Well, that’s January over for another year folks. How was yours? Here at Insider Trends we’re ready for a bigger and better year than ever before. Too busy with the January admin to read our latest posts? Catch up on the best of Insider Trends January 2018 below…

Retail Concepts

January is all about setting goals and learning from what has come before. We rounded up our top 50 favourite retail initiatives of 2017 from luxury brand Hermes’ pop-up launderette Hermesmatic to Target’s two-door store, with a separate entrance for shoppers who like to browse and those who know what they want. Which trends kept popping up throughout? What will be important for this year? What have you learnt? Take a look at all fifty and get inspired.

One brand always on top in terms of British fashion is Burberry. Known for being forward-thinking, the fashion house has proven its innovative thinking time and time again. What knowledge can we gain from the company? How is it that a company set-up in 1891 now dominates the digital and e-commerce world? We took a look at how Burberry does it and what they can teach the rest of us. Checks at the ready!

Top Tips

You know how we all moan when something goes wrong when we’re shopping? Yet, when something goes right we tend to keep it to ourselves, don’t we? That’s why it’s so important to remove pain points from the physical shopping experience. From having to stand in a really long queue to pay or to finding the super tricky returns system, these are all things that can make a customer simply not bother. One of the big attractions of online shopping is that it removes many of these pain points.

We wrote up the most common pain points for you to consider when designing your store concept and how to remove them from a better experience. You’re welcome.

Innovation

Sometimes it’s a good idea to take a look outside of the retail world for inspiration. Communications, hospitality, entertainment, festivals, food service and transport are all looking at new ways of doing things and sometimes these concepts can be translated to retail too. In one of our first features of the year, we took a look at the top 50 innovations from outside the retail industry that might just shed some light on what’s next for retail.

And while we’re on it. Innovation isn’t something that you would normally associate with luxury brands, is it? We tend to presume that luxury is continually operating in a traditional sense, targeting those with money and offering amazing service and grand interiors. Nevertheless, there are brands changing the game and redefining the term “luxury”. Customers are becoming more discerning in their buying choices. They are after more for their money than just a logo on a product and they’re looking for a more immersive experience across all channels – in-store, digital, social media and more.

Catch our most recent post on the five brands redefining luxury before you lose it to all of our February content!

Retail Openings

It’s been a pretty jam-packed one for openings this month with December and January openings all in the melting pot for us to pore over. New York openings saw cult-brand Reformation opening the doors to its first tech-enabled store, while Gucci Garden in our concept store openings proved popular. Have you got a new store opening soon? Get in touch.