Retail Evolving: One is Easy

Among Miller Zell’s end-to-end capabilities, we excel at “Design” and “Design Development.” Both are critical to create outstanding branded environments, but Design Development is where fantastic meets feasible.

Our process centers on mastering scale — engineering and executing a flagship design for hundreds or thousands of locations, on brand, on time and on budget.

As Miller Zell’s Chief Creative Officer Tom Ertler notes, “Building one of anything is easy. The hard part is taking that one [design] and applying it to a whole chain.”

In other words, implementation often is where big ideas can become huge headaches. Budgets and schedules blow up. Installation teams learn that one size does not fit all.

Our clients often come to us with drawings or designs that they want to use to refresh or reimagine their stores across the country. Our role as their partner is then to bring those designs to life at scale and reduce project complexity.

It’s a collaborative process, as we work through material sampling and selection, surveys and prototyping. We never stop value engineering while ensuring the design is optimized for aesthetics, purpose and cost. Then our program management teams maintain peak efficiency during rollout, fostering transparent communication at every point of production, delivery and installation.

Whether it’s a retailer or a bank, a brand refresh or a store-within-a-store, bringing a design to life at scale is about pairing innovation and creativity with efficiency and precise execution.

Our end goal is always the same. We partner with clients to deliver their unique brand promise and exceed their expectations, whatever the scale of a project, from one store to 5,000.