A pop-up that stands for a month is still temporary. Until recently almost no thought went into keeping its carbon down, or into using that to bring the cost down with it.
An exhibition booth lasts three days. A merchandising unit lasts a season. An airport pop-up lasts a month. Different durations, identical problem. Something is designed, fabricated, shipped, installed, used, removed and replaced, and the cycle repeats next quarter with a new campaign graphic on the front.
Travel retail has run that way for decades, at scale, across thousands of airport doors. The material volumes are larger than most people in the industry realise, and until recently very little attention went to what any of it cost in carbon, or to the fact that the same decisions were quietly driving the cost.
For Pernod Ricard's global travel retail business we developed their life cycle analysis tool. An industry first, and still in use.
Across 681 projects it has shown a 51 percent reduction, avoiding more than 411 tonnes of CO2e.
It started with a strategy engagement and a question nobody had answered: what are these fixtures actually made of?
We reviewed 17 global travel retail design guidelines and 128 individual materials against environmental criteria and against the client's own published red-flag materials list. The findings were uncomfortable and useful in equal measure.
Twenty red-flag breaches, over 15 percent of the materials by number, with a further eleven potentially in breach. Breaches in all but one of the 17 guidelines. In one brand's glorifier, 44 percent of the materials were on the client's own red-flag list, mostly because of electroplated metals.
Of 128 materials, one contained recycled content: an oak laminate at 3 percent. Just under 40 percent were easily recyclable or natural.
The guidelines themselves were inconsistent in a way that guaranteed the outcome. One brand named the material brand for a brass-effect finish. Another said only "brushed gold brass". A third specified a colour and nothing else. None of the seventeen carried any sustainability requirement on materials at all.
That is not a supplier problem. It is a specification problem, and it is fixable at the document level.
The takedown sheet. Suppliers sign off on responsible processing of materials at end of life. It converts an intention into an obligation, and it is the single most useful thing we introduced.
Design for disassembly, so materials can be separated at end of life rather than bonded into a composite that can only be landfilled.
A supplier fallback rule. Where a material has no environmental credentials of its own, source it from a supplier holding ISO 14001 or equivalent. Not perfect, far better than nothing, and a decision a designer can actually make.
Local sourcing, measured. On one engagement average supplier distance was 45.4 km, with two suppliers inside 630 metres of the venue.
The eco-design framework we work to in travel retail. Each carries the question we actually ask of a project, which is what stops it being a poster on a wall.
Rethink. Challenge whether each component needs to exist. Ask: have the designs shifted from the standard template at all?
Responsible sourcing. Recycled content and sustainable origins, with certifications that mean something. Ask: does this project use materials with environmental certifications?
Recyclable. Recyclable materials only, or compostable and bio-based where not possible. Ask: is at least 50 percent of this recyclable or natural?
Reusable. Keep fixtures alive as long as possible. Avoid campaign-specific branding, which is what kills a fixture's life span. Ask: have any components been reused from a previous project?
Reduce. Optimise specification to cut size and weight. Combine logistics. Ask: has logistics been reduced by combining shipments and sourcing locally?
We hold quarterly life cycle assessments per installation, filed by region and by site, across EMEA, North America and South East Asia, running over multiple years.
From the exhibition side of the same client relationship: at TFWA Cannes, 67 percent responsibly sourced materials and 84 percent easily recyclable or 100 percent natural, against 9 percent in 2019. The 2024 booth measured 11,300 kg CO2e and the hospitality suite 7,600 kg.
That is a dataset rather than a case study. When we tell a brand their new gondola is heavier than last year's, we can show them last year's.
Permanent merchandising units and gondolas. Promotional activations and pop-ups. Airport boutiques and shop-in-shop. Merchandising guidelines and design systems, often the highest-leverage work because it sets what every supplier in every market builds for the next three years. Materials strategy and red-flag list development. Life cycle assessment and reporting.
Our Design Director spent years as a brand lead inside the global travel retail arm of one of the world's largest drinks groups before joining us, and has close to twenty years in event and retail design. He has sat on the client side of this exact conversation, which is why the first meeting tends to be short.
Design of the fixtures, merchandising units, activations and pop-ups that brands use in airport and duty free retail. It sits between exhibition design and permanent retail: longer-lived than a trade show booth, shorter-lived than a store.
Scale and repetition. The same fixture is deployed across hundreds of doors and replaced every campaign. Small specification decisions multiply enormously, and almost nobody was measuring them until recently.
Figures are indicative, produced with our own in-house methodology and not independently audited. Third-party verification can be arranged on any project.
We will audit them against your own red-flag list and tell you where they break. No cost, no obligation.
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