For the second year in a row, I found myself at the Creative Retail Awards as a poor stand-in for our Head of Trends (and Awards judge) Jack Stratten who was overseas. And I had a lovely time, being wowed by all of the entries and having no idea who actually was going to win as we hadn’t discussed that beforehand.

If you want to know who did take home the trophies, the full list is here. And of course, I had some takeaways from the night because that’s what happens when you spend time in a stimulating and inspiring environment.

Last year I talked about the superpower of the store in creating exciting and inspiring and surprising experiences compared to online. And I stand by that again this year.

But throughout the evening I also found myself coming back to the very human creativity demonstrated by the nominees and winners.

I know it’s very boring to talk about human creativity and AI because everyone has already chewed over it and you just feel full up on people’s opinions on it. But hear me out because whatever your opinion on AI is and whether you use it in your work or not, a retail store is made by people and used by people.

If we ever reach a point in the future where our AI-powered robot proxies go out and do all our shopping for us, there is no reason for stores to look and function the way they do now. 

Because a robot or AI doesn’t need an experience or to be wowed or to have a rest in a cafe or be enticed by window displays. We can probably just adopt an Argos model for everything for the sake of efficiency.

We have to keep the human in our store concepts because they need to cater to humans. And we all know how paradoxical and odd and hard to put in a neat box people can be.

Practicality, ingenuity and creativity

The Creative Retail Awards really is a celebration of the ingenuity and joy of human creativity. 

Amazing shop design, the sort that wins these awards, is a collaboration between ideas and execution. And there’s creativity at both ends of that.

Brands and design agencies don’t come up with these wonderful, creative concepts that make an impression and someone simply slots some pieces into place and ta-dah. The shop fitters and suppliers and partners find creative ways to bring those ideas to life. 

A customer wants a solid gold counter that for financial and weight reasons is impractical? Someone will find a way to get that same look that meets weight specs at an affordable price.

It’s similar to how theatre and set designers translate the world written on the page into reality. The script might call for a city but you can’t just get a construction crew to build some skyscrapers for you. Instead you have to get creative with backdrops, wood, lighting and all manner of other things.

In retail, the store is the stage. Everything that goes into it has to walk the tightrope of practicality while trying to perform creative feats that get attention. We’re trying to impress without making navigating the space a frustrating journey. No one wants to have to find their way through a hall of mirrors when they just want to pay for their armful of products.

That balance was evident in the stores and concepts spotlighted during the Awards. These were beautiful spaces and ideas that you wanted to be in or look at because of the ingenuity behind how they were made. 

And when you get creative about everything – how you express brand, how you use the space, how you use materials, how you use technology – you end up with unique retail that’s a joy to visit.