What's In The Box
The brand new podcast from BOXTEC. Join us as we invite guests from retail and hospitality to discuss the issues of the day, with one unique twist: uncut, unedited and each episode just fifteen minutes long - because we're busy and we know you are too.
What's In The Box
Retail Design Revolution: 40 Years Shaping the High Street With David Dalziel
What does it take to design retail spaces that captivate customers, build brand loyalty, and withstand the test of time? David Dalziel, the visionary behind some of the most recognizable store designs on the high street, reveals the fascinating journey behind four decades of retail innovation.
From humble beginnings designing pubs in 1983 (while being paid in cash that he kept on his mantelpiece), David and his partner John Pow built a design powerhouse that would transform retail environments worldwide. Their big break came with River Island (then Chelsea Girl), leading to a remarkable 25-year partnership. "We spent five hours together every Wednesday for 25 years," David recalls, highlighting how these deep client relationships—not just individual projects—defined his career success.
The conversation takes us through David's extensive work with Primark, following their expansion from a single UK store to international locations like Madrid's stunning Gran Via flagship. He offers candid insights about the current retail landscape, arguing that physical stores remain crucial for building customer loyalty: "The web is a fulfillment tool, but I don't think it recruits fans as much as the space can." This philosophy underpinned the award-winning EE Studio at Westfield White City, which reimagined telecommunications retail by creating an open, welcoming environment where customers could simply wander in, enjoy free coffee, and engage with the brand without pressure—boosting footfall by 400%.
Now pursuing his artistic "Life After Work" venture in Primrose Hill, David has returned to his roots in furniture design while creating artwork free from client constraints. His custom pieces, made in collaboration with a Welsh craftsman, allow him to express his creativity while maintaining connections to his extensive network in the retail world.
Whether you're a retail professional, design enthusiast, or simply curious about how our shopping environments are created, this episode offers rare insights from a master who has shaped how we experience brands in the physical world. Follow David's current work at portfolio-n8.com or on Instagram.
Welcome to what's in the Box, the brand new podcast brought to you by Box Technologies. Powering retail with purpose, boxtech delivers innovative and market-leading customer engagement solutions that turn business ideas into a performing reality, from design and integration to ongoing support and maintenance. We're with you every step of the way. Now, this podcast is a little different to what you might be used to. It's audio only, totally unscripted, and around about 15-20 minutes each episode, because we're busy, our guests certainly are, and we're sure you are too, so let's get right into it. Are too, so let's get right into it.
Speaker 1:Now for those unfamiliar with my guest, you'll certainly be familiar with his work because the design studio he gave his name to and worked at for over 40 years has undertaken store design work for many retail brands over the years. In fact, the list of clients reads like a who's who at the high street Boots, primark, argos, molton Brown, ee Boss, m&s Hamleys, next. I could go on. Then, after 40 years, his career took a turn, which led me to where I am now, because we're here at Life After Work, his pop-up in Primrose Hill. It's a showpiece for the art and design he's been creating over the last couple of years and, as one might imagine it's a beautiful space. Welcome to what's in the Box, david Diel.
Speaker 2:Welcome, nice, to see you here. It's always good to have visitors.
Speaker 1:Well, as I say, it is and we're going to come on to that maybe towards the end what you're doing now. As I say, it's just some wonderful art on the walls here and some beautiful furniture which I know that you have designed. So we'll come on to that. But I think that the piece that really our listeners are going to be most interested in I listed some of the well-known brands that you've worked with, so we could say that you're responsible for a large part of the look and feel of High Street. So we'll get into that. But you've co-founded the DL and Power Agency just over 40 years ago, 1983.
Speaker 1:That's right, tell us what it was like back then. Maybe some about the motivations for founding it and what it was like back then. Maybe some about the motivations for founding it and what it was like you know, in 83 yeah, different days, very different days 83.
Speaker 2:I don't think we were in a very good place financially in terms of the confidence in the market, but my myself and my partner, john powell, we worked together in a business called McCall's and we were really quite busy there doing a lot of work. But in the evenings John and I did even more work and that became so busy I shouldn't say this because I don't know if I'd encourage other designers to do the same but we were working till two and three in the morning on freelance work that became so busy that we had to leave our day job. So John and I John first, then me following worked from his house in Camden and we designed 37 pubs. In our first year we got paid the majority in cash, which again, I don't think I should be telling you, but I'll tell you that I couldn't pay my rent because I didn't have any money in the bank, but I had a wad of 50 pound notes on the mantelpiece that I used to peel one off every week to give to my landlord. So things were tough, but we were optimistic and we were cash rich. So we turned that into a proper business. By starting to employ the right people.
Speaker 2:We found ourselves a studio in Camden and then that gradually grew into something real, because our first break came when we happened to contact River Island. We were doing a lot of pubs and clubs, we'd done a couple of stores, but we weren't retail designers as such. Bernard Lewis and Leonard Lewis came to our studio. We cleared out John's office and pretended it was a meeting room, because we didn't have one. We sat around John's desk talking to Bernard and Leonard and they asked if they could step aside for a moment to have a chat about what they might do. So they went to the end of the room, saw a few designers that we were employing and a few of their friends to make it look bigger. They came back into the room and said we like what you do. We'd like you to start work for us tomorrow.
Speaker 1:This was on friday at four o'clock. This was river island, so just after this was rebranding from chelsea. Chelsea girl, right, okay, right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And they said uh, so friday at four o'clock, what are you guys doing tomorrow?
Speaker 1:Nothing as it happened.
Speaker 2:So I had to make a few arrangements and cut out my football and stuff like that. So we then got on a plane at Leavesden Airport and flew to Plymouth and troubleshooted a new project that just opened for Chelsea Girl, which was a bit of a mess, and they liked what we said. We went in the wednesday following so friday to saturday, then wednesday and we started working on a 25 year contract with them, which is incredible. They paid us by the hour, every hour, which we'd never heard of. We thought we'd have to negotiate every project individually. They they just spent time with us.
Speaker 2:We spent five hours together every Wednesday for 25 years looking through the plans, looking through the goals, deciding on locations, designing brands, designing graphics, shooting art direction all around the world for them. So I was lucky enough to go to Norway, australia, morocco, eilat, which I wouldn't go back to today, but there you go. But that was the theme. Then it was international for River Island. They wanted to be everything we designed Chelsea Girl and then invented with Leonard River Island. We've actually got the notebook where we wrote River Island down for the first time ever on a piece of paper, with me trying to scribble an identity around that and we had to use that 15 years later in a defense against a Chinese company and they carbon dated the bit of paper and the ink on the paper to make sure that River Island was actually written down on that day.
Speaker 1:Maybe you need to have a word in Richard Walker's ear. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there are ways in which it was probably more scientific than that to actually assess that kind of thing, but it was all a really good relationship and I guess if I was to look back on my career, the most striking thing is relationships rather than projects. So working with the Lewis family later on, getting to know the Primark team, seamus Halford, arthur Ryan, the ex-Primark team, and also Paul Marchant, who then took over but again 25 years with Primark, which was quite incredible to go from one store landing in in south end, which we again have a look at our store. Tell me what you think. It's shit. What can we do? We need to make things different. You did river island, did you? Yes, we did. Okay, let's do something now. So that resulted in everything up to madrid, which was a big, big opening.
Speaker 1:So we're talking about the Gran Via, yes, which, for the listeners, if you haven't been there, if you're in Madrid, go along to it. It is an absolutely amazing store.
Speaker 2:And it's already over 10 years old and it still stands up today. And Boston their launch in the States stands up today and and boston they're they're launching the states. So, as I say, from one shop in the uk which was very second rate, to hundreds of stores around the world, in every country you could imagine, I think possibly now I put a word of warning out to the primark team they need to keep evolving because I think maybe they've been too focused on expansion and not enough about creating an experience.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of expansion in the US, isn't there? There is.
Speaker 2:And even in Europe. You know, when they open in Turin or they open in Warsaw or whatever, they do get a lot of press because they've arrived. That's a big, big story. But I don't know if I should say this, but again, I'm going to say this because we can talk. I don't know if I should say this, but again I'm going to say this because we can talk.
Speaker 2:I don't really care now I've retired, right, so so I would say Primark and others need to be putting as much attention into their experience today as they ever did, maybe even more, and that's not what we're getting in the market today, and things are a bit flat, I I think, at the moment.
Speaker 1:You see, just on that point, yeah, I agree, because I think that more and more and we hear all the time oh, you know, a struggling retailer, oh, it's the challenge of online and I'm not actually convinced what it really is. I think it's more that their stores have become somewhat more abundant.
Speaker 2:I think primarily the product.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Always primarily the product, yeah, always, always the product, and then the experience, because I think that's what recruits and retains customers, yeah, and the web, I feel, is a fulfillment tool. So the web is really important to make it easier for your customer to. But I don't feel and I don't know if I'm completely right, but I don't think that the web recruits fans as much as the space can. So when you land something in Oxford Street or in Westfield, if it works, you get immediate payback, and people like JD understand this, people like Next in a way understand this, and I think that this momentum that you can get with stores can carry through into the web. But I don't think the web can necessarily create it on its own. So when we see newcomers into the market and we see Uniqlo having their fourth, fifth attempt to come to the market, they're expanding so fast, and I think it is because of the product first and foremost, and then the stores and then the web, which works. But if it was purely web, I don't think we'd get there.
Speaker 2:I don't think they'd get there. So, yeah, I think there is a lot to be said for being brave and having the commitment to the space. And yeah, I guess also and this isn't true throughout the world, it's not true for every brand but this UK market is currently quite nervous about the future, whereas international markets like Dubai, saudi, india, china, even to some extent Canada, for example, who rely on malls and internal spaces to sell these markets are quite buoyant and the UK can be that. But there's a nervousness here which makes it a little bit you're a little bit handcuffed in your thinking and also another bugbear of mine maybe a reason why I'm not working so much much as I did is that I think the importance of physical retail in the eyes of the senior management of any brand has dropped down a rung or two.
Speaker 2:So now, if our company were being briefed on a project, we'd be meeting the five 25-year-olds who have all got an impression but have no experience, and our company would be teaching them what needs to be done. And only then would we, for example, win a pitch and win a project. Take it to a CEO or brand owner and they would look at the brief and think you know I don't think I'll do this After we've done the work, after we've officially won the work, although we haven't yet been paid the full fee and it's cancelled on you because the senior management haven't been involved in the briefing, and I think that's a big issue here, whereas if you're dealing with Simon Wilson, bernard Lewis, arthur Ryan, you know what's expected of you.
Speaker 1:So, david, let me ask you were there any brands that you didn't manage to work with that you'd have liked to have done?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think D&P's success was working with brands that perhaps didn't behave like brands as in really popular retailers who wanted to have a brand presence. Therefore, I think we probably didn't work directly for brands themselves. So if I can explain that someone like Chanel, gucci, they would not come to D&P. We were very popular, we were very mainstream. When Westfield Shopping Centre opened in White City we opened 12 stores that day, so we were busy and that kind of work turns people like Mamas and Papas, Next others, into brand-motivated retailers. But we did not work for niche brands. We didn't do many of what I might call those kind of boutique brands.
Speaker 2:That's a bit of a miss for me. I think that would have been fun. It wasn't as commercial. You wouldn't get paid in the way you can when you do commercial success for major retailers. But I think that is a missing thing that I couldn't name those brands that we missed out on, but I think there were a few that I would like to have got to know the kind of people who were involved. But there again we were. We are successful, so I cannot complain about that.
Speaker 1:Now you mentioned Westfield, white City, and so one that I did want to ask you about, and that was the EE Studio at Westfield-White City, which you and I both know is award-winning several times, and with very good reason. I was fortunate to have had a tour of that with Asif, the retail director. And tell us a bit about that, because it is. It's an amazing store for a number of different reasons. I know it's a very successful, popular in terms of generating the footfall and so on and so on, but it's got all sorts of things that you would not associate with what is ostensibly you could say is a supplier of broadband, which clearly are not now. So tell us a bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yes. So the brief came from Bridget Lee. Bridget we'd known from O2 in the past and also we'd worked with Bridget way, way back at Oasis when she was a product director there. So we knew very much her ambition. She tended to move around quite a lot and has moved since, but she liked to make an impact. So we appreciated that.
Speaker 2:We recognised that she had encouraged EE to take bigger space in Westfield, which was really positive twice the space they previously occupied and a little bit more. So there was a broad ambition to fill a space full of experience. So when you take a big space like that and it's something like three and a half thousand square feet, maybe four thousand you can divide that into components and we had as many as six or eight ideas in the space, including something from your studio which was a, an immersive digital hub. So those, those six or eight experiences added, added up to much more than a shop. It. It does not feel like a shop and for that reason we titled it the Studio, trying to let people realize that they can be creative in this space, they can be learning in this space, they can spend time with people who care for them and look after them, but they can also buy product. That's there. That's inevitable. But what it meant was a couple of key things that we tried. Westfield don't like it when you take away a shop front. They're really negative about that. They think it turns you into a marketplace. If you understand. They like you to put in a glazed window and dress the window old school right. So we pushed all of that aside and we pushed the shop front back by six or eight feet and created a structure that was completely open that you can walk through. There is no door as such. Even that was a challenge for westfield. It worked very well for the studio because people just wandered in. So we now have a shop that's doing 400 increase on the footfall compared to a shop that was over half the size as the one it replaced. It's now more than double what it replaced. So, yeah, I'm really proud of that work.
Speaker 2:I think it takes a boring sector and challenges everything, which is great. It is on brand maybe a bit too color saturated in retrospect, but that's what we and they wanted. We started a little bit more subtle. We ended up with a lot of the corporate color coming through, a lot of branding, a lot of storytelling. It's a space you can just sit there and have a coffee for free, and if you're open about that, so are they. They don't mind. That's great. I know waitrose try that. If you spend some money, you help yourself to coffee on the way out. But this was saying to someone come in and sit at that gaming machine, sit there for two hours on a Saturday afternoon, have a cup of coffee, have a glass of water, take care of yourself, enjoy it.
Speaker 2:So a bit more of a skew from hospitality than retail, which I think is a big trend. I think everyone's talking about that. There's often more creativity in hospitality than there is in retail, and ee recognized that. We'd recognize that. Anyway, great story, and you're right. It's been winning awards and now I'm really pleased to see it roll out, not in the same scale, not quite the same ambition, but most definitely the same concept, and I think they and we are really proud of that. It's. It's really good to see something land that's popular and successful. It's quite rare these days, as we know.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, we've got a couple of minutes left, so I did want to also ask you about where we're sat now in this pop-up in Premier's Hill in Chalcot Road, life after work. Tell us about that. I briefly introduced it and sat around and I'm looking at it now. There's some amazing artwork and this is perhaps where an audio only podcast doesn't really work. However, there will be plenty of images to accompany this. But there's artwork on the wall. There's some amazing furniture, which all of the artwork you've done. You've designed the furniture. Tell us how this all came about.
Speaker 2:Well, I think when I retired two years ago, the last thing I was going to do was slow down.
Speaker 1:If anything I've sped up.
Speaker 2:I'm now doing work without clients which, as I think I hinted, clients are not always today on your side. It can be very challenging. You can be pushing the concept uphill. So here I have a chance to do what I've wanted to do for a while. I've revisited furniture, which I qualified in 1980 from Glasgow when I retired. My dad died on the same week as I retired. That was very sad but at least he saw me busy for quite a long time and I got back from him in Glasgow a table I'd made at college. That table became the foundation for a range of furniture. We now have 14 pieces in the range, foundation for a range of furniture. We now have 14 pieces in the range, seven of which have been made. So that's positive in two years. I'm pleased with that. And that furniture is made to commission. People come in here, they see the pieces, they see the models and they will commission with me with a maker in Wales.
Speaker 2:Very transparent about cost, where the money's going and how much the timber costs. Everything else I wouldn't say it was commercial. Thankfully it doesn't need to be, otherwise I would be in real trouble. So I'm not teaching anyone how to run a business, but I am showing how you can be enjoying retirement. Have a bit of fun, do what you wanted to do. Particularly, I think the artwork is very free and easy, whereas the furniture is a bit more functional. It's a nice balance and it gives me something to think about. If I'd done this maybe 15 years earlier, I think I would be approaching furniture traders to sell my ideas through their platform, and I can think of a few.
Speaker 2:But I'm not doing that. I'm doing it purely on a one-off basis. People come to me often friends, associates, ex-business contacts. I have. The MD CEO of Fred Perry has just commissioned a table. Nice. He never commissioned us as a client when he worked there, but we did work with him at Jigsaw. He's a lovely guy. So, yeah, I'm exploiting my network in a way that lets me be creative but also a little bit useful. I think you need the vindication as well of selling a few things, and that has happened not only to friends but to a few strangers. I'm always amazed when strangers buy your work. I only really sell when I show, and that has happened not only to friends but to a few strangers. I'm always amazed when strangers buy your work. I only really sell when I show. I don't sell much online, although we have a website. But when I show and I have an open day, I can sell 18 pieces in a day and I can be really chuffed. And then I do nothing for six months and then go again.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, david, we could carry on talking for ages, but we're pretty much out of time. So, before we finish, in terms of your current work and what you're doing now, where can people find you?
Speaker 2:Well, it's on a website called portfolio-n8.com and we do show up at a few events. So if you followed me on Instagram, you'll find my name. There's not many David DLs out there, so you'll find me. And yes, so we do turn up at a few events, a few art fairs, things like that, but mostly it's about personal contacts. So search me out portfolio-n8 or David DL and you'll find me.
Speaker 1:Okay, David. Thank you so much. That's been absolutely brilliant. So that's all from what's in the Box for now. New episodes will be dropping every two weeks, so please stay tuned, and if you want to find out more about BoxDeck, please follow the link in the description. My thanks to my guest, DavidDL, and thank you for listening.