Olympic Colour Cafe | design-led paint retail
There are obviously far better ways to sell colour.
Paint is usually sold in a hardware store...next to the nails and plumbing supplies.
But paint shoppers are not really buying the stuff in the bucket, what is being bought is rather 'a wall full of colour'.
Yet paint brands - because it makes sense for them to sell their stuff in a hardware store - force buyers to 'imagine' the space they want to paint by printing a tiny colour square on a little card, which you are meant to use to somehow transport your mind into an alternate colour realm, while standing in a draft...next to taps and cold glue.
There are obviously far better, more customer-centric, ways to sell colour.
Olympic Paints have chosen a different approach; one that involves creating a cafe of colour, that seems more in keeping with the spirit of the occasion of choosing colour for your home.
Designed by architect Nisha van der Hoven, in collaboration with TAG Collective, the Olympic Colour Cafe (in the Centurion Mall, Pretoria) is an immersive, design-led space where shoppers of colour can muse and ponder (while drinking a cappuccino) and spend quality time...carefully considering colour.
It's almost as if the approach was chosen based on what's best for customers, rather than what works for the paint company.
Crazy idea, right?