What: IADS’ Partner GDR quarterly report on innovation in retail.

Why it is important: A series of retail examples gathered by GDR from all segments and categories.

GDR identifies 8 trends this quarter: Meta-vending, Phygital Playgrounds, The Public Store, memory-making factories, the permanent pop-up, digital worlds, Eco chamber shopping and single minded ethos. We have made a selection of interesting cases from a retailer’s point of view below:

Meta-vending: how smart machines can bring a significant upgrade to stores by bridging online and physical shopping. It is for now mostly dedicated to convenience grocery shopping (as illustrated with Urbx market) or consumer goods (Huawei, Hyundai). But it can also provide interesting additional services to customers, such as Delipop, which is an automated click and collect concept in city centres, or Robomart which brings to the customer a selection of products they might be interested in.

Phygital Playgrounds: how omnichannel retailers are using their stores as an extension to their digital experience. It can be done so through:

• Apps: Zara with a store mode allowing to browse stores’ inventory from the app, Alibaba’s physical supermarket Freshippo Store X accessible with an app, Van’s allowing customers to customize their store experience thanks to Wechat,
• New services: H&M’s Weekday brand offers an instore pickup of online orders within 3 hours, Sam’s club allows customers to scan a large item (furniture, etc..) from the sales floor and organise the shipment just with their phone, SK-II providing interesting content and entertainment to customers waiting in lines.

The Public Store : transform flagships into public spaces where it is natural to gather. Many examples are given:

• Ikea has a store meddling into Copenhagen city by connecting different parts of the city (a bit like BHV Marais in Paris), Chinese children fashion brand Balabala doing the same in Foshan, connecting a street to a park,
• Gucci flagship in Seoul completely customized with Korean elements of decoration,
• Duoyun, a library in China transformed in meeting point,
• Georgian bank TBC opening flex offices,
• Anya Hindmarch opening a village of 5 stores in the same street,
• Dicks Sporting Goods in New York which offers a running trail, a climbing wall and a golf simulator in the store to test products.

Memory-making : incredible experiences in incredible flagships: new Lego flagship in NY designed to be half shopping, half entertainment experience, L’Oréal store in Shanghai connected in real time to Paris, Google store in NY, Experimental Perfume Club proposing fragrance education, Freitag in Bangkok which is half store, half factory, or proposing a cycle-powered cinema experience in Amsterdam, War Paint in London where male customers can have customized foundation made to measure.

The permanent pop-up: another way to animate flagship stores is to bring some elements from the popup playbook to bring novelty and surprise. GDR mentions Ralph Lauren with a café in its Tokyo Ginza boutique, Sotheby’s in NY selling pre-owned luxury goods, or Neighborhood Goods concept in itself. It also includes mall owners favouring popup initiatives to animate their property: a mall in Shanghai or Westfield in London do not charge anymore small brands coming in with an innovative popup concept.

Digital worlds: how brands can enrich their equity by being present also in the Metaverse.  Examples provided are less applicable to retailers, apart from the Gucci example, running at the same time an installation in Florence and in the Metaverse, and Metajuku, the first shopping mall in a virtual world.

Echo chambers: how to use curation and validation to increase the customer base.  This goes through a heavy use of social media (Hollister releases a monthly drop on Tiktok, Netflix sells private labels on its platform, fashion multibrand retailer The Yes using a Tinder-like app) but it also goes through content (grocery ecommerce website built around recipes rather than ingredients, Camps creating content for kids.

A Single-minded ethos: how to embrace important social issues.  GDR cites among other LMVGH and its Nona Source sustainable initiative, Zara Beauty brand, Morrisons and Lidl providing for free sanitary products, H&M offering free suit hire for job interviews, Mattel offering a free recycling service for used toys.

If there are any examples you would like to deep dive in, let us know and we will liaise with GDR to know more.

Global Innovation Report 79