NEXT Thurrock Lakeside

When NEXT unveiled its largest store to date at Thurrock Lakeside Shopping Centre, it marked a bold new direction for the brand.

At 80,000 sq. ft., this was more than a major retail opening. It was an opportunity to rethink large-format retail design around flow, product discovery and customer experience, creating a store environment that felt easier to navigate, richer to explore and more engaging for customers moving through multiple departments.

O12 was proud to partner with NEXT in shaping key in-store fixture moments across Womenswear, Menswear, Kidswear, Lingerie, Beauty, Shoes and Home.

The work was about more than creating new fixtures. It was about designing purposeful moments that elevated product presentation, supported customer navigation and transformed the way customers explore and interact with the NEXT brand and environment.

From distinctive department thresholds to a new Beauty and Home Fragrance concept centred around an interactive tester bar, the project helped NEXT Thurrock Lakeside feel more premium, intuitive and engaging for customers moving through the space.

The result? A store experience that felt intrinsically NEXT while raising the standard for the brand’s largest and most ambitious store to date.

• Supported NEXT’s largest-ever store at Thurrock Lakeside Shopping Centre, helping shape a large-format 80,000 sq. ft. retail environment with clarity, rhythm and purpose

• Created distinctive fixture moments across key product categories giving Womenswear, Menswear, Kidswear, Lingerie, Beauty, Shoes and Home stronger presence within the space

• Helped improve customer flow across a major flagship store environment, making departments easier to navigate and key collections easier to discover

• Designed category-led displays to support product discovery

• Created interactive Beauty and Home Fragrance concept to encourage product trial and dwell time

• Used premium material finishes to elevate the visual merchandising palette

• Developed creative concepts with practical constraints, production needs and brand consistency in mind

NEXT was opening its largest-ever store at Thurrock Lakeside Shopping Centre, creating a significant opportunity to redefine the customer experience within this major flagship location.

The challenge was to support a large retail footprint with fixture solutions that felt distinctive, premium and practical. The store needed more than additional display space. It needed rhythm, structure and standout merchandising moments that would help customers move through departments with ease, discover key collections and engage more closely with the product.

NEXT wanted to create a flagship retail environment that set a new benchmark for the brand. That meant elevating presentation across multiple categories, encouraging customer interaction, improving flow and introducing new experiential retail concepts while ensuring every element still complemented the wider store environment.

For O12, the task was to shape a large-format retail environment that balanced creativity with commercial purpose: bold enough to bring new energy to the shopfloor but considered enough to sit naturally within an existing brand world.

O12 developed a series of new fixture concepts and design details that created purposeful moments throughout the store.

Rather than simply adding new fixtures, we focused on how each display could support the customer journey. The design introduced moments of pause, discovery and interaction, helping to give structure to the shopfloor while bringing greater visibility to key product categories.

The architectural team had already established a material palette for the store. Our role was to design fixture moments that complemented this existing aesthetic while adding softness, tactility and visual interest. Where the architecture featured sharp, squared lines, we introduced softer curves to bring balance to the environment.

This approach was carefully shaped around the NEXT brand. Every new fixture solution needed to feel elevated but also familiar enough to sit naturally within the brand’s established retail world.

The result was a series of considered fixture moments that gave key categories more presence, supported clearer navigation and made the shopping journey more engaging.

The project helped establish NEXT Thurrock Lakeside as a flagship retail destination and a new benchmark for the brand’s large-format stores.

By introducing distinctive fixture moments and category-focused displays, the store gained clearer focal points across the shopfloor. These displays increased visibility for key collections, supported product discovery and helped create a more engaging customer journey.

The Beauty and Home Fragrance concept added a more interactive layer to the experience, encouraging customers to spend more time with products through a tester bar and illuminated display units.

While no formal KPI data is available, the project supported NEXT’s ambition to create a more inspiring, customer-focused and commercially effective customer experience.

The core creative idea was to elevate NEXT’s flagship store into a premium, interactive retail environment through strategic architectural fixture moments.

These moments were designed to help customers explore the store more naturally. Each one created a point of interest, guiding movement through the space and giving key departments more presence.

The concept balanced creative ambition with practical retail thinking. It introduced softer forms, premium finishes and illuminated details while protecting the clarity and consistency of the existing NEXT environment.

The aim was not to overpower the store but to strengthen it. Each fixture needed to feel well thought out, useful and true to the brand.

The thinking centred on product discovery: helping customers understand the space, find inspiration and engage with products in a more natural way.

O12 designed distinct and engaging entry thresholds for the Womenswear, Menswear and Kidswear departments, creating stronger arrival points within the store.

Across the wider environment, the visual merchandising palette was upgraded with premium finishes including timber veneers, terrazzo blocks, polished granite and bronze framework. Integrated LED halo-lighting and illuminated shelving helped draw focus to key collections, giving the flagship environment a more elevated and considered feel.

One of the standout moments was the new Beauty and Home Fragrance concept. Designed around an interactive tester bar, the area encouraged customers to engage directly with products rather than simply view them on display.

The tiered, illuminated Home Fragrance units created a clear focal point within the category, supporting discovery and helping products feel more tactile, accessible and inviting.

Together, these moments helped shape a more premium experience, giving customers more reasons to pause, explore and engage across the store.

O12’s role covered conceptual design, design development, fixture visuals and technical detail to support production.

The project began seven months before the store opened in July 2025, giving the team time to explore, refine and develop the new fixture concepts in line with NEXT’s wider store vision.

As the project progressed, the design was adapted to suit budget and production requirements. For example, the original concept included oversized digital media screens, but this was successfully refined into large-format lightboxes with illuminated presentation plinths. This kept the impact and presence of the original idea while making the solution more practical for delivery.

The final concepts were passed to NEXT’s production team for implementation, supported by O12’s technical design detail.

This balance of creativity, clarity and practicality made O12 the right partner for a project where every fixture needed to look considered, work commercially and support production.

A store of this scale needs more than visual impact. It needs clarity.

Every fixture moment had to work within the realities of a busy flagship retail environment. That meant supporting customer movement, making product categories easier to understand and creating moments that could stand up to everyday use.

The most successful elements were those that balanced presence with purpose. They gave customers a reason to stop, look, test, explore and continue through the space.

This is where the retail design had to work hardest: not as decoration but as a way to shape a large-format store around real customer behaviour.

The result was a more engaging, premium and customer-focused flagship store environment for NEXT Thurrock Lakeside.

The new fixture moments helped define key departments, improve product visibility and create a stronger sense of journey across the shopfloor. The Beauty and Home Fragrance area introduced a more tactile, interactive experience, encouraging product trial and giving the category a clearer point of difference.

By working with NEXT’s existing brand environment rather than against it, the project created an elevated store experience that felt cohesive, commercially useful and unmistakably NEXT.

For O12, the project was a strong example of retail design shaped for real-world impact: improving flow, strengthening product storytelling and helping a major retailer bring a bold flagship vision to life on the shopfloor.