The more appealing a store is to a customer and the more the customer stays inside the store, the higher the chances that they will buy more items

We have seen a boom in the department of retail services in 2021. With the ongoing pandemic taking out several businesses in the retail industry, many businesses are considering the services of retail consultants.

We, at Waterhouse Wade, would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations on the unveiling of the first outlet under the newly-incepted convenience store brand, Goodlife, in the municipality of Taytay, Rizal in the Philippines

A master plan or comprehensive plan as it is sometimes called is the plan that recognizes overall evolution in line with community aspirations and goals. In the context of a retail business, it encompasses every aspect of a firm that contribute to the overall functionality.

Retail branding in the Philippines in 2021. The development for the luxury market in the Philippines is soaring and is speculated to do so in the long haul alongside its reinforcing economy. Waterhouse Wade worked with some of the notable brands in the Philippines to establish brand identity in the market.

With the spread of the Coronavirus throughout the entire globe, the retail commerce as we know it is not the same anymore. For the better part of last year and almost the entirety of this annum so far, the challenges faced by the retail based industries, large distributors, retail trade in most parts of the world have forced it to go on an indefinite hiatus or adopt strict measures in store regulation

There’s so much more to retail interior design than meets the eye. Not only as a mode of shopping, but a thoughtful design for a retail store can uplift a brand in myriad ways. 

It is with profound shock and great sadness that Waterhouse Wade announces the sudden passing of our Founding Director, Terry Waterhouse over the weekend. 

We extend our most heartfelt condolences and sympathy to Terry’s family and our thoughts are with them at this most difficult time. 

Terry’s spirit will forever be the foundation of Waterhouse Wade and we will honour his memory by continuing to support and serve our clients and do the work that Terry loved so much. 

There will be no changes to the management or operations of the company. 

Md. Mehran Hussain will be taking over from where Terry has left and please contact him for any further information:

Md. Mehran Hussain

Senior Director

+852 93444015

mehran@waterhousewade.com

As with any will to survive hope has to be at the core of human psyche. It has a unique power to propel individuals, groups, organisations, brands and communities to action and can sustain their energies to help them achieve their goals. 

Hope is differentially conceptualised and studied as an emotion; as a positive motivational state incorporating elements of pathways and agency thinking and also as goals pursuit cognitions that can cause emotions; and, lately, as a character strength. 

How you experience this time will be, in part up to you. 

Why is hope important? 

Hope provides a positive vision for the future about what’s possible, motivating us to look forward. While it’s an optimistic state of mind, hope can emerge from distressing and even tragic situations. 

A lot of us are probably feeling a lack of hope right now to have hope, it’s vital we feel a sense of meaning in our lives. Particularly during a crisis, having meaning or purpose can protect our wellbeing. 

We need to modify and adjust our goals to ensure they’re realistic within the “new normal", and we have a clear pathway to achieving them. 

It’s important to focus not only on long-term hopes and vision, but on the short term too. If we focus too much on the future, we can lose sight of what’s achievable and important to us now. 

We should ask ourselves, what can we reasonably do this week or next month within current restrictions and uncertainty? 

The ability to to remain hopeful and ability to be adaptable are crucial in maintaining focus, purpose and morale in business. 

The following are some key strategic points to bear in mind: 

React quickly 

Speed is the most important commodity in times of crisis. Don’t wait and risk missing the opportunity. 

Adapt to new reality 

The homebound economy requires different service operations and engagement, adapt now. 

New formats 

Consider live streaming, community messaging, group online events and experimental online activations. 

Engaging & active 

Stay connected with your audiences, they want to hear from you with relevant content. 

Leverage the power of community 

Empower your community with new tools, new ideas and creative concepts. 

Stay positive and hopeful 

Show community support through positive messaging and actions. 

We recently came across the following quotation in context to thinking, believing and hope: 

"If you want to make God laugh, tell him your long term plans" - Woody Allen, quoting an old Yiddish proverb 

We all need to to stay positive and hopeful. 

Brands can be proactive change makers in their community by taking positive actions and stepping up to the challenge. 

Waterhouse Wade are here to support our clients and help provide a glimmer of hope. 

To help clients make creative change, designers have always used two quite different kind of thinking – Strategy and Design. We also now need a third – Learning.

Strategy is the most famous way of creating change in the world – initially by soldiers, then by business leaders. It’s primarily intellectual, a process of analysis, of weighing things up, and making rational decisions on the best course of action. 

You do strategy primarily by thinking – about goals and about how to reach them. 

Critical intelligence is essential: the best strategists ask plenty of searching ‘why?’ questions. 

The test of a strategy is whether it’s logical, whether it’s feasible, whether it’s ‘right’ and strategy consultants tend to tell (or ‘advise’) their clients on what to do

Design belongs to a different world – the domain of artists, craftspeople, inventors, engineers. 

Design is less intellectual, more intuitive, and its mode is imagining and making things, often through a long process of trial and error. 

Designers often feel their way forward, rather than aiming at a destination. 

Designers are often less constrained by critical thinking – their instinct is to ask ‘why not?. The lifeblood of design are ideas – wonderful, fragile, usually unprovable. 

And the test of design is not whether something is ‘right’, but whether it looks good and works well. Designers tend not to advise their clients, but to make and show them things.

The two ways of thinking seem complementary. 

Design appeals to our intuitive ‘System 1’ thinking, and strategy to our more conscious and deliberative ‘System 2’ thinking. 

So why is it that the combination doesn’t always create the intended transformation? 

Why do great strategies and great ideas often not work?

Because they need people to change. 

A new business strategy, exemplified by new products, services, stores, apps and branding – they all need employees to work in new ways. 

The most innovative also need customers to do things differently too. And people don’t like to change. 

It’s human nature to resist change.

Due to Covid we need to change.

But most people do like to learn. 

Human beings are curious, and mostly enjoy acquiring new knowledge and skills. 

So perhaps learning is the essential third way of thinking – the third muscle.

Learning means that creative agencies shouldn’t just advise their clients on strategy and show their clients design, but also help their clients learn. 

You could call this ‘teaching’, but it’s more than that. It’s a way of working in which both client and consultant discover new things, try them out and reflect on them. 

Teaching, after all, is just one (rather good) way of learning.

So this is less about thinking or imagining, more about discovering. 

It’s partly intellectual, partly intuitive, but also hugely empathetic. 

It’s not so much about strategies or ideas, more about people and how to help them go further. 

A lot of it is about coaching clients, and their employees, and their customers. 

The aim would be not just a one-off learning exercise (a workshop, a class, a course) but a constant drive to learn (a culture) in both the client and the agency.

And perhaps that kind of culture is the outcome that matters most. 

Strategy and design are vital muscles, but only the third muscle – the learning muscle, exercised daily – opens up long-lasting innovation and growth. 

At Waterhouse Wade we work with our clients to develop a hybrid of design, strategists and learning and fuse all three together to discover new solutions and ideas as a collaborative partnership. 

Now we all need to go further, push the boundaries and fuse all three elements together to provide relevant but meaningful and sustainable solutions that are relevant to the new normal.