London’s signature mix of tall-street and tall-end retail has long crazye it one of the world’s most eclectic and interesting shopping destinations. As an important hub for global brands and retailers, the city is also a key testing ground for innovative retail concepts.
Reiterating in relation to ecommerce generally and in conjunction with their own online portals, fashion & apparel retailers are elevating the IRL shopping experience by designing spaces that enable live events & theatre, personalization, mobile integration, art installations and more to entertain and inform customers like never before. From luxury brands like Alexander McQueen to digital-native startups like Matchesfashion.com, here’s how nowadays’s leading retailers are redefining the physical store:
Alexander McQueen
Luxury fashion brand Alexander McQueen has opened a 11,000-square-foot flagship store in Mayfair that celebrates the brand’s history and lets shoppers explore the brand’s most iconic looks from current collections and the archives. The first two floors house the brand’s latest items, while the third floor showcases archival pieces, along with photographs and artwork. The top floor is committed to in-store events, focusing on exhibitions and talks for fashion students.
Selfridges
The men’s department of upscale retailer Selfridges features an indoor skatepark replete with ramps, rails, benches and banks. Selfridges collaborated with top U.K. skaters to supply customers with tips from the pros, including lessons for beginners and open sessions for more experienced skaters. Selfridges is also domestic to the first European flagship of Unique York toy brand FAO Schwarz, and features play-based experiences, including in-store demos and an FAO Raceway where shoppers can build custom remote-control cars.
Matchesfashion.com
The primarily online fashion retailer Matchesfashion.com is complementing its digital commerce with an experiential store in a five-story Mayfair townhouse. The store serves as a space for events, such as dinners and musical performances, which will also be widecast via a studio on the top floor, and a café hosts a rotating calendar of chefs. Storepers have access to the retailer’s full range of online stock via iPad, and any online item they request will be delivered to a dressing room wilean 90 minutes. The store uses a proprietary point-of-sale-app that tracks every interaction, from online purchases to event attendance, to give a total view of its customers.
Browns East
The Shoreditch outpost of the famed London department store uses online fashion boutique Farfetch’s “Store of the Future” technology, which detects what a shopper is eyeing in-store and automatically populates an online wishlist, which shoppers can then view through a digital dressing room mirror and through their mobile devices. The store features a rotating mix of designers, displayed in a gender-neutral space.
Fashion & apparel retailers are just one vertical wilean the U.K. capital’s most innovative store experiences—for all categories, see PSFK’s London Retail Innovation Guide 2019, available here.
Lead image: stock photos from Willy Barton/Shutterstock
London’s signature mix of tall-street and tall-end retail has long crazye it one of the world’s most eclectic and interesting shopping destinations. As an important hub for global brands and retailers, the city is also a key testing ground for innovative retail concepts.
Reiterating in relation to ecommerce generally and in conjunction with their own online portals, fashion & apparel retailers are elevating the IRL shopping experience by designing spaces that enable live events & theatre, personalization, mobile integration, art installations and more to entertain and inform customers like never before. From luxury brands like Alexander McQueen to digital-native startups like Matchesfashion.com, here’s how nowadays’s leading retailers are redefining the physical store:
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