ABOUT ROLF BENZ

Rolf Benz is one of the best known European brands in upholstered furniture. The company was founded in 1964 in Nagold, Germany and nowadays, it is active in more than 50 markets worldwide.

Rolf Benz ensures all of their products are of the highest quality and are incredibly sympathetic to the views of their customers.

BRIEF

Rolf Benz commissioned KVB Design in 2012 with a brief to create a retail design to both reflect their established corporate identity and create a platform for the launch of their new Freistil brand. The KVB Design team liaised with Rolf Benz to develop a showroom concept, which perfectly mirrored the essence of premium German brand yet created a vibrant new atmosphere in keeping with freistil’s younger audience.

The initial showroom occupies 850m² at the Rolf Benz head office facility in Nagold Germany and is accessed through a totally newly constructed reception area.

OUR APPROACH

The Freistil concept features several distinctly different retail areas, separated by a fashion style central ‘catwalk’ walkway with ceiling rafts above.

The central walkway structure forms the key element of the concept design.

The ‘catwalks’ position within the main central area of the showroom assists in creating the perfect customer journey and turns the store visit into a total experience. This structure is designed to allow for the many varied store layouts and different retail footprints.

Breaking away from the trends of traditional furniture showrooms the central walkway also offers a totally unique and intuitive look and feel to the showroom; adding a fashion ambience to the furniture ranges. Together with the new Freistil furniture range the showroom design ensures that the complete product portfolio is portrayed in a new fresh, youthful and invigorating style.  

The walkway, ceiling raft and individual product areas work together to add the required intimacy. Detailed lighting planning with a distinctive light colour palette and directional spot lighting assists in guiding and moving the visitor into and through the total retail space.

Lighting is in-set into the ceiling raft to create a clean, sharp, and futuristic look and feel. Suspended lighting rafts, crafted from galvanised metalwork, add intimacy to the large volume showroom areas. The combined look and feel of the lighting elements offer a contrast of refinement and a more urban look and feel, blending the products into a true multi home environment.

The centre of the showroom features a timber slatted box construction to create a defined room environment; featuring meeting tables, a kitchen and a café style area – whilst retaining a transparent look and feel to overall showroom.

QUOTE

“Working together with KVB Design on building an innovative and inspiring “home base” for our new brand Freistil, was a very creative and professional process. The team from KVB Design came up with a showroom concept that brought our brand values to life and created the perfect space for our customers to get the full product and brand experience. The final result definitely exceeded our expectations and has proved us right to work with KVB Design. We are looking forward to working together on future projects.”

Andreas Lechner,
Director of Communications ROLF BENZ AG & Co.KG