Here’s some of the previous workshops we have run.

1. Fashion Career Workshops

2. Fashion Marketing Bootcamp

3. Retail Spy

4. Social Media

5. The Business of Craft Workshops

View calendar of all upcoming workshops

We’re pretty excited to announce our next destination for TheSuperCool mobile emporium of everyday objects. We were approached by the team behind SO:ME Space – a unique retail concept that supports local and emerging designers from around Australia for the purposes of brand growth, experimentation and development in a dedicated, boutique space within the market.

Encouraging repeat customers, there’s a changing of the guard for 4 of the pop up spaces within SO:ME Space and it is here TheSuperCool will be visiting for 6 weeks with a unique retail installation.

We were first encouraged to check out the space when it opened last year and we were impressed with the curation of designers, the industrial fit out and the way the space seamlessly merges with the surroundings of the South Melbourne Market.

It’s well worth a visit and whilst you’re there checking TheSuperCool out, you can get your groceries as well!

Dates you need to know: Launching Friday 27 January – Sunday 4 March 2012

Location: SO:ME Space South Melbourne Market  Enter via corner of York & Cecil Street South Melbourne

Opening Days & Hours: same as market days.

Wednesdays:  8 – 4 pm

Fridays: 8 – 5 pm

Saturdays: 8 – 4 pm

Sundays: 8 – 4 pm

See you there!

It’s that time again. Fashion Exposed presents its business seminar line up and iSpyStyle is presenting the Retail Exposed seminar. Retail is at an interesting point in history and as always we hope that our workshops and seminars provide insights, practical tips and some easy to implement solutions for your business.

Details you need to know.

Where: Sydney Exhibition Centre

When: Sunday 12 February 2012

Time: 4pm – 4:45pm

Tix: FREE – first in best dressed. Only 30 seats but plenty of standing room. You must register to visit Fashion Exposed and you must be part of the industry to register. Details here.

All photos by Marsha Golemac.

It’s taken many “inspirational chats”, a lot of emailing international artisans, negotiating with freight forwarders, sourcing unique locations, briefing creative agencies and web developers, becoming best mates with the postie, a hundred painful cardboard papercuts, a helluva lot of visual merchandising references, calling on lots of friends and some designer cardboard furniture to make TheSuperCool project come to life.

We launched Thursday 17 November at Melbourne Central’s greenhouse on the old Myer link bridge on Level 1 (enter from lonsdale street) and we had a steady stream of interested customers all day who genuinely seemed to “get” our concept and were excited about it. (bless them) We were madly pricing items, selling stock, wrapping test tubes safely for customers to take home (we sell some amazing chemistry inspired interior homewares) and generally trying to keep up to the demand.

Friday arrives and we’ve sold out of some items (yay) and restocked several other items and we’re thinking this is amazing. Friday night arrives and we need a foot spa badly after moving into the space, working 14 hour days and getting little sleep.

So far, so good. We’re excited to be bringing such affordable Christmas gifts and awesome everyday objects to the people!

Make sure you pop down to Melbourne Central’s greenhouse before 4 December. After that we head to Pope Joan Cafe from the 8 December to Christmas.

A big thanks to

Studio Alto for the awesome branding  job, stickers, postcards, stamps and general id. We think you’re SuperCool!

Karton for sponsoring us with your amazing, durable, easy to assemble and light weight cardboard designer furniture

Marsha Golemac for her amazing photo’s capturing our first location and its incredible amount of product

All our family and friends for supporting us with moving, coming to visit and buying up big!

You may have noticed we’ve been busy lately and not posting as much content as normal. We’ve been busy working on a special project called THESUPERCOOL.  It’s a mobile emporium that goes to the people, with an eclectic mix of everyday objects from around the globe,

It’s launching this November, just in time for Christmas.  Through our own retail trend analysis for clients, we realised there was an opportunity to create a mobile retail experience; pop-up shops 2.0 – where the pop up keeps on moving to new locations.  We were fascinated with the concept of vintage peddlers who were the original mobile retailers; taking their wares to wherever the people were. This idea of creating a temporary shop for locals resonated with us given the state of the current retail environment.

THESUPERCOOL will sell stationary, design books, posters, kids toys, homewares, gifts and vintage collectables among other items. Following trends influenced by fashion, pop culture and the creative industries, THESUPERCOOL has hand selected everyday objects from local and international artists to bring a unique edit. It offers a sensory experience you can’t achieve by shopping online.

Destination 1: Melbourne Central Greenhouse

Location: Myer link bridge Level 1 – Lonsdale Street entrance Melbourne Central

Dates: Thursday 17 to Sunday 4 December 2011

Destination 2: Pope Joan Café

Location: Function room in garden of Pope Joan 77-79 Nicholson Street East Brunswick Melbourne

Dates: Thursday 8 – Sunday 18 December 2011

More Destinations to be announced.

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Get connected to stay in the loop and follow where we go next.

THESUPERCOOL.COM – launching soon

TWEET US – @TheSuperCools

STALK US – TheSuperCool

EMAIL US – thesupercoolproject@gmail.com

It’s a mixed bag of inspirations this month. From wooden greenhouses at trade fairs to a modern wooden take on chandeliers to the latest pop up store by Body using white bricks in a novel way to nail lacquer dripping all over GPO. Creativity is literally pouring out of these brands.

GPO collaborated with OPI to offer a Nail Frenzy for the Races.  A novel idea for injecting some colour into your spring racing outfit. We particularly loved the oversized posters with pop colour nail lacquer dripping from the 1st floor!

We met the entertaining, talented and unique Loz from Grandeliers at Life In Style in August. We were totally smitten by her exceptionally modern take on chandeliers using acrylics and Tasmanian woods. Lighting is really having a design moment and adding luminosity to any room is now such a hard choice with so many amazing designer options out there. We think these grandeliers would suit so many bars, cafe’s, gallery spaces and of course adorn many an inner city apartment or loft style warehouse.

As we’ve discussed before, pop-up shops are a great way for a retailer to test the waters in a certain location to suss out the foot traffic and neighbourhood before committing to a 8-10 year lease. So we’re not surprised to hear that Body by dainy sawatzky has launched a pop up shop in Chapel Street, South Yarra.  Body has always had a unique retail offering with locations varying from Healesville to East St Kilda to Degraves Lane, so this pop up location shows a more commercial side to their business. However, there’s nothing commercial about their temporary shop fit out. Using white bricks to their true visual merchandising potential and making the most of a small space, this fit out is a little pocket of heaven. Something Holly Hobby would be comfortable in! Open until 31 December 2011, make sure you pop by. It’s next to Zimmerman and the Pound Cafe on Oxford Street (although considered Chapel street by the posties!)

The humble greenhouse has had many incarnations of late and we’re pretty smitten with it. We particularly loved this example used at a trade fair for housing Seedling’s products at Life In Style. It’s raw timber aesthetic made it stand out amongst all the white stands and the astroturf brought a homely feel to it (not to mention the comfort on our sore feet from traipsing up and down the halls).  We also loved the DIY kids products they had at this fair, encouraging kids to interact more with their toys.

The Accessory Cube located in the main thoroughfare of Melbourne Central. Fantastic use of the yellow transparent walls.

The Information Centre construction looking like a hybrid between a shipping container and oversized peg board.

Who is Hue? Accessory Store.  Loving their simple but effective pull out drawers to alter display heights.

Love this idea of taking a recycled hand towel cylinder or several toilet rolls and putting tape, elastic or wrapping paper around it for a simple and eye catching visual display.

One of the entrances to The Element Collective. The display on the left hand side caught our eye and encouraged us to discover more.

Using an old stripped back door and some raw work bench legs with a host of vintage looking apothecary bottles, this display blends the old with the new seamlessly.

Apologies for the blurry photo, however you can see how clever their Visual Merchandiser is with using upside down tea cups connected to electrical wire as lights.

This clever use of offcuts of timber and using the original brickwork combined to create an interior tree within the store. This provides a real punctation when you walk into the store.

The view from the main entrance merging the old original shop interior of the Shot Tower with the urban youth focused product of The Element Collective.

On each of the shelves and merchandised alongside the product is a mix of nostalgic collectibles like vintage globes, books, sewing spindles and glass jars.

We loved the mix of paying homage to the old interiors as per this shot which would normally be covered up and considered an eye-sore!

Another example of great colour block merchandising.

A great recycled wooden wall creates a back room and provides a wall display towards the back of the store. Front hang merchandising at its best here, complete with axes and wood to bring out the “Mountain Man” in every guy!

The jeans wall has sawn off wooden pellets for a roof and industrial looking work bench shelves as its display. The chalk handwritten signs provide a functional yet playful direction towards the mens Vs womens jeans.

Our favourite wall is the mid century built in shelving unit that displays branded product in amongst retro curio’s.

No store is complete without a “Footwear Library” and this one houses storage galore, a great array of shoes, vintage suitcases, typewriters, art books and industrial finds with a functional wooden ladder on wheels!

We’d heard some great things about Melbourne Central lately and thought it was time for Retail Spy to pay a visit. We were quite excited about what we saw. On the main street entrance in the Latrobe St building near the shot tower is a hub of activity. What was once an empty thoroughfare with the occasional event is now an inhabited space with interactive pop up spaces. Firstly there’s a cube with yellow acrylic walls called The Accessory Cube hosting a variety of designer accessories. Secondly a very Scandinavian style shipping container (but polished and modern) houses the new information centre. It’s beautifully designed and in a much more customer friendly location now. Thirdly there’s a host of interesting retailers with stand out visual merchandising and two in particular that I liked were Who is Hue? and The Element Collective. These two shops sit near the new initiative called “The Intersection” within Melbourne Central.

Hope you enjoy our documentation. Apologies for the slightly blurry photo’s – our camera battery died after the first shot!

If you get the chance to visit these windows in person, do so. As many of you would be aware, Myer’s Bourke Street, Melbourne windows are hot property and have the potential to drive extreme brand exposure. The coveted positions are often part of the business arrangements negotiated with brands within the Myer stable. Mecca Cosmetica, Cue, Aesop have all had amazing windows of late and this latest Mecca Cosmetica one is no exception.

The two key components that make this window work is the bold use of colour and the oversized, repetitive typography. Visual Merchandising with beauty brands in such large spaces can be really challenging as the actual products are so small, so creating impact is often left to reptition to solve the dilemma. What’s interesting in these windows is the emphasis on Mecca’s brand values and promoting key categories rather than actually showing lots of their products. It’s a smart and unique approach.

Image courtesy: Portable

Portable have presented some amazing talks in their Australia wide tours: most notably Threadless & Refinery 29. This new presentation is no exception and we’re pretty excited to hear Scott Belksy, CEO and founder of The Behance Network and author of Making Things Happen present tomorrow in Melbourne, Thursday in Sydney and Friday in Brisbane.

We discovered The Behance Network a couple of years back and often use it to source new & exciting presenters for seminars, interviews and to discover unique creatives from a wide variety of genre’s within the creative professionals industry. It’s a must visit if you need to hire creatives.

One of the offshoots of developing The Behance Network is The 99% which is a think tank and research arm to their business. According to their website, ”Taking its name from Thomas Edison’s famous quote that “genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration,” the 99% includes a daily web magazine, an annual conference, and the best-selling book “Making Ideas Happen.” Through articles, tips, videos, and events, we share best practices that help creative professionals move beyond idea generation into idea execution.” It’s a fascinating site for trend based information about creatives doing interesting things and as any regular readers would know, that’s a topic we’re pretty passionate about.

Don’t miss out on seeing Scott share his story and tips. Find out more here. Tickets still available for all sessions, but just…. so don’t wait too long.

Picture yourself starting a fashion / accessories label and trying to get buyers and media attention? Picture yourself coming from a remote location removed from the hub of the main media and buyers (like Perth). Now picture yourself having a big helping hand navigate this process and assist in developing your business potential. That’s what From Here To There is all about. Bianca Vallentine (the brainchild behind this concept) has been there and done that and understands, hence why she started this unique event. Now in its second incarnation and partnering up with Melbourne Spring Fashion Week and housed in Melbourne Central, Bianca provides a great hub for supporting West Australian emerging design talent.

Date: 2-5 September 2011

Location: Melbourne Central (above Lonsdale Street on Level 2)

Website: From Here To There