Sportsshoes.com Creative Hub – Bradford

Bowman Riley designed a creative hub for 100 people at Sportsshoes.com after they acquired an industrial unit adjacent to their headquarters in Shipley near Bradford.

Our brief was to create an agile and expressive workspace for their digital, marketing, and commercial teams while offering a much-needed space to hold events and brand showcases.

We reused as much of the existing frame and building as possible to reduce the need for additional building works. We used recycled and reclaimed materials and artefacts, minimising the embodied carbon. The exterior redesign gives the hub a new identity within the labyrinth of Sportshoes.com buildings. The new black finishes and stealth lighting enhance the curb appeal, and the new windows flood the internal mezzanine with natural light.

We designed the interiors to be a fully immersive brand experience referencing Sportshoes.com’s origin, ethos, people and products. The playful concept is based on Sportshoes.com’s brand featuring running tracks, climbing frames, graphics reminiscent of sporting accents, and gym horses for seating with oversized graphics throughout the spaces. The addition of a shipping container creates an unusual meeting room and a backdrop for the bleacher seating.

Pods and breakout areas provide a variety of spaces that can be easily reconfigured to work, collaborate, and relax, including an indoor garden, wellness space and area to watch sporting events. The layout, furniture, fabrics and lighting accommodate multiple working styles, from open, collaborative spaces with workbenches to quiet working pods for online meetings. The fabrics reflect the environment – in the open-plan areas, we used a brighter punchier palette; in the quiet, calming workspaces, we used shades of green and biophilia for tranquillity.

A mixture of meeting spaces has been incorporated, from a feature boardroom with graffiti-style fabrics on the chairs to agile meeting rooms with tall poseur-style tables to keep team catch-ups short and sweet.

Now complete, the hub helps Sportshoes.com with talent retention and recruitment in an environment that fosters community.

Read more about the project in the media in the Yorkshire Post and in Retail Gazette.

This project has been shortlisted for Insider Property Awards 2023 in the category of Fit-Out of the Year.