Captain Fawcett’s Emporium

Projects

The Company

Captain Fawcett is a world-renowned manufacturer of men’s grooming products, from fragrances to beard grooming kits. Since Richie Finney (the Captain himself) launched the brand with his first moustache wax, the business has gone from strength to strength, quickly reaching a global audience with its wildly successful and expanding range of products. To support this rapid growth, Captain Fawcett needed more space and better manufacturing facilities, which prompted the relocation to the current premises in 2010. To mark 10 years since the move, the company opened Captain Fawcett’s Emporium, a barbershop museum celebrating all things related to male grooming and the barbering arts.

The Challenge

Captain Fawcett required a new air conditioning system for the Emporium. The museum is located in a spacious double-height room with a mezzanine floor on three sides. With the room’s high ceilings and dimensions, the new ventilation system would need to supply large air volumes. It would also need to do this without creating noisy or unpleasantly draughty conditions for visitors to the museum, another essential consideration in a retail application like this one. These requirements made fabric ducts the ideal candidate, as they are designed to supply a lot of air quietly and at low velocities.

Our Approach

Working with JD Cooling Group, which managed the project from start to finish, Prihoda designed a duct system consisting of a long header duct with two branches spanning the main room’s sides. The inlet was connected to a ducted heat pump supplied by JD Cooling. Prihoda fitted the ducts with fabric nozzles to ensure that the conditioned air would reach all the way down into the lower level of the museum.

Captain Fawcett selected our recycled material for all the ductwork, saving 739 plastic water bottles from going to landfill. Aesthetics were a priority in this project due to their impact on the overall visitor experience. Using our Prihoda Art service, the ducts were made in the corporate colour to match the olive green colours of the Emporium. Captain Fawcett also chose to have custom branding/decorative text printed on the ducts to create an interesting visual feature and complete the museum’s look. The design included internal aluminium reinforcing tyres spaced 1000mm apart to preserve the ducts’ round shape even when the air supply is switched off.

The Outcome

Customer feedback on the system was extremely positive, particularly regarding the speedy installation by JD Cooling Group. With such a lightweight construction, Prihoda’s textile ducting requires minimal anchoring, which makes installation a cinch.

The bespoke arrangement of the fabric nozzles creates draught-free air dispersion to maintain visitor comfort at all temperatures. And despite the great distance between the ducts and the floor level, the conditioned air can reach the occupied zone with ease. The use of recycled fabric material coupled with a heat pump makes this system a remarkably eco-friendly HVAC solution. The result is a visually striking ventilation duct design that perfectly complements the museum and the brand’s overall look.

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Photography by Matthew Usher.