Paper & Tea: a superb concept store in the middle of Berlin

Among the nice retail concepts that were born in Berlin, I liked particularly Paper & Tea, a small “concept store” where tea meets paper Art. This store proposes a customer experience that differs substantially from what you can find in come more classical tea shops. There is a touch of design, a touch of innovation that you won’t find elsewhere and that make the visit valuable. I spent a great time talking about the store and taking pictures of it.

It is located not fare away from the famous Ku’damm (Kurfürstendamm) on Bleibtreustrasse 4.

The store is rather small, easy to “read” (I mean by that that its layout is not complicated and that it’s easy to find what you want). Unlike other tea stores where products are presented on shelves, Paper & tea adopts the principles that can be found at Apple or in other telecom concept stores as we reported earlier. A flat surface serves as exhibition area and walls are used for secondary products (accessories in their case).

So far for the “tea”-part of the store. The “paper”-part is also present throughout and consists in fine printed matters. You find the passion for print also in the labels used for the tea. What is remarkable is the simplicity of the store which is also rendered in the clean labels used to display prices and information about the tea types.

Advice for your marketing strategy

If you are in the retail sector don’t forget that visitors need up to 3 visits to understand the layout of a store. In most sectors however you won’t have 3 opportunities to welcome a customer. Either you get it right the first time or he/she won’t come again.

Keep this in mind when you’ll design your own store. Keep the “customer experience” in mind and try to figure out how the customer will want to behave. Just thinking about the dynamics of customers’ in-store flows will certainly help you make some crucial changes. We completed this year an assignment where we had to improve the flows of customers in a 1000 sqm store. After 6 hours of observation we’re able to identify the bottlenecks, the parts of the layout that were impeding the progression of customers in the store. We fixed the problems and the changes we observed in customers’ behaviors were just spectacular.

By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab Dr. Pierre-Nicolas Schwab is the founder of IntoTheMinds. He specializes in e-commerce, retail and logistics. He is also a research fellow in the marketing department of the Free University of Brussels and acts as a coach for several startups and public organizations. He holds a PhD in Marketing, a MBA in Finance, and a MSc in Chemistry. He can be contacted by email, Linkedin or by phone (+32 486 42 79 42)