Australian tea chain, T2, has teamed up with Sydney-based design firm, Landini Associates, for its first international store in London’s stylish Shoreditch.

T2 has previously worked with the agency on its Melbourne-based headquarters and brew bar concept, T2B.

The 80sqm store is located on Redchurch St and blends old with new, retaining elements of T2’s Aussie heritage while adding a series of creative firsts for the brand.

“It’s uber hip and uber trendy, but also uber urban,” Mark Landini, creative director at Landini Associates, told Inside Retail PREMIUM of T2’s new address.

“We kept this in mind and designed something a bit more urban than the previous model was,” Landini said.

Keeping T2’s signature black interiors and Chinese wallpaper, the store also features elements yet to be used by the brand, including transparent display counters made from layers of interwoven welded steel.

T2’s bright orange feature wall and orange packaging is offset by the industrial colour palette and raw, stripped back interior.

“The orange wall was used in T2B and we used a similar displays, but with a rougher, and heavier metal in homage to Shoreditch.”

Like T2 itself, the design celebrates the centuries old art of making and drinking tea. The store houses a 30m tea library with more than 250 different varieties of tea, as well as a tea station and aroma tables, taken from the T2B brew bar concept.

Landini has added a sense of order to T2’s merchandising displaying teas in cubes and by category for the first time.

“We’ve added some logic so now you can shop by category. It sounds obvious, but now customers can understand where things are and be able to shop independently in the store.

“We created some communications about the teas themselves and how to drink, brew, and make.

“We’ve also got a small brew bar where you can sample tea. Normally that’s separate to the main counter, but we have combined them in this instance.
To create a greater sense of space instore Landini used clean, minimalist fixtures, and placed a mirror of the store’s low ceiling.

“The store is long and narrow and has a low ceiling, so we put a mirror on the ceiling above the rest of the shop so that the beautifully coloured tea was mirrored.”

Photos: Andrew Meredith