Quick-step
Floor designer
Bringing design and innovation along to the race
Quick-Step is synonymous with floors for life, as is its partnership with King George. Quick-Step has been one of the key players in the floor-coverings sector for decades, but it is also known as the main sponsor of cycling team The Wolfpack. A strong focus on design and quality and an insatiable hunger for innovation: that’s what drives both Quick-Step and King George. A match made on Flanders’ heavenly cobblestones, with plenty of spectacular twists and turns. A sprint past several milestones:
Interior Design & Brand Activation
Paris Design Week – Quick-Step Inspirational Trend Studio
In 2015, Quick-Step cycled to Paris Design Week, where a trend studio was installed in Le Marais in the heart of the city. From that moment onwards, Quick-Step began to focus more and more on creating interior experiences rather than simply presenting its flooring samples. In its Paris trend studio, Quick-Step’s mood boards came to life to show visitors how an international flooring collection is created. A combination of photos, samples, mood boards, sketches and the final result offered a unique behind-the-scenes insight and experience.
Styling & Art Direction
Signature - From producer to trend watcher
Quick-Step has been a renowned producer of high-quality vinyl, parquet, and laminate flooring for years. Recently, however, it has also been trying to communicate that it offers more than just technically strong products. Floors are incredibly important for interior ambiance, so as a flooring expert, Quick-Step can most certainly call itself a seasoned interior brand. From the 2019 Signature collection onwards, there has been a focus on trend-watching in Quick-Step’s activities, from trade fair stands to campaigns and activations.
Signature is the vinyl collection that King George set to work with. We placed mirrors in the decor to magnify and draw attention to the floor. This enabled the audience to realize that the floor dominates in all kinds of interiors, from modern to industrial, dark to light. And just like that, the link to interior trends was made, while the product remained the prominent feature.
For this, King George chose the location, managed the art direction and photo shoot, and devised the storytelling.
Brand Strategy, Fotoshoot, Art Direction & Branding
Marketing campaign - Wood For Life
Trends are transitory and furniture too is subject to fashion. The only thing that will retain its authentic beauty throughout the ages, is parquet. And that is Quick-Step’s main USP. With that knowledge as its starting point, King George devised a marketing campaign in 2019 (from photography to copy) that communicated as clearly as possible. By dividing the campaign image in two and juxtaposing a past interior with one from the present, we showed how only the parquet had stood the test of time.
King George came up with the ‘Wood For Life’ name and concept, developed the entire photo shoot and styling, and provided POS material.
Booth Design & Brand Activation
Batibouw - The ultimate trade fair
Batibouw is one of the annual highlights for interior brands and construction firms, including for Quick-Step. Although it can feel like a thorn in your side when your stand doesn’t stick out head and shoulders above the rest! Using the Signature collection and the campaign we had already developed for it, King George deployed mirrors at Batibouw. “We created trend boxes in a series of containers,” explains Nicolas Block, founder of King George. “We brought the images we had created for the campaign to life in real decors.” This allowed visitors to walk into the interiors and experience their ambiance for themselves.
Installation Design & Brand Activation
The traveling Bar Vélo
Even professional cyclists need a delicious cup of coffee from time to time! What could be better than a coffee bar that travels with them? Quick-Step asked King George to fit out an Airstream as a coffee bar. Bar Vélo has since hosted The Wolfpack and dozens of VIPs at cycling races, including the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. It provides the setting for a relaxing cup of liquid gold and countless chats and interviews with the cyclists. The traveling coffee bar doesn’t just keep the cyclists awake: it is also a permanent shot of brand-awareness caffeine for the general public.
Quick-Step always opts for carefully considered and refined interior links. The company tasked King George with creating a design to more effectively bring to the fore the Quick-Step interior brand and what it stands for. With a young and fresh eye, King George transformed a bog-standard Airstream into Bar Vélo, combining trendy colours and Quick-Step wood with other distinctive materials.
As the main sponsor in the cycling world, Quick-Step is all too often associated exclusively with cycling. Bar Vélo is the perfect setting to raise awareness of Quick-Step’s role as an interior brand because it links and reconciles interior design with cycling.
Installation Design & Brand Activation
Pain Caves - People keep exercising during lockdowns
With the closure of gyms and other sporting facilities during the pandemic, both professional cyclists and amateurs aiming to go pro went in search of a worthy alternative. One of the break-out sporting trends of 2020 and 2021 were pain caves. A pain cave is a space in a house that is entirely fitted out as a home gym, with benches, running and cycling facilities and even swimming pools. As the main sponsor of The Wolfpack, Quick-Step cheers on a number of cycling legends from the sidelines. To encourage them to train at home, and to once again profile itself as an interior brand, the company asked King George’s interior designers to set up pain caves in several cyclists’ homes.
Julian Alaphilippe, Zdenek Stybar, Pieter Serry, and Fabio Jakobsen have been cycling up the highest virtual mountains in their home gyms!
Interior Design & Brand Activation
Stage Parijs-Roubaix - A nod to Bar Vélo
For sponsors, springtime’s time-honored cycling events are perfect moments to raise brand awareness, as the whole world is glued to their screens. For the press conference at Paris-Roubaix, Quick-Step wanted a stage with a nod to Bar Vélo, without the Airstream being physically present. Using moulds and cut-out floors, King George recreated the coffee bar, including its young and fresh colours and materials.
Digital Strategy & Social Strategy
Smart strategic thinking
Behind this exciting timeline lies a carefully thought-out strategy. For several years now, we have been working together to construct an interior brand that responds to – and even determines – the latest trends. This strategy translates into a digital and social strategy. Quick-Step has plenty to say, and we amplify those messages online. We build a bridge between the company’s cycling story and its trend story, striking just the right balance.
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