Movie: Miguel Fluxá, head of shoe brand Camper, says the company's use of high-profile designers for its stores is more about brand-building than making money in this movie filmed at the opening of the latest New York store.Â
Camper has commissioned a host of internationally renowned designers to design its stores around the world.
"We've worked with many people, from Martà Guixé to the Bouroullec brothers, the Campana brothers, Alfredo Häberli, Tokujin Yoshioka and Shigeru Ban," says Fluxá, who was speaking at the opening of the brand's store on Fifth Avenue in New York designed by Japanese design company Nendo.
Fluxá says the company took this approach to its store design when it first started expanding outside of Spain.
"We thought it was interesting not to repeat [the design of the Spanish stores]," he explains. "The world today is becoming a little bit boring, everything is becoming the same. So we thought it was interesting for the brand, and for the cities, to do different designs from one place to the other."
Camper is a family-owned company; Fluxá's great-grandfather, a Mallorca farmer, founded the business in 1877 and his father went on to establish the brand as we know it today in the 1970s.
Fluxá says that this allows the company to experiment with different design approaches for its stores without worrying about the commercial impact.
"We're lucky to be a privately-owned company, a family-owned company, so we look at the long term and we try to do things that we like to do," he says.
"Of course, we think it's of benefit to the brand. It's given a lot of identity to the brand, and customers recognise it. Some concepts work better than others but the reality is that we don't measure it."
Other recently opened Camper stores include one in Shanghai by Chinese architects Neri&Hu, which features a house that appears to be cut in half, and one in Sweden by Note Design Studio filled with mobile metal trolleys. See more Camper stores on Dezeen »