What: The new GDR report dedicated to innovative thinking.

Why it is important: This season, they discuss about New Retail (omnichannel on steroids), metaverse and local fulfilment.

GDR, a UK-based IADS partner, regularly spots retail concepts and trends across the world. They have recently launched the GDR Assembly, a curated panel of specialist innovators and thinkers. This time, they gathered Mei Chen, head of fashion and luxury from Ali Baba, Andrew Ku, CEO of Unmateriality, and Jason Soar, CEO of Thinkthru, to discuss new retail, metaverse and local fulfilment.

• New Retail is a term coined by Alibaba to deeply mingle online and offline, i.e. omnichannel taken at the next level, through seamless integration. Concretely, this translates into stock unification (no more distinction online and offline), use of livestreaming to created a connection (often thanks to KOLs) and massively invest in AR and gamification.
• The Metaverse, a term very much in fashion these days, is a virtual world where everybody can have another life, another economy and another personality. This is a strong nod as well to New Retail, as this involves AR, omnichannel experience, but also goes further, with virtual showrooms and stores, and virtual products for avatars. Retailers are encouraged to address metaverse by seeing it as a new brand platform enabling them to capture more customers and create brand equity.
• Local fulfilment is all about quick commerce, seen as the contrary of a supermarket. It is all about using automation & omnichannel fulfilment techniques to make sure that the product arrives in the hands of the right customer, at the right moment (day and night), extremely quickly.

The GDR Assembly Report Vol. 2