The shoe brand’s third US store highlights raw materials, with an eye toward elevated pre- and post-purchase service.
By Lauren Mang
Photographed by Carlos Chavarría
Who needs a stock room?
Certainly not FEIT, the Australian-born, New York–based footwear brand that just opened a store in San Francisco’s Jackson Square neighborhood without that very detail. Designed by Los Angeles-based Jordana Maisie Design Studio in collaboration with FEIT’s cofounder Tull Price, the 861-square-foot shop—the brand’s third in the US—seeks to reimagine the customer experience, moving that stock to the forefront (i.e. no more disappearing to a back room to retrieve footwear) and highlighting it as a design feature. The goal is to allow for more face-to-face interaction with the shopper and provide fast, uninterrupted service in a streamlined space that salutes the product’s handmade nature.
“[It’s] a modernization of an old cobbler shoe store,” Price says. “The focus around seating, service, and supply allows the customer to have a comfortable easy experience in an elevated, minimal environment.”
Inside, raw materials abound, including concrete, stainless steel, mirrored surfaces, and naturally finished Baltic birch plywood, upon which the shoes are displayed. A perimeter shelving system houses the stock and highlights the the shoe boxes as a repetitive design feature.
Seating is integrated directly into the cashwrap to simplify the shoe-trying on and -buying process. Rounding out the service-focused concept, the shop offers in-store repairs (though more extensive jobs are completed in New York or at the brand’s factory), a shoe donation program, and gratis leather conditioning treatments. How’s that for putting one’s best foot forward?
FEIT, San Francisco; feitdirect.com
