Queenie Lo, President of Spatial Design at FutureBrand

0:08Claire:Welcome to My Life in Design, brought to you by the DBA and design-focused PR agency Red Setter. I'm Claire Blythe, co-founder of Red Setter. In this series, I'll be speaking to more people who are shaping the world of design, finding out how they discovered that design was a thing you could base a career around, and how they got to where they are today. This week, I'm joined by Queenie Lowe, President of Spatial Design at Future Brand. She now leads the global team to create immersive insight-driven brand experiences across retail, hospitality and branded environments. She's worked with brands such as McDonald's, Estee Lauder brands like Clinique and Origins, LVMH brands such as Sephora and NYX, P &G brands like SK2, Starbucks, Bentley, Bottega-Faneta, Heineken, Adidas, L 'Occitane and Nike.

1:02Claire:Queenie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Good to be here. Thank you so much for coming on. I know you've got into what you do at the moment, into design through the account management side of things and project management side. I always wonder, how does anyone even know that's out there? I thought if you wanted to go into design, you had to be a designer. And there's so much more to it than that. At what point did you no design existed i think the word design not so my mom was a fashion designer and she had her own fashion line with her sister so i think from a very young age i would go to the showroom and cool you don't really know or you don't really have a name for it but you basically you saw your mom in clothes and playing with clothes yeah very excited and when i graduated high school i wanted to study psychology.

1:47Did you? I was really into like human behavior. But then last minute I threw it out and I went for international fashion management.

1:55Claire:Wow, so this is in Amsterdam. That's in Amsterdam. And I did a year at London College of Fashion. I was part of the program. It was something, I think being Chinese, not maybe for my parents, like the first choice. I think a lot of maybe people coming from all different parts of the world understand And like if you're the first daughter going to uni, they would prefer more traditional. So it was more medicine, law. I think psychology, they were like, okay, well, that's still in terms of like more of a traditional type of behavior. So fashion management, they were frowning. They were supportive, but they said, okay, well, at least it's fashion management.

2:33It's not like you're going to do something creative because for them, like stability and also having security to really make your living was a core thing. coming from Hong Kong and Indonesia to come to Amsterdam.

2:45Claire:So even your mom as a fashion designer was worried about you going into fashion. She had a very good career in Hong Kong, but when she moved back to Holland, for a lot of people, they changed their career. So they have a restaurant. My dad was from Indonesia and had an Indonesian restaurant, very successful. But mom didn't pursue further her passion when she moved to the Netherlands and also had three girls. right okay yeah that's quite common behavior isn't it that sort of and then puts that on the back burner and probably thought you should get back to it at some point yeah so I did want to work in fashion but I think within international fashion management I also realized the whole idea of marketing appealed much more than the traditional like how to build up a collection I wasn't really good at the whole understanding the technical areas I was more of the storytelling and I think that was also based on the interest of psychology and how people behave so I think that's very close to that was that part of the course at all because it also have like uh cultural insights behavior and then the traditional marketing uh courses as well so that was more like college I really enjoyed working internationally the year in London was amazing as a student what did you do did you do a four-year course for the year oh okay with an international exchange program that was mandatory brilliant so you went to London for a year yeah ah fantastic who did you work for in It was a Dutch brand that was based outside of London.

4:06It was Van Giel's Fashion. So there was a men's brand and they had like the headquarters there. And I just did, I think, four months. And the rest was going to colleges, museum.

4:16Claire:I mean, yes, best life as a student. That's brilliant. And then back for a year. And then how did you, what did you decide after university? What did you think you wanted to do? Part of my final closing year at uni was an internship. And my roommate back then finished an internship at the Tommy Hilfiger headquarters in Amsterdam. So it was the European headquarters. And for her, it wasn't really a right fit. She was studying concept and branding. So she was looking at something that was very highly creative. And that internship was more around, okay, how do you work with creatives? How you really create like after a design, how do you bring a product to life?

4:56And it was done in a department which was called Creative Services, which were responsible for more environmental design. So as a brand, Tommy Hilfiger, I think maybe people will know it's more Americana. I wouldn't say that they're the front leader of fashion. They're well known for maybe their polos, their sweatshirts. But how many stories can you tell about a polo? So that was my first introduction into brand world building. So we would like create the headquarters and we would turn it into like a Frank Lloyd Wright house. When we had a summer collection, we would build out a full diner to talk about the America story.

5:34There was a lot of like music cues. We would play like a disco venue, Studio 54, to really bring the collection to life. So when buyers would come all the way from Selfridges to Corte Inglés or the French department stores, they were like, wow. And they were kind of exciting stepping into the world of Tommy Hilfiger.

5:50Claire:Yeah, OK. So that was the job. So there was a creative team and I was really managing it from briefing it in, also listening to the different departments from men's, women's, kids, like, OK, what do you want to really communicate in this collection? Yeah. And then the team would go ahead. It's a lot of responsibility at that sort of age out of college, isn't it? It was fantastic. Yeah. I think it was so exciting that back then the CEO was also, I think, very much of a front leader of like, OK, be bold. really like if the collection like how do you support it from all different ways so they would have corporate events to really engage with the employees they would have a flagship experience they would have i think pr events they would have sponsorships with a sport culture so i think that's something very core for that brand that they did super well and i loved it so i did that for eight years were you there for eight years wow okay so what did you work yourself up to is it Yeah, from intern to manager.

6:44Brilliant. Yeah, they went quite far. They were like Tommy Barr. So I really saw also going beyond just fashion that they also were touching F &B. I think then I was introduced. Yeah, it was for staff, but like, yeah, they also had external events where they had music. So it was really creating a world around Tommy Hilfiger.

7:02Claire:Yeah, that sort of huge experience. Yeah, interesting. Exactly. And that was back then that I think a colleague, we were always also working with freelancers an agency and then they point me out to this small boutique well I didn't know it was a boutique agency yeah in Amsterdam which was called Oxus and it was founded by George Cottle Oliver Michelle yeah I met them and decided to quit my job wow and that's a big move it was a big move again my parents like okay you have a steady job big brand name you're a manager you're like mid-20s Like, why would you go and work for the consultancy side? Like, that's again, like, that's a bit of a, you have to like find clients.

7:47Yeah. Like, how stable are they?

7:49Claire:Yeah, must seem much less stable in that sort of perception of you want to protect your kids. Exactly. So again, like, it's like, here she goes again. But no, I really enjoyed that meeting. And there were like a team of 15. Yeah. And they did everything from like already Nike and they worked with Levi's and they worked with Nespresso. Wow, even when they was just 15. Yeah. So just to explain to anyone listening that Access became future brands. Yeah. The spatial side of future brands. Exactly. So that team of 15 grew into... But what we have today. Yeah, absolutely. So I joined as the first project manager because everybody did everything.

8:27It was like a multidisciplinary team, which I also loved. So it was even going deeper in the matter of what I did previously at Tommy, where I worked with designers more on the interior side. But here I was dealing with architects, retail designers, restaurant designers, graphic designers. Wow. Just pulling everything together. But they didn't have a project manager. And they also saw like, oh, like within the creative field, you also need people who organize things. Yes. They are also creative and they love being around creatives, but they take differently. Totally. organize differently and you also can complement each other with these skill sets.

9:04Claire:Yeah, absolutely. That's why I find it fascinating because I started working in design as an account exec and then got into the new business and marketing side of things. But I don't understand how I ever would have known that all this was out there. Exactly. Like no one at school ever says, there's a whole design industry and you could be a finance person in it and you could be a project manager and you could be an accounts person. It's just design producers, aren't they? Exactly. And that's also one of the reasons why I really enjoyed moving more on the agency side. And it was like founder led.

9:36So you really, together, you chase things that you have to figure it out. Like you create literary roles that you think, okay, well, we need it. So either you skill yourself or you hire somebody.

9:45Claire:Yeah. So we did things like very, I think, like startups. Like we would do pitches with the Tate Modern and we were the only one from Amsterdam. And we're like, no, we're going to do this. Yeah. has somebody like fly in and hand deliver RFP because you're like what if it gets lost like what if the ACA yeah like like yeah it wasn't uh it was required a hard copy so maybe when you're in the UK you just send it by mail or it's a national delivery or courier so our business developers just took the easy jet flight and just flew over deliver it and we won that project did you we won it's like one of my first pitches that I won oh that's fantastic with access and that was with Tate Modern?

10:25Claire:Yes. What were you doing for it? The retail stores, they're still up. Wow. What's the retail that's existing now? It's still ours. Wow. I didn't know that. That's really cool. And like for us, like working with Hurts and the Moron as agency, like really big architects. So that's something I really enjoy and look very much with fond memories, like how a team like, oh, okay, we have our normal clients when we're going to do this. So it was like in the evening, in the weekend, and we're just like really learning as we go. But I think that's also a little bit like my foundation on this job because, yeah, I moved on to become an operations manager, general manager and eventually CEO of Access.

11:05Claire:Yeah. So what's the difference between what you're doing to operations manager? I think there's more of a component that I also meet new clients. I also introduce there's more of also like for me winning new clients in. That's more versus on the operations role. You really have to show that everything works and ticks and bring the right people. putting proposals together and all that side of it so it works with the studio yeah yeah but for me now to meet new clients having a very good understanding what we're good at and how we do things helps yeah I think if I speak to team members when I still run certain projects they know it comes from a certain knowledge side not because I'm like the highest boss lady or whatever I used to be a project manager I don't know like how well we can do yeah that was really help That was great.

11:49That was the first part of my career at Access. And at the same time, we're winning, I think, a lot of new clients. But those larger clients sometimes also wondered like, well, you're just this agency in Amsterdam. So George and Oliver, the founders, started also looking how they expanded. At the same time, FutureBand, who is originally a branding agency, also saw how can we expand going from brand where you talk more about visual identity, logos, further in space. So AXIS was acquired 2013.

12:23Claire:Wow, okay. So quite a while ago now. Yeah. 12 years ago. Within that role, like now changes. That also meant like eventually a name change. So the name AXIS changed into spatial design at FutureBrand. Right. Yeah, absolutely. That's a fairly recent. So it's been a sort of slow transition. How have you found the transition? How has it worked over the years? Yeah, as you pointed out, being part of FutureBrand is now nearly 13 years ago. It's a larger network with multiple offices. We also have the opportunity to sometimes do projects that are more brand led and then go into us. So it's a very, I think, positive way that you can really be longer with clients.

13:01Yeah. And I think for our teams, the creatives, they also are having a much wider pool to work on. There's like 14 offices globally. And sometimes you do have chances to work with New York or to speak with teams that are all based all over the world. So as our clients are positioned everywhere, we also see the benefit of helping them and servicing them everywhere. It's like truly global. Truly global, but still very, I think we will always say like boutique approach. Like every of us has like an MD or my role, like a president that we run our studios with our direct clients. When we can work together, we do, but everybody still serves us.

13:37I think in terms of how we operate, it's still very much the same.

13:41Claire:Yeah, it feels really personal here. So it doesn't feel like you're lost in a big conglomerate. No. I think that's maybe also the success that our clients feel like, okay, when we meet Queenie for the first time, she stays on, she's part of the team and she's engaged. And it's not like when the project starts that we never see her. We all know from every level that we're all involved. But depending which design phase you are, my time is needed more or less. What does your role look like today as president? What's the... Yeah, I meet like, I have my clients that I've worked with. McDonald's is a 12-year client.

14:16Claire:Do you still work hands-on with the clients? Not hands-on. They have like dedicated design teams, but they do involve me and they do expect me that I know like things, like key strategic decisions. Or strategic point of view. Yes, and also where it's all going rather than exactly how it looks. Exactly. And sometimes also where things are changing in terms of like market trends, do we also then change teams? Yeah. And for new clients, yeah, I'm usually one of the first when I talk about the agency, I listen to the design brief, and then I also discuss here with the team, like, okay, what is the most appropriate and best team to be allocated to the team?

14:49And then they kick it off.

14:51Claire:Yeah. And then I come in and out and I join presentations. But in the end, like, I do feel more comfortable when clients call me when things go well, that I know what they're talking about, but also when they're not well, that I'm also the one who committed and taking the project on. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Do you enjoy it? Yeah. It's been here for a while, you know absolutely you can only do this like where there's a certain like passion or yeah i really i really enjoy like delivering projects and now the business is my project that's the ultimate project management role yeah absolutely yeah just managing it and getting all balancing it all yeah yeah definitely how many people are there now what's the we're under 40 here in in Amsterdam, then under 20 in Detroit, and then I still have a designer also in London.

15:38And we can really work on a global level.

15:41Claire:That's brilliant. I love that it just came from that 15 people. Same. That's sort of grown into a sort of global entity. Yeah. It's one of those things, again, where I think, if I was looking at a feature brand now, I'd see the spatial part and I'd just think there's no way I could recreate that because it's part of a massive organisation. but you can see the sort of steps of how you built up to it and how how did they become interested in did they start talking to George how did they know about it in the first place do you know much about that I think when they they're very well known for branding but they also knew like at a certain moment when you do like a rebrand or repositioning that has to go on a building on a store yeah and they were already I think having sometimes like a specialist in their studio that would bring it more in the environments and they sound like hey this is an opportunity to do more but i think at the same time like a specialism like how much focus do you put that as a department or is it like more of a what do we call like integrated offer yeah so that's what it did so they also were looking at digital agencies because they also see like okay how does digital also play out in a digital world so that also happened and being part of future band who then is also now part of into public and our first parent companies world group there's media there's pr so everything that we're affecting when you talk about a brand i mean it's it's everywhere everywhere in your lives so just yeah absolutely product design to like looking at it from entering to a store to financial services everything is a brand and how does a brand behave can be expressed to everything so i like to call it it's like brand transformation through space and it can be retail that can be hospitality can maybe anything so just that's looking at all the touch points of yes where you've got the brands and who's going to be using it in the audiences and just working out exactly where they are so i think the team here for instance we are a interior retail agency but we have also strategy here we feel it's very important to really analyze the brand why and how yeah really come up with an idea before we start designing so the way that we approach our projects also enables us going from beauty to food to hotels to automotive yeah because we think through shopping behavior through consumers so how do you behave and then you design a store for it yeah so bringing all that psychological side exactly and maybe that's why i still love it yeah definitely yeah i love that side of things yeah i think in another life i go back and be a strategist in this sort of area because i think working out all those plans and working out how you connect with audiences.

18:21Claire:I love that. Yeah. That's an interesting side. How do you inspire yourself in a day to day? Do you have sort of like creative inspiration? Do you have ways of sort of inspiring yourself? I think I get a lot of insights from the team. And I think I do like to shop. I do like to eat. So you also see what's out there. Me too. Yeah. So I think that is also like a starting point. I think also making sure that you're connected to a very like diverse audience. I'm a mom. I have two boys that they also have sometimes things like, oh, never heard of it. But like, that's that's interesting. Yeah. So I think a lot of input.

19:01I'm a little bit of more of an analog versus a digital person. So I'd like to see and do things versus.

19:08Claire:I think surely everyone is really. But the digital stuff is just so easy and accessible. that's where I still spend a lot of my time and that kind of thing but still going into a store or into a restaurant and picking things up and all that sort of stuff surely that's got to be more more valuable to most people it must be because like we're as an agency that's what we do we really deliver and create like places that we really feel that people want to be at and yeah we often say like how many memories do you have through like your phone well yeah that's exactly and how many why do we make instagrammable or social moments and we take a photo you want to capture something that is dimensional yeah totally that's an emotion that you feel and we've like we design towards that towards that emotion and brands if you have an emotional connection for the red it's not an aesthetic like a beautiful fixture that like holds lipstick but yeah we'll make sure that people are feeling happy when they dwell into sephora like they can do so many other places but they choose sephora yeah god yeah sephora is just mind-blowingly successful i really like it i think it's great my 12 year old daughter you always leave with more than you definitely yeah the minis section always gets me what are you working on can i ask you what you're working on sort of at the moment or recently that really shows that shows of how you do that sort of emotional connection yeah but like all i think where you get your inspiration i really love the fact that we work in different sectors like i get inspiration from working from like automotive car brands and then thinking about like how that resonates is in in the beauty but also our clients are quite curious they want to know like oh like a beauty client like there's so much competition like and trial in beauty like the linger time does it matter for a sephora that maybe you try lots of things but maybe you just buy one yeah so what's gonna make people be testers and try it out exactly there's a lot of like what they what they call like footfall in sephora that is just also a driver for other people why do people are getting curious because there's a queue is it always a product or is it like again in their heads like oh there's something happening there it's always busy yeah definitely it's that desirability isn't it that yeah i've queued with my daughter outside of sephora and even though it's like a two minute queue or something it doesn't last very long yeah it does create that i don't know it's almost exclusive feel to the whole thing yeah so i think when i talk to clients a lot of the time they want to be the leader in in their sector yeah that goes from mcdonald's to like luxury they want to be in like a clinic they want to be the best in their category yeah and they know a lot of their own categories or because of competitive analytics but we try to like overlay them with insights looking at the global level we know that the way that people shop in asia It's very much, I think, digital-led and they have very high expectations.

22:01Is it? Is that the difference? Yeah, I think there's much more integration of digital, the way they shop in China. For instance, you can just pay with face recognition. Really?

22:10Claire:So it goes so far, I don't think it's going to happen here. But I think things like that, how far they really go in orchestrating, how beautiful product presentation is, that's something that we're like, oh, okay, how does it play out here? Yeah, okay, that's interesting, isn't it? sort of differences between i love what you just said about memories aren't created digitally it's true i've never really retold a story of how i was having an amazing time on an app almost like really sort of like an enabler yeah it's just something that kind of fits with your head that enables you to do stuff yeah and we always say like maybe like digital is more transactional like when you write and versus when when you go to a store at that moment that a person hands over a bag to you that's one like oh that's that happy feel maybe you have that when a package arrives at your foot like at your doorstep and you open it but that's that's not a digital moment anymore again that's a physical moment when you open the box again yeah you remember that yeah so that's really interesting i was talking to someone about this recently and i think it was on a podcast and i can't remember who it was now but they're making the point that you never dream about your phone so like the amount of hours i'd spend on my phone for like work and email and social media and all that kind of stuff it's never turned up in my dreams exactly which is interesting isn't it it's like whereas someone knocking at the door and opening a box or you know all those little moments do appear in dreams but people don't tend to dream about their phone so it's not it's not getting in there no and i think through the work here like we also found out we even push it further our strategy department is doing something what they call like service rituals it's small moments of things that they, as a store staff, they do to also enable and enhance the experience.

23:52Ooh, what sort of thing? So for L 'Occitane, it's like a French, I think, skincare brand, but they also do perfume. And they come up with this ritual. Normally when you sample perfumes, they do it like on a piece of paper. And you put it in your bag or you put it in your pocket. Like nothing really happens. And then somebody else can be like, what if we do it on a ribbon and we tie that ribbon around your waist? it has like a little like l 'Occitane logo and you smell it during the day so you just got it on your wrist and yeah like the memory but the ritual of like oh that's the store that like wow like

24:25Claire:yeah doesn't just become a piece of rubbish in your bag yeah like just little bits like that but from a person working there that's also like a moment that you you're more than just selling a product yeah part of like the whole retail ritual yes so we like to really also like approach and think about that human behavior yeah accelerator in store environments that's really interesting and our teams like interior designers or retail designers they love with working with the strategy team like oh wow with that inside and then i can just plate it up when i design a fixture and then yeah yeah absolutely just make it happen yeah yeah yeah it must be lovely but walking into stores now or walking into restaurants or hospitality or whatever it is and just seeing that you and your team have created it all super proud yeah i love that it's uh can we talk about sort of the design industry yeah do you feel part of it yeah i do i think as i said before like the creative community comes in different roles like it's not only that it has to be something tangible that you produce i think every person has a certain level that contributes in our agency delivering a final product.

25:30Now I do see like where I used to talk more with the retail teams when they said like, oh, the store has outlived their concept. We're doing like a new store concept refresh. That is a bigger discussion now. Like I now talk to like CMO's chief marketing officers that say like, hey, I look at the entire way how a brand operates. Yeah. That also means stores, flagships, the way how they show up in department stores. So that world of creatives is for me now a bigger network of people that I talk to. And that is really nice because I also feel being challenged and pushed to also sometimes making a case like, hey, it is super important.

26:09Like it's not about like this most beautiful advertising image or campaign that you're running. What they see on TikTok, when they see on socials, from the moment that leaves and you go into a store, does that match?