Cascade retail environment in new Columbia Sportswear store
WHEN Columbia Sportswear started its business in 1938, it laid down a tack to promote and preserve the outdoors through its products. It’s a mission and a vision that it continues to share with customers 80 years after.
This push of the biggest outdoor wear company in the world reverberates in its recently launched store in SM Mall of Asia.
Boasting of a Cascade Retail Environment store concept, the new Columbian shop, located at the second level of the North Wing of the Entertainment Mall, draws inspiration from its home in the historic Timberline Lodge, a national landmark in Oregon that attracts more than two million visitors a year.
The concept store incorporates evergreen photography, prop libraries, and highly customized fixtures in the store as seen through the elaborate fitting rooms and the dramatic and well-thought out amphitheater.
The people behind the store said that every detail was meticulously planned and implemented for one purpose, which is to deliver a superior brand environment dedicated to enhance the retail experience of customers.
“Columbia Sportswear started in 1938 as a hat company, and 80 years later it has become the biggest outdoor wear company in the world. It never stopped innovating and improving itself to be better and bigger,” said Tiffany Batungbacal, Columbia Philippines assistant vice-president, at the store launch on Dec. 6, speaking of the kind of journey Columbia has had as a brand.
To complement the cascade retail environment that it exudes, the new Columbia store offers products that feature the brand’s innovative technologies like the Omni-Tech, Omni-Heat, and Omni-Grip technology, among others.
Among those on offer is the Bugaboo Interchange Jacket.
A 3-in-1 jacket concept — wear the fleece liner when it is cold, the waterproof shell when it is wet, or wear them together when it is wet and cold, the revamped Bugaboo Interchange jacket features Columbia’s Omni-Heat thermal reflective liner and Omni-Tech waterproof/breathable, critically seam-sealed weather protection feature, making it even warmer and drier than the one that came out in the 1980s.
The jacket is also embellished with a special 80th Anniversary embroidery, quotes from Columbia chairman Gert Boyle, and a Bugaboo 1986 history patch.
“When Columbia arrived in the Philippines, it not only presented products that customers here can use but it also invested in promoting and preserving the outdoors, seeing how beautiful the Philippines is. It wants people to stay longer outdoors,” Ms. Batungbacal said, adding that more is in store for Columbia in the Philippines moving forward. — Michael Angelo S. Murillo
