I’m Bruce Moon. President and CEO of Moon Design Mfg. We design and manufacture a wide variety of retail store fixtures and interiors. We also have a reputation for never missing a Grand Opening in over 29 years.
It was 8pm on June 30th of this year that I received a call from Bloomingdale’s, asking if I was interested in fabricating some unique fitting rooms for a new store that was opening in Santa Monica, California. I said, “Absolutely!” and we met the next day.
The vision was the “Bloomingdale’s Style Bar”, an area of the store where the customer and their “in-store personal shopper” would be able to create the ultimate shopping experience. One unique feature of this space would be personal dressing room POD’s, that would raise and lower from the ceiling.
We discussed the height of the existing ceiling, preliminary concepts, inspiration images, and different types of fabrics. Then I asked the big question, “When is the grand opening? August 6th!” My team had five weeks to make this happen.
We immediately did a site survey. We knew that we had to maintain a minimum height clearance of 7’ 6” when the POD’s where fully raised. We also needed to determine the diameter of the opening in the existing ceiling and how much clearance we would have to work with.
Each POD would require its own motor, switch, electrical circuit, and structural support system. Using laser measuring devices, we noted the exact location of the existing electrical, mechanical, and structural elements that we would need to incorporate into the final design.
Bloomingdale’s also specified a light fixture that needed to be incorporated into the design. It would provide light for the customer when the POD was lowered. It would also light the POD in the raised position.
Taking all these must-haves into consideration, we then measured each door opening that the POD would need to go through at time of delivery, knowing that whatever we ended up fabricating, if we physically couldn’t get the POD into the area, a great design is useless!
To expedite the submittal process we photo shopped some existing inspiration images this allowed us to quickly determine if our proposed design was headed in the correct direction. We also needed to submit various fabrics to determine the correct sheerness of the acceptable fabric.
Once the concept was approved, we submitted two design options that took into consideration the site conditions that we previously surveyed. Once we received approval on the overall design, we then focused on the POD’s lifting mechanism.
Safety was priority number one. We designed each POD to have a dedicated keyed switch. This would allow the “in-store personal shopper” to operate each POD independently, while visually confirming that no obstacles or people would be in the way during the operating process.
Each lifting motor was designed with separate limit switches; this would allow the POD’s to hang exactly at the same level and transforming them into huge lampshades. Another benefit with raising the POD’s is that it created over 1000 square feet of open floor space for fashion shows and events.
The design also took into consideration the motorized lifting cables. We designed the cables to remain taut when in the lowered position, matching the hanging light fixture cord. Each POD also required a locking door; two coat hooks, a cushion seat, and a rolling mirror to create an exclusive private space.
Please watch the video to get a glimpse of “The Ultimate Shopping Experience”.
