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Our retail experts are on a never-ending mission to make connections, start conversations and engage the debate around emerging trends in retail. You can read regular blogs from various members of the team here, all with their own unique angles on defining best-practice. We also share thought-leadership pieces from our wider community. Above all, these pieces aren't the last word, they are part of the debate. As ever, we'd love to hear your thoughts...
This week sees UK retail stores reopen after a year of unprecedented disruption. What aspects of retail life will pick up seamlessly from where things left off in early 2020, and what will have changed for good? How should retailers navigate these months? Monday 12th April 2021 marked one of the key milestones in the UK Government’s roadmap in ‘unlocking’ the
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No other sector is more awash with data than retail. The real challenge for retailers is knowing when and how to apply technology to this data, to understand and deepen the relationship they have with customers. Which is where Artificial Intelligence comes in. That artificial intelligence has moved out of the realm of science fiction and into our everyday lives is
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With renewed interest in RFID coming from multiple sources, and new implementations for major retail brands proving ROI, it feels like third time lucky for the tireless technology. At the turn of the millennium there was a lot of buzz about RFID, which was rekindled a few years later when Wal-Mart announced an implementation, which then took a few years to
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Can lightning strike twice? After its barnstorming inaugural event last year, Retail Tomorrow returns in February for two days of “Igniting Ideas and Accelerating Innovation.” Can’t wait. At Retail in Detail, where we keep a big focus on the practicalities of introducing new ideas and technologies, we’re all about ROI and measurement. By any form of measure, the first Retail Tomorrow
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Over 35,000 attendees from nearly 100 countries congregated in an ice-blasted New York City to reconvene the retail conversation, swap war stories around 2017 and the holiday season sales, and look forward to 2018. But what were we all talking about this year? At the risk of saying I told you so, personalisation was without a shadow of a doubt the big
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Retail in Detail is one year old! To celebrate we’re looking at the best blogs from 2017. To be honest Retail in Detail is actually a few months more than one year old, but closing 2017 marks our first full year of delivering and delighting insight and opportunity for the retail sector. We’ve just published our ‘Trends to Watch in 2018’
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I had a lightbulb moment at the weekend, without the lightbulb (an LCD moment, perhaps?): digital-shelf-edge is going to change stores completely. At this time of year my thoughts tend to turn to NRF as all our planning goes up a gear. I was wondering what innovations would be making an impact on the expo floor this weekend when a friend showed
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What will be the three biggest trends in retail for 2018? Personalisation, personalisation, and personalisation. In case you think my opening statement is just about me wanting to disrupt or satirise the usual template for these start-of-year trends-to-watch articles – it’s not. Personalisation will be ubiquitous, and will carry other trends (analytics, customer experience, machine learning, voice) before it. Personalisation has
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The Direct to Consumer (D2C) wave continues to gain power and momentum. That this represents something of a threat to retailers can’t be ignored – but it also represents opportunity, if retailers are brave enough to embrace change and rethink relationships. Digital River were the hosts for ‘Ecommerce Accelerated’, an insightful and inspiring one-day conference. I joined a packed and expectant
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What’s the link between experimentation, innovation and failure? It’s probably closer, and more predictable, than you might think. Two things are on my mind from the last month: innovation, and failure. These two thoughts were prompted by two things. The first was a genuinely thought-provoking keynote speech at Retail Week’s technology conference by Amazon’s VP for Global Innovation, Paul Misener. The
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It’s that time of year again, when retailers’ thoughts turn to the last Friday in November… I was going to write that the Black Friday publicity seems like it gets earlier every year, then thought that makes me sound like an old fogey. Then I thought I’d do a quick check, and it looks like it objectively does get earlier every
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