What: The 2026 World Department Store Summit, co-organised by IGDS and Liverpool and held in Mexico, centred on how department stores can rebuild relevance through operational trust, loyalty as a revenue system, and pragmatic AI deployment, set against BCG's portrait of a 2030 consumer who is pessimistic about the world but willing to spend.

Why it is important: We have selected the most relevant presentations for IADS members, covering Liverpool's unified commerce strategy, Nordstrom's measured AI use cases, Paris Department Stores' customer-health approach, and Mecca's full-price service model, as well as broader sessions on the 2030 consumer (BCG), the mid-market shake-out (Achim Berg, FashionSIGHTS), loyalty economics (Aeromexico), brand turnarounds (Gap, Kurt Geiger, Authentic Brands Group), and succession planning (Dimas Gimeno and Egon Zehnder). 

IGDS World Department Store Summit 2026