Work

TST liquidation is one of the several liquidation stores in North America. Currently TST owns five stores in Ontario, Canada and plans to grow to 20 stores within a year.

Clearly this expansion move would put TST in a different ball-game, from running a couple of stores it is on the path of becoming one of the key players in the liquidation retail business. (below : photo of the TST Liquidation store at Belleville , Ontario)

Process

It is only upon complete understanding of the problem at hand that a solution can be devised.  To help TST Liquidation come up with their strategic plan, we went about understanding the business and market of liquidation retail.

Upon understanding the liquidation retail business model, market dynamics and analysing the customer psyche and behavior, we could grasp that a number of key factors drive the liquidation retail business. Some of them are clearly evident while others are not so conspicuous.

In a nutshell it can be said that low price is what makes the business click at these stores.

Brand USP

We wanted to create a brand for TST Liquidation that would connote to a store where quality products are sold at discount rates. TST would be a well managed modern store chain that keeps a wide variety of products for sale. TST Liquidation would break away from the liquidation stigma and create a niche of its own as a low-price, high quality, great choice discount store.

The various brand touchpoints that would come into play and would attract customer attention are designed herein to reflect this new brand value and philosophy.

Name

Doing away with the word liquidation was the first step towards breaking the commonly existing association of liquidation with cheap, low quality, unsold stock.

TST Liquidation was re-christened as TST, accompanied with the tag line “clothes and more”.

As TST has no dictionary or cultural meaning, the word uniquely coined for the liquidation store, TST, gives the freedom of conceiving a modern brand with it’s own unique values without any restrictions.

The tag-line with the emphasis on the word “more” not only gives a glimpse into the primary offering of clothes but also hints to the ever-expansive product category. We wanted the customers to come back for not just for the price and the quality but also for “more”. The concept of the ever-expansive and virtually infinite choice and categories that would trade under TST, would be one of the USPs.

Brand Identity

We worked towards a clear, strong and modern identify for TST. The characters T, S and T were written together in a clean and a modern sans-serif font. The letters were used in the lower case to give the brand a strong yet friendly feel.

Red, grey and white were chosen as the brand colors. Red symbolizing vibrancy and giving a strong visual positioning and recall was complimented with a soothing and balancing white and grey.

The USP of “more” was brought out in a speech bubble emerging out of TST. The concept of “more” was engineered into a tag line for TST. As clothes comprise the most prominent product category, the tag-line “clothes & more” was chosen, with “& more” coming in a separate line from “clothes” to give the concept of “more” greater emphasis and enable us to use it later on a more generic level when it came to designing signages and labels.

The placement of the speech bubble was done to make it emerge from TST. The intention is to make the speech bubble communicate the tag-line in a more personal way. It’s like TST talking directly to the customer.

Stationery

What better way than to let your card say your name. The speech bubble in the brand identity gives room to be incorporated in a lot number of functional and smart ways.

The visiting card is printed on both sides, with the front giving out the name and designation of the employee on the TST’s identity’s speech bubble. Here the identity has been redesigned to contain the details in the bubble.

One the reverse the logo comes in the normal form along with the address and other information.

Price Tags

It’s easier for the brain to make decisions and perceive the benefits when a comparison is possible. For the same reason, when a product’s price is mentioned along with the earlier price showing the markdown or the benefit that the customer is getting, it increases the chances of sale.

Deals surpass logic! Thus it is extremely important to make the deal evident in the price tag in our stores whose foundation lies on “deals”. The new TST price tag besides the required brand consistency has the functional aspect of clearly and effectively brining out the “deal”. Also for effective cognition the current price is given a visual hierarchy over all other things.

Signage

The signage has been made to take the inherent speech bubble of the brand and use it in a functional manner, the logo has been engineered for the purpose of a signage, TST takes a lower hierarchy here and the primary focus is directed towards the product category. Also, each product category is  represented with a unique color. Thus, the entire signage language  makes a colorful palette and it is easy to identify the categories from a distance.

(above : photo of  re- branded TST Store at Cornwal, Ontario)