Located on the corner of Tib Street and Swan Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, Outsiders Store occupies a landmark premises long known locally as a reptile shop. The project marks the brand’s third major site following London and Liverpool, establishing a flagship presence in its home city.
Spread across ground and basement levels, Counterfeit’s design strategy was to highlight ownable assets and expand them into an ambitious, elevated format. Colour provides a clear organising device: a deep forest green connects the external façade with the interior, with the ground floor defined by a green ceiling while the basement is anchored by a dark green floor finish. Together these create a vertical connection through the building, loosely echoing the canopy and ground of a forest.
Fixtures draw on materials introduced in previous stores: solid beech posts and birch plywood are retained here for their warmth and tactility. Rather than repeating, they are evolved and elevated: stainless steel detailing adds contrast and precision, and a pressed bead-rolling detail, borrowed from hiking lunchbox tins, is applied to shelving as a subtle reference to outdoor craft.
Adaptability was central to the brief. Wall systems are engineered with interchangeable components, and all mid-floor units are set on castors to allow rapid reconfiguration for event hosting, a critical part of the brand’s activities to connect with its wider audience. In the basement this flexibility extends further: stackable display plinths double as benches, combined with a ceiling-mounted projector to form a screening area for film and activations.
The customer journey is marked by considered interventions. The descent to the basement is punctuated by skylight-style lighting and custom artwork, while fitting rooms employ perforated wall panels and back-lit mirrors to create a sense of depth and lightness.
Several focal points punctuate the store. On the ground floor, a library snug provides seating among books, magazines and ephemera, underpinning the brand’s cultural connection beyond retail. The cash desk is clad in timber shingles and finished in salmon orange, a striking counterpoint to the otherwise natural palette. At shopfront level, a hand-crafted neon illustration of a snake recalls the building’s past life as a reptile shop, tying local memory to the new brand identity.
The result is a retail environment that is flexible, functional and materially grounded. It provides Outsiders Store with a scalable design language that can adapt as the brand grows, while also setting a benchmark for how cultural value can be embedded into commercial space.
