Charles Sparks + Company is a retail design, planning, and communications consultancy that applies multidisciplinary and integrated services to the shaping of consumer experiences.

CEO, President, and Corporate Creative Director of the firm, Charles Sparks, recently took the time to share his expertise with Surface & Panel magazine. Sparks guides the creative team of professionals. His influence is recognized throughout all of the firm’s projects, and his work is among the most recognized for design excellence, receiving more than 40 national and international design awards. His design background of 37 years spans consumer products, architecture, interior design, and branding. Sparks was inducted into the Retail Legion of Honor for Lifetime Achievement in January 2008 by the Institute of Store Planners (recently rebranded as the Retail Design Institute).

Sparks is a professional member of the Retail Design Institute, the Association for Retail Environments, the Museum Store Association, the International Council of Shopping Centers, the International Interior Design Association, and the American Institute of Architects. He also serves on the editorial advisory board of Display and Design Ideas (DDI) magazine. Charles holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Environmental Design from the Art Institute of Chicago.

S&P: What is your company’s specialty?

Sparks: As interior designers and interior architects we have to describe, specify and select all finishes, whether its part of the FF& E (furniture, fixtures and equipment) or leasehold improvements. We specify everything that goes into the facility itself, and anything that is built off site and brought there for fixtures and cabinetry and casework. We do all the lighting specification and layout. So virtually everything you see, except for the merchandise, is specified by us.

S&P: How do you specify materials?

Sparks: The world is at our fingertips when it comes to the selections. Of course we now have the new overlay of LEED ratings and all those things to look at. Obviously the right material performance is a consideration. There are environmental considerations, things such as low VOC’s and other requirements you have with LEED. We use MDF and HDF and all different composite things. Sometimes when it comes to loose fixtures we use some unusual backdrop materials such as laminations that are translucent, composite materials and resins; all kinds of different things. Part of it is driven by performance over a period of time, and cost. And part of it is driven by the pure aesthetics. We balance those 3 things together.

S&P: How important is it to your clients to have environmentally friendly or green materials?

Sparks: I think the whole industry has recognized that this is something that is the right thing to do. Our clients, and Neimans in particular, are being responsible and asking us, in our selection process, to sensitize them to what is possible. They want to know eco-friendly product selections and what rating or certification the product has. Some want information identified right on the back of the sample. Neiman’s asks us to put a little green butterfly, that is their symbol, on the sample itself so they know that there is some aspect of this. And that is an eco enabler.

S&P: As a design firm, how do you learn about what materials are available and what standards they meet?

Sparks: Well we have a LEED AP (accredited professional) architect on staff and we have others that are being trained that way as well. We make understanding the environmental implications of products a part of our inquiry and our screening of materials. It is not the only thing we look at, obviously, but we make it a part of our process in how we look at things. And we also factor it in our budgets because there are some premiums for certain things, though those seem to be becoming more manageable. Sustainable building is becoming a part of the regular vernacular and vocabulary of project elements.

A lot of our clients though are interested in it, particularly the ones that are publicly owned. Some are doing a better job then others. We do a lot of work with Best Buy and though they carefully consider the green aspect, they are also careful about putting it out there. I think companies have realized that you just can’t say something is green, you have to know what kind of green it is. Green is doing nothing at all. So that is true green. But we do live in this world.

Starbucks, on the other hand is looking more aggressively to using “post consumer” products. As they go through their ten-year total renovation they are taking product that they already have, either on the floor or in the casework in their stores, and grinding up that material so they can reuse it. In our test site that we did for them in Chicago, we identified a couple of resources that took some material and ground it up to make a counter surface. And it met the health codes and everything else. For them that kind of cradle to cradle point of view is important. Nothing new gets cut down and shipped thousands of miles. Materials get recycled over and over again, it is that point of view.

S&P: Do specification representatives call on your firm to introduce new products?

Sparks: Actually, we probably don’t get called on enough. As professionals we have to keep up our CEUs and to do that we attend trade shows and seminars and so forth. Some of these are online now, which is very helpful. But we probably don’t get exposed as frequently as I’d like. It would be beneficial if companies were proactive with updating us “as it happens,” because we always have to be a little bit out in front of what’s actually become run of the mill production. We like to look at what’s being experimented with and the ways that materials are being combined and what that looks like. In design you have to be quick.