Oliver Bonas Relocates
Independent British lifestyle retailer Oliver Bonas has relocated within St Pancras Station to a new site; the new store is more spacious and will sell an edited stock package across fashion, homeware and gifts.
The Oliver Bonas story starts with its founder, Olly. His creative upbringing, culturally influenced by the many countries he lived in, instilled a love of design and an exploratory spirit from an early age. Beginning with Olly bringing back gifts for friends from his travels abroad, a small business grew and in 1993 the first shop opened, repainted by his friends with Olly behind a second-hand till.
Over two decades on, Oliver Bonas has evolved from hand-picking others’ designs to sell to creating their own. Today, Oliver Bonas includes an amazing team who share Olly’s passion for bringing new ideas to life. The designers take Olly’s exploratory spirit and channel it into the fashion and homeware collections as well as the overall store design and fittings. They are inspired by the alchemy of great design, fresh thinking and the belief that design has the power to positively affect how we feel.
The new store can be found at Unit 16a in St Pancras Station. The in-house design team have designed and curated the space from store layout to bespoke fixtures and fittings unique to this shop. Work on the new site started towards the end of March 2017 and was completed at the beginning of May.
Brendan Kelly, Store Designer at Oliver Bonas, spoke to Premier Retail magazine about the project:
He said: “The project involved the design and fit out of the new retail space within the station, relocating from a relatively small unit to this new larger site. The unit has a unique corner frontage giving great views all the way into the store from numerous angles.
“The overall aim of the design was to create an enjoyable experience for our customers with an element of lux detailing along with referencing strict guidelines laid down by the station and the English Heritage team. Whilst incorporating our own materials palette and design reference points, the guidelines set out in our submission where also influencing factors that shaped the look and feel of the store.
“The one off bespoke finishes that feature in this site range from handmade brass light fittings to made to measure clothing window rails. The unique ceiling features came about as a creative solution to the requirement for an open ceiling needed for the smoke extract system within the station.
“The unit has a corner frontage, with a tall glass façade. This gives great views into the whole space and meant we needed to design a series of bespoke fixtures to show off our products without creating visual clutter and reducing sight lines into the store.
“The unit is essentially one large open space in which we’ve used the shape and positioning of current and new bespoke fixtures, to help create a flow and exploratory journey through the space.”
Today Oliver Bonas has grown to 60 stores across the UK and is run by an amazing team who share Olly’s passion for bringing new ideas to life. The new St Pancras store will sell an edited collection across women’s fashion, accessories, homeware and jewellery.
Brendan concluded: “Our customers have been really excited about the new store and feedback has been they are really enjoying the new space and shopping experience. Working on projects where you are challenged is always really rewarding when the project comes to life.”
New Oliver Bonas designs land in store and online every week.
