In competition with shopping malls are downtown department stores and shops of individual designer brands. These buildings are traditionally designed to attract attention and to express the modernity of the products they sell. A notable example is the Selfridge's Department Store in Birmingham, England, a department store designed by the firm of Future Systems, founded in 1979 by Jan Kaplicky (1937–2009). The department store exterior is composed of undulating concrete in convex and concave forms, entirely covered with gleaming blue and white ceramic tiles.