Good news for retailers: the National Retail Federation expects holiday retail sales – not counting car, gas and restaurant purchases – in November and December this year to increase up to 4 percent over last year for a total of $678.75 billion to $682 billion, up from $655.8 billion last year. However, turning browsers into buyers all year round can be a challenge for retail environments. Retailers increasingly try to change-up their shops to get buyers off the couch and int

After three years of construction, a new 40,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market has opened in Hoover, Alabama. The developer of the shopping center spent millions of dollars tearing down an old grocery market there and building a brand-new structure in its place. Starting before 7 a.m. on opening day, hundreds of people were lined up for more than 200 yards around the shopping center. Off The Wall is proud to have been part of what Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato described as “po

It is likely that after the first sign was ever put up inside a store the first consideration was how to set it apart from its visually busy surroundings. The most effective solution was to simply aim a light at it. This continued to be the practice for many years -- designers assigning particular lights in a store the job of illuminating specific signs. Meanwhile the science of directing light evolved. Louvres on fluorescent fixtures directed some of the diffuse lighting