From Carnaby Street to Cannes

Both have used the concept to add a fun and creative element to corporate events. YR Store printed over 180 T-shirts over five days for Nike at a World Cup celebration event and produced almost 1,200 shirts in five days for the Google Creative Sandbox at the 2014 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

In the words of YR Store founder Tim Williams: “YR Store works with brands, retailers and agencies to create and deliver unforgettable, interactive, immersive experiences for consumers.”

For retail clients YR Store sets up and runs in-store design-and-print departments where customers can design their own garments on touch-pod design stations before they are printed on the spot on Epson’s dye-sublimation printers.

The concept is proving a fashionable in itself. Within months of opening in summer 2013 as a ‘pop-up’ outlet in London’s Carnaby Street, came temporary in-store pop-ups at retailers Liberty and Selfridges - and the company had pitched Topshop the idea of a permanent concession in the men’s and women’s fashion departments at its flagship Oxford Street store in the capital.

Williams believed from the outset that the YR Store idea would translate from such retail market to corporate sectors – and he was right. “It’s customary for people to leave corporate events with tangible mementos as well as sponsors’ messages, and T-shirts are a common vehicle for this. YR Store adds greater value, not just because the souvenir is unique, but because creating your own T-shirt is such an engaging experience.

Nike was especially receptive to the idea, regarding it as an extension of its existing NIKEiD concept, where customers can customise Nike products either online or using in-store NIKEiD ‘studios’. A pre-World Cup ‘celebration of football’ at Nike’s London Phenomenal House combined NIKEiD with YR Store’s live design and print facilities to allow people to create customised football team T-shirts.

YR Store was also in line with the thinking behind the Google Creative Sandbox at the 2014 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Billed as “an immersive experience built to inspire and involve”, the free-to-enter Sandbox provided delegates with a range of fun activities, including playful demos and free yoga. Its look and feel was the work of graphic artist Anthony Burrill, whose involvement was extended by a YR Store installation where delegates took their pick of Burrill’s iconic slogans and designs and created their own wearable memento.

The NIKEiD and Google projects demonstrate another feature of YR Store that brand owners like. “They differ from retail environments like Topshop, where customers have free reign in the images they use, because both brands provided a fixed range of images. This doesn’t necessarily impact on users’ creativity, but it does give brands a degree of control over their messaging,” says Williams.

He is in no doubt how absolutely crucial the printing part is of the YR Store concept. “YR Store is about delivering garments quickly to a quality that does customer’s designs justice and which they expect from leading retailers and major brands.

“We operate three SureColor dye-sub printers in our head office, and the SC-F6000 model is performing superbly in Topshop. As we operate YR Stores in a wider range of environments it’s good, too, that Epson offers us a choice of printer. For Google Sandbox we stayed with the SC-F6000, but for the NIKEiD event we used the smaller-format, more portable direct-to-garment SureColor SC-F2000 printer.

“The printers at the end of the process have to deliver an ultra-reliable package that can keep pace with potentially heavy demand. The whole point of YR Store is to make the experience engaging, immersive and easy-to-use, right through to the moment the customer picks up their garment after printing and thinks, “wow!’”