Coca-Cola opened its first European pop-up merchandise store in Covent Garden in April 2022, selling branded apparel and accessories, collectibles and a mocktail bar serving branded drinks. This was after the successful launch of several similar outlets across the USA. The project was created to enhance brand affinity- with personalising soft drinks, Coca-Cola branded fashion in collaboration with well known design brands, and heritage elements to evoke nostalgia from customers. It was the first direct to consumer venture by the soft drinks manufacture in Europe.
Coca-Cola tasked their design company, Big Production House to find authentic materials in keeping with their brand to bring the store to life.
We were contacted in November 2021 by the designers, who were interested in our blend 4 red reclaimed style brick slips, and our white blend 35 brick slips to bring colour and texture throughout the project, in line with the famous branding. When the sample panels arrived, they were taken to Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, along with the proposed designs that included them.
With the retro recycled signage and merchandise sourced, both the design company and Coca-Cola themselves loved what blend 4 could bring to the store, both in terms of the colour palette, and the texture and variations of each brick slip. Therefore, they scrapped their initial selection of a red and a white brick, in favour of additional blend 4 brick slips throughout the length and back of the store.
To create a consistent brickwork look, the pillars in the covent garden store need to be covered in the same brickwork. To achieve this they used our corner tiles - L-shaped brick slips, cut from exactly the same brick as the full tiles, which creates a seamless finish. The installation meant that it was impossible to tell that brick slips were used as opposed to a full brick wall with pillars being built, or already being there.
Using white pointing mortar to keep the slips in the brand's iconic colour scheme, one of our recommended installers set on bringing this store to life. Once completed, and styled they were over the moon with the final result, absolutely perfect to reflect the branding, and it creates such an amazing space to showcase the Coca-Cola brand in the UK.
