It is that exciting time of year again, to begin judging the entrants for the 2022 VMRD Retail Design Awards. From experience as an awards presenter, I know that the ceremony itself is a great spectacle and a place of high excitement and emotion. These awards mean a lot in the retail industry in Asia and beyond. It is quite an accolade. However I have to say that I also-
Physical shops: Places in our hearts & minds COVID was supposed to be the death knoll for physical shops. It was of course immensely damaging and resulted in many shops closing and businesses folding. Customers naturally migrated to digital channels, some permanently and others temporarily. Despite the whole channel being closed, the physical shop, in its best incarnations has already continued to bounce back. Despite everything, it is still the-
Made.com: fabricating a new approach to furniture Made.com was founded in 2010, as an online retail enterprise. As a product of recent times, it exhibits the same entrepreneurial culture, a desire to innovate, and an appetite to disrupt the traditional way of doing things in its own sector, as other digital-first businesses. Imagine a furniture concept that throws out the baggage of the traditional ways and re-invents the whole process-
What is a Digital-first retailer? What does digital-first, or being digitally led, actually mean? They are the buzzwords of the moment, the latest in a lengthening line of technology originated expressions that have in turn become essential to retail. It is the supercharged increase in digital retail sales that has prompted a spiraling interest in new ways to organise businesses and their processes. It is the key for every retailer-
Apple: a business designed on simplicity The best advice I ever received in Design College? Keep things as simple as possible. The temptation always when seeking beauty through design is to add more ‘beautiful’ elements to it. In fact, the way to design beauty is to be brave enough to remove as much as you dare to reveal the absolute beauty of simplicity. I’m sure that Apple needs no more-
How to be an essential retailer Every retailer must now be essential, supporting the emotional lifestyle and well-being of the customer, as well as simply supplying products.‘Meaning in the Retail Madness’ explains how touchpoints have replaced channels, how linear supply chains will become circular, why assortments are increasingly virtual, how physical is turning to local, and why products and shops are not necessarily made for each other anymore.It supplies a-
What makes a retailer essential? Our viewpoint of what an essential retailer is has been re-focused by the covid19 era. Consumer goods were put into perspective within the wider social context. The people in our lives, and those who effect our lives, were recognised with a new clarity as being essential. The existential threats and the exciting opportunities now emerging for many retailers have been growing for some time. What-
The Promised Land of Creativity: The Future for Visual Merchandising There’s always much talk about the future of visual merchandising but surprisingly little about the evolution of the role of the visual merchandiser. It’s almost as though beautiful stores happen by magic. And that misconception is certainly one that still holds back the VM profession, its recognition and rewards. However, all markets and individual retailers are on a retail journey.-
Bloom & Wild: Delivering a fragrant revolution I’d recommend that we all spoil ourselves with flowers. Not, for the hell of it, and not any flowers. Just those delivered by Bloom & Wild. Their story is not about flowers, no matter how beautiful they are, but about disrupting a market where with one decisive initiative they transformed the sector. From that point they have blazed a trail of disruption through the-
It’s an interesting discussion. What drives a customer to a specific shop? Is it the individual store itself and the experience in it? Or is it the wider retail brand and its portrayal to the customer? It’s particularly relevant because currently everything in retail is up for change. Loyalty is in the balance. So, lets take the individual store. The correct way to deliver this is to create an amazing experience-
