Amazing Retail Designs
Retailers across North America are upping their game, enlisting A-list design firms from inside and outside the cannabis industry to stand out and to keep customers coming back for years to come.
While some of the following stores reside in well-established markets and set the bar high for competitors, others operate in newer markets and act as ambassadors for the entire industry.
Marijuana Venture spoke with the leading designers behind many of these retail stores to get insight on the design decisions and why they work in their respective markets.
Noble Herb
Flagstaff, Arizona
To keep up with Arizona’s rapidly changing cannabis industry, the Noble Herb enlisted the award-winning local firm High Road Design Studio to design its new flagship location.
“They were really going for something that felt communal and modern, but warm, inviting, friendly,” says Megan Stone, principal of High Road Design Studio.
“They really wanted to play that welcoming card,” which fit well with the surrounding city of Flagstaff, a college town and gateway to the Grand Canyon, Stone says. “There’s a ski resort there and it’s a hotbed for outdoor activities and things like that.”
Photo by Kevin Brost.
Noble Herb was originally launched as The Greenhouse in 2013. Part of the company’s rebranding included a spacious new location, a former Mexican restaurant on old Route 66, which runs through the city’s historic district. Giving the store its homespun appeal is a variety of wood tones and a “perfect shade of mustardy gold” that was developed into a plaid pattern that captures the area’s outdoorsy feel.
“Plaid is so approachable,” Stone says. “It has a home in so many different cultural and active sorts of things … kind of that universal texture.”
The store also features enormous 12-foot bifold windows at the front of the store, which can remain open nine months out of the year, and a deceptively clever lobby fireplace that projects the image of flames onto water vapors with LED lights.