A well-crafted concept

In 2019, the Super Zoo chain opened a pilot store in Prague with a retail area in excess of 1 000 m2, the chain's biggest outlet in the Czech Republic. The focus is firmly on visual communication with the consumers: fascinating themed presentations await customers in the aquarium and reptile departments in particular, turning a visit to the store into a genuine experience. "It took us almost one year to prepare the store. The result is a Super Zoo store that changes the pet shop market and sets a new benchmark for other business entities," says Dušan Plaček, CEO of the retail group.
The store is located in the well-frequented Homepark retail park in the Prague suburb of Zličin. Here it rubs shoulders with Ikea, Tesco, Takko, dm and other well-known stores and restaurant chains. The new Super Zoo is also the first to display the newly designed logo of the retail group.
A characteristic of the new store is its clearly organised merchandise presentation, which makes it noticeably easier for customers to find their bearings. In designing the pilot store, Dušan Plaček has drawn inspiration from marketing experts, who make reference to the fact that men and women have different preferences when it comes to design and styling. Women are reported to prefer soft, fluid and round forms, while men opt for linear, square and practical designs. Since more than a third of pet product shoppers are normally female, circular shelf supports on wooden plinths and round signs marking the individual pet groups were designed for the new store. Another typical feature of the pilot store is a universal colour coding system, which assigns a colour to each pet category, and new LED lighting that changes the mood at the POS depending on what is being illuminated.

Super Zoo has demonstrated a sure instinct in its product presentation too. A wide range of cat scratching furniture is displayed on wooden pedestals against the backdrop of a brown wall with paws painted on it. Quirky forms of presentation have also been chosen for dog and cat toys and other accessories to make the products attractive to customers at the POS. Posters bearing information from the fascinating world of animals, such as about the long tongues of chameleons, are also a new arrival on the sales floor. These are intended to underline the competence of the store on the one hand while offering customers interesting insights on the other.

At the back of the retail area are other visual highlights, including the majority of the range of live pets presented in store. In the so-called chill-out zone, shoppers can sit on a cosy sofa and relax to the accompaniment of soothing sounds from the adjacent aquariums and from an audio system that simulates the sounds of the underwater world. Every visitor can enjoy the huge circular glass aquarium featuring jellyfish, a paludarium with e.g. stingrays, the large and varied array of fish tanks and a presentation of fighting fish. A macaw aviary and a bird enclosure with diverse varieties of popular cage birds are other elements of the live pet assortment.
Super Zoo has now extended the novel concept to a large number of stores across the country. While not rolled out in full on account of the mostly smaller retail spaces, characteristic elements of the pilot store concept are nevertheless recognisable in the new Super Zoo locations.

In Jablunkov, a town on the border of the Czech Republic with Slovakia and Poland, the Plaček  Group has opened its 250th store in Europe with a sales area of 200 m2. This store is a pilot for smaller retail formats at the same time and was conceived especially for towns of less than 10 000 inhabitants. It picks up on numerous elements of the pilot store implemented in Prague. Like all Super Zoo branches, this smaller store also sells live pets. Compared with the large-format stores, however, this outlet doesn't offer such an extensive range of product groups and is geared primarily to supplying local pet owners. The concept will be applied to future new stores and will make a substantial contribution to bolstering the expansion of the Plaček  Group nationally, even in more rural areas.