean ‘girl’ as in child, but the excitement and emotion of a girl that stays with a woman throughout her life—that enthusiasm and openness. Mattel wanted the store to bring out the girl in women of all ages.”

Walking into the entrance lobby, customers are immediately welcomed with a sense of high fashion. The lobby features a high-impact fashion display, surrounded by white, curving walls and a dramatic chandelier overhead. “The idea was to give a ‘Barbie’ feel, but not quite the immersive experience just yet—kind of a teaser,” Hayes Slade says.

Off to the right, a brightly lit escalator well serves as the gateway that takes customers up into the immersive world of Barbie. This “moment of extreme pinkness,” as Hayes Slade puts it, is a bit abstract and engages the consumer’s curiosity as to what this Barbie experience is really going to entail. “It’s almost kind of a palate cleanser,” James Slade says. “You’re coming off of this busy, bustling street, and you enter this bright pink escalator, and there’s a very subtle sound of giggling. As you go up, you hear this faint sound of laughter that gets louder as you ascend. It creates excitement.”

The escalator brings customers up onto the third floor, a central area with views up to two floors above. The store is organized around a central spine—a winding staircase housing 800 Barbie dolls, all dressed in pink. The dolls are encased in staggered translucent polycarbonate boxes hung on continuous stainless steel straps. “The doll is the filter that you see everything through,” James Slade explains. “The idea of agglomerating and bringing a mass of dolls together here is that Barbie is a collectible—it’s an important part of the heritage of Barbie.”

The third floor—referred to as the “women’s floor”—also houses a make-up counter, where girls and women can have makeovers done in-store, as well as a couture women’s fashion area. This area features display tables with Barbie poodles as bases, mirrors encased in butterflies and even a table whose resin base has doll-size Barbie shoes, handbags and other accessories cast inside. Slade Architecture custom designed most of the fixtures and furnishings in the store, partnering with Kingsmen for the manufacturing.

The fourth floor is dedicated completely to dolls. Straight off the doll staircase, customers come to a Barbie media area, which features oversized lampshades, flower stool cushions and soft seating—a place to sit down, linger, read a book or watch a Barbie video. There is an international “Dolls of the World” element here with dolls fashioned in national dress, lined up in a V-shaped showcase.

Nearby is the kid-friendly toy area, which houses shelf after shelf of packaged Barbie dolls, in addition to an experiential “play wall” with bump outs, mirrors and bubbles for children to play on. “The whole area is meant to be the same color as Barbie packaging, so that it gives the effect of being the biggest and best collection of Barbie dolls you have ever seen,” Hayes Slade says. One of the play tables has a light fixture overtop that is made to look like a cloud—a play on the “dreamhouse” metaphor. The carpet packs more Barbie punch with a custom fade element (in various shades of pink).

Also on the fourth floor is the exclusive Barbie Design Center, an interactive feature where customers can create their own Barbie doll, including her fashion ensemble. Mattel brought in Columbus, Ohio-based Chute Gerdeman to coordinate the space planning for the Design Center, which is housed behind closed black doors to heighten the level of mystery for what goes on inside. Inspired by their visit to the ultra-secret Mattel fashion birthplace in El Segundo, Calif., where Barbie fashions are designed each year, the Chute Gerdeman team wanted to bring that exclusive idea of the creation of fashion into the Design Center experience. “We wanted to communicate the foundation of fashion, but bring it down to a girl level,” says Mindi Trank, director, brand strategy, Chute Gerdeman.

Design Center guests are adorned with a designer’s smock, and are then led to a computer station where they can design their custom, one-of-a-kind Barbie doll. Design elements within the space reflect creative influences, such as an “inspiration wall” with fabric swatches, Barbie sketches and fashion photos to get customers’ creative juices flowing. Once the Barbie is designed and complete, the guest receives a “design portfolio” housing her design, a certificate signed by Barbie and, of course, her own custom doll.

Outside the Design Center, the Slade team created a designer gallery showcasing Mattel’s history of designer dolls—a collection of historic Mattel dolls dressed in designs by fashion houses such as Vera Wang and Versace. “We wanted to create a depth and an air of mystery for the Design Center. We did a series of layers of translucent fabric, with cutouts where the dolls are. It’s a display, but it also refers back to how fashion is made and what it is made of—fabric,” Hayes Slade says. The gallery walls are backlit in color-changing LEDs, and the area features custom-designed pink-and-black seating elements, as well as a custom rug displaying Barbie fashion icons.

The fifth floor is dedicated to girls, and the designers implemented an innovative play on scale to make little girls feel “doll-sized” from the moment they enter. As customers travel up an escalator to the floor, flower cutouts on the walls grow in size from 6 in. to several feet, giving the effect of a little girl becoming “doll-sized” as she progresses up the escalator. This play on scale continues into the shoe area, where mirrors are cut in the shape of oversized Barbie boots, giving the effect again that the girl is now the doll, and Barbie is now life-sized. Similarly, a graphic mural features
floor-to-ceiling human-size images of Barbies dressed in ballroom garb. (Cutouts in the mural allow customers to stick their faces through the wall for photo ops in a “Barbie body.”)

Pink is notably present, especially on the girls floor. “For the color palette, we were very conscious of the important role that pink has for Barbie,” Hayes Slade reiterates. “The pink increases in intensity as you ascend up the levels of the store, so the women’s and fashion areas have just notes of pink, the doll area has more intense pinks, and the girls’ floor is a more immersive pink. There is definitely a lot of pink in the store, but we took note to use it in a way that made it special.”

In addition to a small giftables and housewares area, the fifth floor also features the flagship’s second major interactive element—the Barbie Fashion Runway. Chute Gerdeman took the reigns on the design of this feature as well, giving girls the opportunity to be real-life runway models, while their parents and family look on from an adjacent European bistro-style chocolate and coffee shop (see sidebar, above).
One level up, the sixth floor houses the Barbie Café, a restaurant and gelato bar outfitted in black and white with pink undertones.

Barbie’s first global flagship is unapologetically “all girl,” and its Shanghai customers are loving it thus far. “The average dwell time for U.S. retail is about 10 to 12 minutes, and China is about the same,” Murtha notes. “The average for our
American Girl stores is about three hours—but Barbie is in a whole other league. It’s on-trend, it’s fashionable, it’s louder. It’s just plain fun.”

On the Runway

Designed by Columbus, Ohio-based Chute Gerdeman, the Barbie Fashion Runway is a standout of the Barbie Shanghai flagship, featuring an interactive area where customers can become runway models for a day. Housed on the fifth floor adjacent to a bistro-style chocolate shop (where parents can watch their girls strut their stuff), the 2,400-sq.-ft. Fashion Runway area features a full gamut of activity.

The cashwrap where parents purchase the runway package features a 7-ft.-high back wall of constantly moving LED lights that catches attention from right off the escalator, says Jay Highland, director, brand communications, Chute Gerdeman. Girls are then taken to a back area, where they are able to pick out their outfit, have a quick hair and make-up session, and then work the runway for all family and friends to see.