Top 10 Global Stores of 2018

Amongst gloomy predictions of a global retail apocalypse, it is easy to forget just how much innovative retail is out there. 2017 was a vintage year for amazing new stores. Narrowing down the best from around the world is always an arbitrary choice, but here is a round up of my top 10 favourite stores...

10. Galeria Melissa New York

We start with Brazilian plastic shoe brand Melissa, whose gorgeous new Galeria Melissa in SoHo, New York, has the best digital we’ve seen all year. 

The entire shop window is a walk in digital tunnel, with giant wall LED screens and mirrored floor and ceilings. This creates an immersive welcome and the most striking shopfront on the street.

Melissa’s omnichannel approach treats its three flagships (New York, London & Sao Paulo) as unique artistic showrooms for the brand, with constantly changing exhibitions that feature the latest designer collaborations. 

Galeria Melissa is a sophisticated, dynamic ‘retail meets art’ experience.

9. Metal Rainbow, Suzhou, China

Whilst Amazon Books is busy rolling out across the USA, over in China, the traditional bookstore is getting a magical makeover. 

Zhongshu Books is a new retail brand, which launched in 2013 and now has eight stores around China.

Every store has a unique and striking conceptual design, with an intellectual grounding that reflects a real reverence for literature and Chinese culture. 

‘Metal Rainbow’, their latest store, designed by Wutopia Lab, is divided into four poetically named zones, which feature new arrivals, recommendations, reading and event spaces for kids and adults, as well as a cafe. The zones flow through the colourful arches of this glorious ‘metal rainbow’.

A triumph of design that sees the bookstore as a colourful, conceptual world of symbolism, and a place to be.

Read more here

8. Arket by H&M, London

H&M are true innovators. As a mass market retailer, they want to be all things to all people, but they know that they can’t do it under one roof. Their solution is to develop a stable of brands, each with a unique personality. We call this ‘elastic branding’. 

Arket is H&M’s latest brand. Meaning ‘sheet of paper’ in Swedish, Arket is a stylish modern-day market, for men, women, children and the home, as well as having a Scandi food veggie cafe.

Arket first opened on London’s Regent Street, cementing its reputation as a hub for global innovation.

The London launch is followed by stores in Copenhagen, Brussels, Munich and London’s Covent Garden. Arket.com trades online in 18 European countries.

The brand is characterised by superb symmetrical merchandising and great cameo storytelling displays. Gorgeous.

Read more here

7. St Ives Pop Up Mixing Bar, New York

With the decline of traditional advertising and the rise of retail own labels, traditional household brands are struggling to stay relevant. FMCG companies such as Unilever are now turning to retail experiences as a way of building brand love.

The St Ives’ Mixing Bar pop up in SoHo created a new and personal way for customers to experience the brand. 

Following the success of Unilever’s Magnum Pleasure store concept, the St Ives Mixing Bar took the same approach to deconstructing and personalising product in a theatrical and instagrammable way.

Customers could create their own unique St. Ives face scrubs and body lotions, with help from a trained mixologist.

This was a project that Echochamber was involved with at the early ideation stage. We ran a trend workshop and retail safari in New York, with the creative team, and helped to generate some of the themes and ideas. We are, of course, delighted with the result! Congratulations to the St Ives team headed by Josh and Jessica!

6. Life Style Sports, Cork

Life Style Sports’ high-tech new flagship in the Irish city of Cork, proves that retail trends are truly global and that world class innovation can be found outside the big, obvious capital cities.

Their stunning new flagship is packed with digital innovation, omnichannel features and personalisation services, within a space that easily rivals the new Nike and Adidas flagship stores in New York. 

Designed by 21 Spaces, the 20,000 sq.ft. store has an augmented reality boot room, where you can test your goal scoring skills against a digital keeper. There’s personal running gait analysis on a treadmill, and instore customisation of boots, jerseys and balls.

Their approach to omnichannel is super solid, with iPad enabled sales staff for mobile payment and stylish browse and order points throughout the store.

5. FEED Cafe , New York

FEED is a philanthropic lifestyle brand which uses customer purchases to help fight global childhood hunger and poverty. It was founded in 2007 by Lauren Bush Lauren, granddaughter of George W Bush and daughter in law of Ralph Lauren. 

After ten years online, the FEED Café is their first ever retail site; a charming social space that sells their own ethical range, along with ‘FEED finds’, a curated selection of other socially conscious brands.

Every purchase is labelled according to how much good it will do and the meals it will buy.

They have already managed more than 100 million meals to date. 

Located in the historic, former industrial area of Brooklyn known as DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), this small neighbourhood is a cool new retail ecosystem with fantastic views across to Manhattan. 

4. Hyundai Card Cooking Library, Seoul

Hyundai Card is Korea’s largest credit card company. Its innovative approach to marketing includes four ‘libraries’; unique permanent flagship spaces themed around music, design, travel and food. Each Library is designed as an ‘analogue antidote to the fast pace of city life in a digital age’. 

The Cooking Library is the last in the series; a five floor culinary experience which runs food events, topped with a rooftop greenhouse restaurant.

Designed by Blacksheep, the concept is a European factory, translated into a food laboratory in the heart of Seoul.

The ground floor is home to a deli, shop, bakery and café, all open to HC card members and the general public. 

Other floors include a vast collection of food books and ingredients, event spaces and a dedicated restaurant for card members. Super cool.

Read more here

3. Starbucks Reserve Roastery, Shanghai 

We visited the amazing Reserve Roastery when it first opened in Seattle back in 2014. Now Starbucks has opened a second version; a 30,000 sq ft behemoth in Shanghai; the largest Starbucks in the world.

This unique space is truly the ‘Willy Wonka of Coffee’, where beans are roasted instore in a ballet of food theatre. A third roastery opens later this year in New York’s Meatpacking District.

The Shanghai Roastery is filled with unique design touches and is the first store to offer augmented reality experiences developed with Alibaba. 

The store also features a gorgeous Teavana, as well as a Princi bakery, the artisan brand from Milan.

The rolling out of different Starbucks Reserve experiences demonstrates the brand’s commitment to building immersive and exciting mass premium spaces. This is the future of retail.

2. Trunk Club Mansion, New York

Trunk Club is a revolutionary omnichannel fashion disruptor, which makes shopping for clothes a luxurious and personal experience.

Customers sign up online and receive a personalised ‘trunk’ selected by an expert stylist. Pay for the clothes you want and send the rest back, for free. 

Acquired by Nordstrom in 2014 for 350 million, Trunk Club also has eight unique ‘clubhouses’, where you meet your stylist, get measured and buy clothes, all with free beer thrown in!

This is the template for Nordstrom’s new Local format in LA; a small format department store with no inventory but a host of added value services.

Trunk Club New York takes an entire wing of the old Villard Mansion. Each of the 11 giant fitting rooms is designed by a different brand and there is no product on display. Instead, outfits are chosen by the stylist and brought in on a trolley specially for you. An appealing alternate future of retail? We think so.

Read more here

1. The Kitchens, Gold Coast

The Kitchens is an innovative ‘City of Food’; a hybrid foodcourt, retail market, factory and event space, which anchors QIC’s Robina Town Centre Mall on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Designed by Landini Associates, The Kitchens is clear proof that hospitality is now the vital ingredient in making retail a destination experience. 

The concept is a true town centre for the local community, creating an immersive space to connect and commune around culinary experiences.

A sweeping combination of food court, marketplace and factory, set beneath a single vast undulating roof, The Kitchens gathers together two storeys of microbreweries, chocolatiers, delicatessens, bakeries, butchers, spice specialists and more.

There’s cookery schools, a gym and restaurants galore.

Read more here

The Global Retail Trends Almanac 2018

If this top 10 has whetted your appetite and you would like to get a deeper picture of global retail innovation, then our Global Retail Trends Almanac 2018 brings you 30 of the very best new stores from around the world in glorious technicolour detail!

Featuring everything from food to fashion, technology to pop ups, our Almanac is 200 + pages of inspiration, which shows just how fast retail is evolving and how exciting the changes.

From creative storytelling, to amazing events, cutting edge design and technology that really adds value to the customer experience, the Almanac focuses on the key trends that are shaping this omnichannel world.

Contact me at [email protected] if you would like to order a copy.