Transforming NOS Through Store Design

When two of Portugal’s largest TV and mobile service providers merged to form NOS, the new brand needed more than a refreshed identity. It needed a physical home that could express the ambition of the business, support its customer base and create a stronger experience across its national store estate. 

The One Off was tasked with creating a new retail concept for NOS, designed to be rolled out across all stores. The brief was to build a space that could better serve existing customers, while also attracting new TV and mobile customers in a highly competitive market. 

The result was a bold and joyful store concept that placed customer needs at the centre, helped staff work and sell more effectively, and has since been rolled out across more than 150 stores in Portugal. 

The Challenge 

Following the merger, NOS needed to bring together two major service providers under one clear brand experience. The business had a new identity and a renewed market position, but its stores needed to reflect that change in a way customers could immediately understand. 

The challenge was both strategic and practical. NOS needed a retail environment that could introduce the new brand, create stronger visibility on the high street and improve the way customers moved through the store. The space had to work for people visiting for service, support, upgrades, new mobile contracts and TV packages, while also giving staff a more effective environment to advise and sell. 

This was not simply a visual refresh. It was a retail brand transformation that needed to connect brand values, customer experience and operational performance. 

The concept also needed to respect the existing equity of the business while giving NOS a distinct new presence. The brand values of curious, sociable and practical became the foundation for the design brief. The store had to feel engaging and expressive, but also easy to use and commercially effective. 

For The One Off, the task was to approach the project as a retail redesign agency, looking at the complete experience from the first impression outside the store through to the customer conversation inside. 

Our Approach 

The project began with the NOS brand values. Curious, sociable and practical became more than words on a strategy document. They shaped the way the store should look, feel and function. 

Curiosity informed the way the store attracted attention. The One Off created captivating store visuals and used projection mapping to bring moments of intrigue to passers by. This gave the brand a more dynamic presence and helped turn the store frontage into an active part of the customer journey. 

The sociable side of the brand shaped the customer service model. The store needed to feel open, approachable and built around conversation. Instead of designing a space focused only on transactions, The One Off reimagined the experience around customer needs, making it easier for people to explore products, ask questions and receive support. 

Practicality influenced the way the store worked day to day. Staff needed a space that helped them sell, advise and serve customers more effectively. The design had to support operational flow, product communication and customer decision making, while remaining simple enough to roll out across a large estate. 

This is where the role of a brand and interior design agency becomes important. The project had to bring together brand expression, retail design, interiors and service thinking into one connected environment. Every design decision needed to support both the new NOS identity and the commercial realities of a busy store network. 

Design Decisions and Rationale 

The store concept was designed to feel bold, joyful and easy to navigate. 

The visual language created a strong sense of arrival, helping NOS stand out and communicate its new identity with confidence. Projection mapping added movement and energy, creating a moment of intrigue for people passing the store and encouraging them to look again. 

Inside the space, the customer journey was designed around clarity and interaction. The aim was to make the experience feel less transactional and more supportive, giving customers a clearer route through service, product discovery and purchase. 

The revised service model placed customer needs at the centre. This helped shift the store from a place of simple service delivery into a more active brand environment, where staff could guide, advise and sell with greater confidence. 

The design also needed to work at scale. A successful retail concept cannot rely only on visual impact. It needs to be repeatable, adaptable and practical for different sites and teams. From the outset, The One Off considered how the concept would move from idea to prototype, from prototype to mock store and from mock store to wider rollout. 

Execution and Rollout 

To test and refine the concept, The One Off developed prototypes and a mock store. This allowed the team to understand how the design would perform in a real retail environment before the wider rollout began. 

The mock store gave NOS and The One Off the opportunity to review the customer journey, test the operational model and refine how the brand came to life across different touchpoints. It also helped ensure that the concept could be delivered consistently across the store estate. 

Staff and team briefings formed an important part of the launch process. A new retail concept only works when the people using it understand the thinking behind it. By briefing teams ahead of launch, The One Off helped ensure the store experience could be delivered with confidence from day one. 

The launch event marked a key moment for the new NOS retail concept, bringing the brand, store design and customer experience together in a clear and memorable way. 

Throughout the process, collaboration with the NOS team was central. The project required close alignment between strategy, design, operations and rollout, ensuring the final concept was both creatively strong and commercially usable.