B-Young Dresses Up Image

B-Young is one of Scandinavia’s largest fashion companies with several clothing brands, among them B-Young for young women and ICHI clothing for young girls. Although both brands stress quality and fashion, each possesses a unique identity.

Owned by Danish-based Brandtex company, B-Young clothing is targeted toward a more self-assertive young woman between the ages of 20 and 35 - a young yet upwardly sophisticated breed. ICHI, on the other hand, targets a more trendy and younger audience – more deliberate, cutting edge fashion for “spirited and adventurous girls that dress to meet every day as a new opportunity for her own flowering and blooming,” as ICHI themselves state.

Total experience
Either way, the B-Young company wants their consumers to have a total experience when they shop, one that starts from the moment their eyes glance at the B-Young facade. The experience must be enjoyable to all the senses and simultaneously excite the curiosity, therefore they concentrate on quality interior design and a unique atmosphere.

B-Young first appeared in 1991 from a small office in Denmark and the company maintains its own franchise shop concept where color is not only very important but constantly developing. Consistently filled with new items and exciting impressions, B-Young shops stress a total concept that emphasizes the coordination of color choice.

Martin Scandinavia
B-Young’s Stockholm store was seeking a dynamic lighting system to match the energy and impressionable image of the B-Young and ICHI brands and contacted Martin Scandinavia to develop a lighting solution.

Besides the obvious goal of wanting to draw attention to the store’s facade by adding color change in the store windows, B-Young sought to ‘bring the back of the store to the front’, that is, draw more attention to parts of the store that have traditionally been left in the dark.

Back of the store comes alive
Martin Scandinavia’s Jens Ole Christensen designed a lighting solution to address just that. “We wanted to make the back of the store come alive - to draw people to the farther corners of the store and the specific point of sale displays,” he stated.

“Typical static signs just don´t get the job done because they are not unique and do not capture the eye. You need something different, something special. Even static light on a mannequin has little appeal and no customizable ability.”

Customizable lighting solution
B-Young wanted to customize the lighting to fit its specific customer - to project different colors and patterns depending on the target market. In order to match ICHI’s structured chaos of changing colors and new-thinking image, color and pattern changes occur more frequently and in combination with movement. For the B-Young brand, color changes occur more slowly with fewer image changes.

Martin Scandinavia supplied and installed compact color changing MAC 250+ profile spot and MAC 300 wash luminaries, along with new color changing Cyclo 04 fluorescent wall washers. In the main store windows visible from the main shopping area, slow color fades from MAC 300 wash a line of mannequins while MAC 250+ project logos onto semi transparent cloth banners. Inside, Cyclo 04 shade perimeter walls in an even wash of color while pattern projection from MAC 250+ decorates the floor, drawing the eye to POP displays. ICHI logos sweep the floor while more static B-Young logos project onto walls and cloth banners. The lighting scheme was preprogrammed on a PC based LightJockey controller with Cyclo control coming from Martin 516 dimmer controllers.

The Stockholm B-Young store’s lighting scheme can be adapted to fit any of B-Young’s more than 200 stores’ individual needs. “This type of retail installation is becoming more popular partly because competition is fierce, especially among the largest clothing brands, and the pressure to keep up or lose out is strong. It´s vital in the clothing industry - especially young women´s clothing - to project an up-to-date image,” commented Jens Ole.