Specialized Costa Mesa

Project Brief

• Size: 4800 sf (446 Sq m)

• Location: Costa Mesa, CA, USA

• Role: Project owner, space planning, fixture design, project management & budgeting.

I don't think Costa Mesa was anyone's ideal location to start a company-owned retail initiative. As it turned out, there were other factors that chose this space for us. The building was surprisingly rough when we assumed the lease and I spent a lot of time getting the MEP (Mechanical Electrical Plumbing) systems dialed in before we could even get to the shop-fit. Still, in the end, the store found its customer base (mostly high end road) and continues to thrive.  

Project Highlights

Flex Walls

For a retail space, especially bike retail, the building is way over-glazed. Almost all of the street-facing walls on this busy corner location are glass bearing, greatly limiting wall display space. I chose an innovative display system that provided good window display on the street side and maintained retail display inside the store. We came to call these fixtures Flex Walls.

Bike Walls

In locations where we did not need to story-tell to the street, we pushed the walls up to the inside of the glass and built fixtures called “Bike Walls" that are very similar to flex walls except where Flex Walls express their platform on the window side, Bike Walls expressed the platforms on the showroom side. This allows for wall-hung bikes interlaced with floor-displayed bikes. You can compare the two wall types in the shot below.  Both use tension rods to keep the eccentrically-loaded walls from leaning.   

Apitong 

I typically prefer to work in reclaimed wood such as fir but in this case I wanted something darker and more durable. As sort of a visual pun that only I would get, I decided to display bikes on Brazilian Apitong which is milled specifically for truck beds. The wood is relatively inexpensive, machines beautifully, takes finish well and is extremely hard. It’s also sustainably harvested and available in full 1” ship-lap profile, which I like. We used mountains of it.