C A Design Services - Retail News

News

August 07

Trailwalker 2007 - they made it!

Trailwalkers downhill Huge congratulations to our Trailwalker team for completing their 100km walk along the South Downs Way last month. The team finished in 24 hours and 46 minutes, raising just over £3500 for Oxfam and the Gurkha Welfare Trust.

The team would like to thank its support crew and all its kind sponsors, including parent company Gardline Shipping, Norwich Audi, Lankelma and Slimdril International.

To see other team photos from the event, please visit our Trailwalker 2007 blog.

July 07

These Boots Were Made for Walking – news on our Trailwalker team

It’s almost the final moment of reckoning for our brave Trailwalker team. After months of training, their 60-mile (100km) walk to raise money for Oxfam and Gurka’s Welfare Trust will take place on July 14th and 15th. The team – Andy Murray, David Batterbee, Owain Parry, James Halls and Steve Brown – will join other fundraisers from all over the country to take part in Trailwalker 2007; a walk following the South Downs Way from Petersfield to Brighton with stunning views across to the Channel.

Trailwalker team

On their last training session, the team walked 35 miles across the beautiful North Norfolk coast line in torrential rain – that’s commitment for you! And everyone thought they were pretty crazy when on the previous walk they started at 6pm on a Friday evening and finished at around 6am Saturday morning! Steve (our General Manager) reported that they were accosted by a local farmer who threatened to call the police thinking they were hardened chicken farm protesters!!

They have walked a total distance from Great Yarmouth to Newcastle (nearly 300 miles) in preparation, and have a great support crew (Richard, Claire, Jo and Guy) to help them on their journey. Lots of luck to them all!

June 07

New café chain Nosh launches first outlet designed by C A Design Services

We are pleased to announce that Nosh Retail has successfully launched its first café in London, following complete design by our team at C A Design Services. Nosh asked us to carry out full retail design for the launch of their first Nosh outlets. The project includes measured surveys of potential sites, full retail design including in-store signage and displays and regulatory consents.

The Nosh brand is built around the concept of a coffee shop selling fresh, healthy and wholesome hot and cold food made on site. The first Nosh café opened in Essex Street in London in May, and the second outlet, which we are project managing, is due to open in Sutton soon. Plans are also in place for further openings, visit www.noshretail.com.

For further details, please call Guy on 01493 440444.

March 07

05/03/2007 - New survey website - www.cadesignsurvey.co.uk

Last year we launched a dedicated retail design website www.cadsretail.co.uk. This website now attracts as many visitors as our main site, so we thought, ‘let’s do the same for our survey customers!’ You can visit our specialist survey site at www.cadesignsurvey.co.uk. The new website gives you more detailed information about all the survey services we provide in an easily accessible format. www.cadesignsurvey.co.uk is live now, so please pay a visit and let us know what you think!

Learn about the following survey services and get a free quotation:

Measured survey (inc floor, ceiling, roof)
Elevations survey (internal & external)
Topographic survey (inc drainage)
GPS Survey
Mechanical & Electrical survey
Asset Stewardship survey

05/03/2007 - Advice for premises affected by smoking ban

We have put together a free advice paper for pubs about the smoking ban, and more specifically planning permission required for any smoking shelters or awnings. The ban on smoking in enclosed public places comes into force on July 1st 2007, so be prepared! Download our free document or call us for advice on planning permission on 01493 440444.

February 07

09/02/07 - 3D furniture library for Homebase

C A Design Services has recently completed a 3D Furniture project for the number 1 UK & Ireland Home Improvements retailer; Homebase. We have created 3D versions of blocks for their Visual Planning team to bring their store plans to life in AutoCAD. They will be used to illustrate how a room set is typically displayed in store and also serve as a guide on how to accessorise furniture and display POS material. We used their Furniture Extra customer brochures to effectively create a CAD library especially for the Visual Planners. Realistic fly throughs and stills can now be easily produced using AutoCAD 2007.

If you would like to move to 3D too, please complete our enquiry form.

October 06

01/10 - Retail software moves into visual merchandising applications

We have recently partnered with category management specialist Shelfmax to build and design a planogramming application for a well-known pet food brand. Stockists will be able to login online and enter their shelving types and numbers, allowing the application to plan and display the optimal layout for the range.

We are very excited about our collaboration with Shelfmax and future joint projects. Watch this space for further details, and for more information on similar applications please call Grant on 01493 440444.

September 06

06/09 - Sainsbury’s try something new with C A Design Services

Buoyed by the successful outsourcing of a substantial volume of their store planning facilities to us over the last two years, Sainsbury’s has recently chosen us as a partner to undertake the commodity planning for their stores too.

In conjunction with Sainsbury’s commodity specialists, our retail team has produced procedures and protocols to enable the smooth transition of this traditionally in-house function to an outsourced facility.

Whereas the store planning is the internal design of the store layouts, the commodity design is essentially the placement of each product group on the shelves.The ultimate aim of all commodity planning is to create a good shopping experience, and also ensure, from the company’s point of view, that all premium items are readily visible and the flow of the customers is such that there are no missed sales opportunities arising from desired items not found.

July 06

03/07 - Clarks Shoes invest in 3D store visualisation

We recently undertook some MicroStation 3D training for Clarks. As part of their shop fitting process, Clarks produce a series of 3D rendered views of drawings derived from original 2D plans, but found the process a bit time consuming in placing the 3D cells. By restructuring their 3D cell libraries we enabled a very quick conversion of the fittings from the 2D plan to a 3D model. This was done by a MicroStation VB Application developed in-house which performs a cell replacement for all cells in a file. As the 3D cell libraries were restructured touse composite cells of smaller parts, the same application can be used to replace a single component in all cells it appears in, thus ensuring a fast way of keeping the fittings up to date without having to modify several cells.

For further details please contact Guy Moates on 01493 440444.

June 06

01/06 Survey department invests £30k in topographical survey equipment

We have just invested in the latest Leica Total Station to further enhance our topographical and building survey service to our clients. The new instrument is fully robotic (turning and tracking a surveyor moving around a site by itself) and GPS enabled giving improved accuracy and levels relating to OS benchmarks automatically. Finished data also be can be returned to our office via our surveyors mobile phones from site using the inbuilt Bluetooth facilities on the Total Station enabling drawings to potentially be turned around on urgent projects while the surveyors are still at site.

The Total Station also boasts new extended-range, high-precision, PinPoint electronic distance measuring (EDM). Its narrow, visible laser beam permits surveyors to measure distances to objects, such as curved surfaces, corners and inaccessible points, with exceptional accuracy at up to 500m away, even in harsh weather conditions. This feature will enable us to take readings in areas not previously possible due to H&S or security issues as the surveyor is able to keep a safe distance from the object. Call Ian Mortimer, our Survey Manager, for details on our topographical surveying services on 01493 440444.

May 06

22/05 Pirates of the CADibbean!

The C A Design Services staff took part in the Norwich Dragon Boat Festival on May 20th, raising a fantastic £1,068.50 for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices. The team would like to say a huge thank you to those companies and individuals that sponsored them to take part in the race. Unfortunately the team were just pipped to the post for a place in the semi-finals, but were proud to pick up the trophy for ‘Best Dressed Crew’ for wearing pirate costumes…see pics below! Fifty-two teams from the East Anglian region joined CADS at the event at Whitlingham Broad in Trowse, where Faber Scaffolding won first prize.

Pirates of the CADibbean start line