UK. Lagardère Travel Retail yesterday (21 July) opened two standalone Lego stores in Gatwick Airport. The stores, located in the North and South terminals, are designed with a new, customer-centric retail concept.
The Moodie Davitt Report Brands Editor and Digital Marketing Manager Hannah Tan-Gillies was on location for the opening as the exclusive industry media representative.
Notably, the Lego stores are modelled on a profit-sharing partnership between Lagardère Travel Retail and Gatwick Airport (see below for comment).
Simple, vibrant and engaging, the boutiques feature flexible Plug & Play platforms that tell new stories and engage with customers of all ages.
Inside, notable collections featured include the Lego Duplo, City, Creator, Friends, Technic, Architecture and Ninjago lines.
Lego’s internationally recognised licences such as Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Super Mario are also available.
The displays are modular and easily adaptable to different Lego worlds, allowing for continued relevance as Lego’s retail strategies evolve.
The store is also a showcase for many audience-first elements. The retail concept puts consumers at the centre of the in-store experience with digital elements designed to complement physical merchandising.
One of the boutique’s standout features is an augmented reality zone, which allows shoppers to see a virtual rendering of any product to scale by simply holding up the box in front of a screen.
The in-store experience is all about learning through creative play and creating ‘smile in the mind’ moments for Lego fans of all ages.
Magnifiers are available at different Lego worlds to give shoppers a closer look of what fully built models look like. In addition, the Gatwick stores offer Lego’s ‘sense of place’ products such as the Lego Bus, Lego Tower Bridge and Lego Spice Girls Sets.
Lagardère Travel Retail UK & Ireland CEO Marion Engelhard told The Moodie Davitt Report, “Lego attracts customers of all ages, but the demographic at Gatwick is one of the reasons we chose this location. The initial sales results have been overwhelmingly positive. One of the reasons for this is because we tried to have London and UK specificity in the store. Here, the London Bus is the best-seller. We sell about 40 London Buses a day in the two shops.
“This concept is a first in UK travel retail with Lagardère,” Engelhard added. “The look and feel of the store really showcases the product compared to the previous concept. It also differentiates the different Lego Worlds, adapting and modernising these worlds for customers.”
Gatwick Airport Head of Retail Operations Nick Williams added, “These boutiques offer something that our passengers want. Lego is a brand we’ve always wanted to work with so it’s great that Gatwick is one of their first airport stores in the UK.”
A different kind of partnership
“As a retailer, it’s our job to bring new partnerships and a complementary offer and I believe that Lego ticks all those boxes,” Engelhard said. “It’s not only about kids, but about adults and the young at heart. This is how we have built our partnership with Gatwick Airport. We are working on a profit sharing model instead of a classic MAG one,” Engelhard said.
Commenting on the business model, she said, “Profit sharing is something we’ve been pushing with Lagardère Travel Retail in different markets and airports for a while now. Here, the discussion with Gatwick was to try something different. They were very interested in Lego and so we came up with this new model because while there is a lot of uncertainty about recovery, we didn’t want to wait for the uncertainty to ease before opening the stores.”
Williams added, “We largely have a concession-based model, but we have been keen to try something different. We are trialling this profit-sharing model to really test something we’ve never done before. We’re looking forward to working with Lagardère on this and hopefully it will benefit both parties.
Rebecca Cañamaque-Martel, General Manager of the two Lego stores in Gatwick Airport, takes us on a video walkthrough of the store’s key features
