New Era, London

This brand new retail offering from Major League Baseball’s official cap supplier New Era is enough to make you want to test your pitching arm.

The sports lifestyle brand might be a nonagenarian, but it doesn’t act its age.

If its newly opened concept store in Westfield Stratford City in London is anything to go by, the brand, known for its apparel and headwear lines, still has a home run or two up its sleeve.

UK design consultancy Checkland Kindleysides hits a home run with its striking retail identity for sports apparel brand New Era

The store uses high-end fixtures and premium materials to communicate the brand’s urban ethos and sports heritage – with eye-catchingly creative product displays designed to tell the brand’s story to a wider audience.

A dark colour palette shifts the focus to the brightly coloured products, and there are sports-oriented visual highlights like batting cage-inspired mesh and wooden panelling suggestive of a basketball court floor.

Huge backlit screens project sports-themed imagery from up on high, and a whole wall is dedicated to spelling out the New York Yankees’ logo via some 300 baseballs.

There’s no mistaking this brand’s sporting roots. But New Era is also about self-expression, and the new design has plenty to speak to that as well.

In an homage to the brand’s renowned headwear range, the rear wall features brand stories and inspirational quotes from famous types – with exhortations for customers to customise their newly purchased headwear, or even design their own product entirely from scratch.

With its new-concept store, New Era aims – fittingly – to usher in a new era for the brand: one that excites and engages while embracing its past.