Pro Shop project gloat....

John Pollman

Member
Messages
1,332
Location
Rochester Hills, MI
Hi folks,
I've made a couple other posts since yesterday talking about a job I just finished for a client. They have an indoor skateboard park/pro shop but the pro shop was too small so they rented a larger space and moved the pro shop there. I ended up building and installing almost all of their display fixtures. Here are a few shots of some of it....

The skateboard racks that I built. They hold nineteen boards each and I built seven of them.

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Their shoe display rack. She wanted to use old skateboard decks but didn't want to just set them on shelf standards. She mentioned that she'd like to try to find some way to hang them. This is what I came up with and they love it....

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And here's a long board rack that I built....

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What do ya think?

John
 
I tell you what i think John .....awesome and innovative.:D

now as to your choice of hockey team well thats another subject altogether.

GO HABS GO

canadiens.gif

Sorry i could not resist.:D;):thumb:
 
I think you nailed the design of it all perfectly.
The simplicity of the displays makes them that much more stand out from a design point of view, not that I know much, but I know they are very easy on the eyes, customer friendly, (customer friendly is very important, with easy accessability)and are perfectly themed for that business.
They add a nice character to the store, without looking so much like display units.
 
I think you nailed the design of it all perfectly.
The simplicity of the displays makes them that much more stand out from a design point of view, not that I know much, but I know they are very easy on the eyes, customer friendly, (customer friendly is very important, with easy accessability)and are perfectly themed for that business.
They add a nice character to the store, without looking so much like display units.

You've got that right Allen. It was a real challenge to design the vertical board racks. It sounded simple at first from what they described. But after showing them the first prototype which was fairly easy to construct, they liked the way it functioned but didn't like the way that you could see the dowels I had to use to hold the boards in place. On the redesign of the second prototype, they still didn't like that you could see the apparatus to hold the board. The thing of it is that it's VERY challenging to get a concave board with a kick tail on each end to balance on end without falling over. :D Also, the boards have colorful graphics on the bottom that you have to display. That made it a real challenge. After about three attempts with wooden dowels I decided to try some threaded rod. I designed a bracket with a double bend in it that held the board pretty securely. Another challenge is that the boards vary in size and width. After a lot of tinkering I was able to come up with a compromise of spacing and bracket visibility that works pretty well. Several times I had to tell them that they were going to have to bend a little bit with the visibility issue in order to incorporate SAFETY into the design. I explained that the racks had to be what I call "idiot proof". That is when a customer off the street walks in and pulls a board down to look at it, they have to be able to easily replace it in the rack without worrying that it's going to fall and hit someone in the head. By tweaking the design a bit I came up with a design that holds the boards very securely and it's what I call almost "idiot proof". The biggest issue came with actually producing the end product. Originally I thought they wanted a couple racks. But after they approved the final design, I found out that they wanted room to store about a hundred and thirty boards! :eek: I ended up using plain 1/4" steel rod that I had to cut to length, thread about an 1-1/4" of one end and then make two bends in it. That was a LOT or work only using an angle grinder to cut them, a vise and small sledge to bend them, and a manual die wrench. Boy I'm glad that's over!

In the end, I think it came out very well and as you can see by the pictures, you can only see the very tip of the black metal bracket that holds the board in place. When you walk into the store the two rows of racks are right by the front door and all you see are the colorful boards. Unless you look closely, you can't even see the retaining brackets. I'm pretty proud of that little piece of engineering. Overall though, my favorite part of the project is the shoe display. That too was a lot of work but it has the most impact and looks the best of anything I did in there. The nice part of it is that Rochester is a pretty affluent area and it has a really nice downtown area and this is right in the heart of it. About a week ago while I was in there finishing up the install of the sales counter I built a man walked in and asked me for a card. He owns a furniture store just a few doors down. He said that everything he saw in the store looked great and he'll probably be contacting me some time for some work. I'm hoping that the other merchants in the area drop in and see my work. The shop owner asked me for a stack of cards to hand out. That would be GREAT! No better advertising than that. Someone walks in and likes what they see and asks who did it. Word of mouth is about the cheapest advertising there is! :)

Thanks again for all of the compliments!

John
 
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