Top 10 Global Stores 2019

2018 was a tumultuous year for retail, with the high profile closure of a raft of long established retail brands, such as Toys R Us. The department store sector is in turmoil, both in the UK, with Debenhams, House of Fraser and Marks & Spencer, but also in the US with Sears, JC Penney and Macy's. People may still be proclaming the Retail Apocalypse, but talk of the demise of shopping is over-done. In fact 2018 was another vintage year for retail, with a host of amazing new stores which opened around the world. Online players are reinventing the rules with new 'click to bricks' concepts, whilst established players are leading the way with amazing omnichannel experiences. Here is my Top 10 best and most interesting stores of the past year. Retail has never been so exciting!

10. Amazon Go, Seattle

New Year 2018 launched with a genuine revolution in retail, which is set to change the way we shop forever. Amazon Go reinvents convenience with technology that works like magic. Enter the store using an app on your phone, pick up what you want and just walk out. No checkouts and no queues.

After four years of development using Amazon employees as guinea pigs, the 1,800 sq ft Amazon Go finally opened to the public in January, a year later than planned. By the end of 2018, there were already 10 Amazon Go stores in the US, with plans to open in London in 2019.

Amazon Go’s real innovation is that it combines the physical and digital to provide a shopping experience that is both stylish and convenient. The technology is seamless and invisible, focusing attention instead on the live kitchen in the window where chefs prepare the food fresh to go or take home and cook. Retail will never be the same again.

9. 5 Carlos Place by Matchesfashion.com, London

5 Carlos Place is an innovative ‘clicks to bricks’ flagship for Matchesfashion.com. The five storey town house in Mayfair, is a physical embodiment of the website. It blends online product edits and digital content with the best elements of bricks and mortar shopping; personal service, a unique luxury setting, experiential pop up brand installation events and a chef kitchen. 

Customers check in for styling appointments to try-on their ‘wish list’, with product suggestions generated from their online history. Website orders can be delivered to the store within 90 minutes. 5 Carlos Place broadcasts content directly to the website, turning the house into a live-stream lifestyle portal. 

Though it feels like a private member’s club, it’s open to everyone and has a relaxed and welcoming vibe with great staff. This is a bold attempt to democratise high end fashion, and Matches are doing it beautifully. 

8. Nike Live by Melrose, Los Angeles

Nike Live on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles is a new type of experimental neighbourhood store concept, which curates products and services based on data culled from local NikePlus members. Nike by Melrose changes much of the product mix every two weeks to keep up with new local trends. 

The 4,500 sq.ft. store features the best of Nike’s online experiences with their most premium in-store services, including product reserve, bookable one-to-one service, delivery to the fitting room by app, instant checkout and curb pick up services. 

This is a store that offers real benefits to members, including a free gift every 15 days whcih can be unlocked from a vending machine using the members app on your phone.

Nike followed up later in the year with the House of Innovation on New York’s Fifth Avenue, which puts the digital learnings from Nike Live into a superb flagship experience.

7. Etude House of Color Play, Seoul

Seoul is the global hub of beauty innovation. Etude House (owned by Amore Pacific) has revamped its Myeong Dong flagship with an interactive personalisation concept called House of Colour Play.

Designed by London agency Dalziel & Pow, the heart of the store is the Color Factory, where customers can have a lipstick made instore in 30 minutes.

Customers can blend bespoke lipsticks at the My Lips Bar, using cutting-edge beauty technology. They can then select a favourite lipstick case and have their name engraved on the packaging.

The three floor flagship offers personal consultation for skin tone and type, ‘find your look’ demos, with skincare how to guides, and personalised engraving and packaging, produced on site. 

Personalisation continues to dominate as a retail trend for the simple reason that it turns a commodity into precious item, creating an emotional connection.

6. Tiffany Style Studio, London

2018 was a year of innovation for Tiffany. They opened their Blue Box Cafe in New York, so that finally you can have ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’. 

This was followed by the Tiffany Style Studio in Covent Garden; a global first for the brand, which offers a more creative and personalised shopping experience. 

Targeted at a younger demographic, the contemporary fit out is designed to encourage creative interaction. The store carries a distinctive collection from Tiffany’s contemporary ranges, curated especially for this location.

Playful additions include a personalisation bar and vending machine for Tiffany fragrances.

Customers can sit at the bar and sketch their own designs on iPads and watch as they are engraved or embossed onto jewellery or other items. There’s a social media powered event space instore too.

5. 'Making Space' by Eileen Fisher, Brooklyn, New York

‘Making Space’ is a unique community concept that sells upcycled Eileen Fisher designs and doubles as an event space for talks centred on sustainable living. Here, customers can attend creative workshops led by the store’s roster of artists in residence, as well as local community events. 

Located in an old carriage house on Bergen Street, Making Space is all about transparency in the fashion industry, from sourcing to manufacturing. 

Product categories include Remade; one-of-a-kind pieces made from worn Eileen Fisher clothing and Renew, which are older, worn styles that have been cleaned and mended.

Artists-in-residence demonstrate dyeing with flowers and food waste, Other artists share skills such as rug making from repurposed clothing. 

This is retail that really connects.

4. Ecoalf Flagship, Berlin

Founded by Spanish entrepreneur Javier Goyeneche, Ecoalf’s mission is to ‘upcycle the ocean’, reducing retail’s impact on the environment, whilst still creating high quality, well designed fashion products. 

Ecoalf gathers plastic waste directly from fisherman, cleaning and processing fishing nets, old tires and plastic bottles to create the fabrics used in their clothing and accessories collections. They even use coffee grounds as part of their fabric innovation.

Ecoalf’s stunning new flagship in Berlin, designed by Madrid based Matstudio, is a stylish space that tells the story of its mission. The store design also only uses sustainable materials and renewable energy within the building. 

This reflects the brand’s ethos of a circular economy as it gathers, cleans and processes waste. 

After all, there is no Planet B.

3. Supercheap Auto, Sydney

Supercheap Auto’s stunning flagship in the ‘blue collar’ suburb of Penrith in Sydney, proves that retail trends are global and affect every sector, even the functional auto store.

This new ‘Customer Experience Centre’ has been designed by McCartney Design as a laboratory for new omnichannel ideas and services.

The concept combines theatrical in-store experiences with the convenience of online shopping and click-and-collect. The entrance video wall is a motion activated digital welcome.

The heart of the concept is the ‘Mad Max’ style Car Clinic; an auditorium exhibition space, which hosts trade-partner events and activations with motorsport professionals. 

Departments are categorised by ‘adventure’ and there is a community coffee room where customers can share car projects and stories. Who said car part retail should be boring?

2. Gentle Monster, London

Gentle Monster is one of our favourite brands. Its sixteen global stores are a charming mix of fantasy, folklore and the futuristic. Each store is totally unique and created around a weird, yet playful story. The new London flagship is called ‘Kung Fu Alien.’

Gentle Monster’s in-house robotics team have created a Kung Fu training ground run by aliens, who dip their hands into metaphorical hot sand to toughen their skin. Waterfall video installations by Ryoici Kurokawa’s provide the serenity for an aspiring Kung Fu master to train and meditate. 

The basement houses the arena where the champions fight it out, surrounded by cheering alien crowds - and a few sunglass displays on plinths.

With their conceptual storytelling spaces, Gentle Monster is more than just an optical fashion brand. Their approach to unique retail design is redefining the shopping experience in a way that surprises and delights.

1. Starbucks Reserve Roastery, Milan

Arriving with great style in Milan, the Reserve Roastery is Starbucks’ first ever store in Italy, a stunning space to promote the brand as a coffee expert and for customers to experience live coffee roasting both digitally and physically.

Housed in a historic former post office, the functional and beautifully engineered epicentre is a 22ft bronze roasting cask that unfolds and rotates to show the de-gassing phase of the coffee bean roasting process. 

Visitors can use their phone to experience the store in augmented reality, playing multimedia information about the company’s history and the art and science of coffee. 

This is the third Roastery after Seattle and Shanghai and was shortly followed by a fourth in New York’s Meatpacking District. There are plans for 19 global Roasteries.

This is a bold investment that shows Starbucks understands the expert future of retail.

Need to Know Subscription

If this top 10 has whetted your appetite and you would like get a deeper picture of global retail innovation, then our monthly Need to Know subscription brings you the very best new stores from around the world in more glorious technicolour detail.

Featuring everything from food to fashion, technology to pop ups, Need to Know features four stores every month, which builds to a collection of 48 case studies over the course of the year. 

From creative storytelling, to amazing events, cutting edge design and technology that really adds value to the customer experience, N2K focuses on the key trends that are shaping this omnichannel world.

Contact me to find out more.