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N R F R E T A I L ’ S B I G S H O W 2 0 1 8 - N E W Y O R K C I T Y
Retail Trends

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I N T R O D U C T I O N
Adeline Çabale
CEO & Co-Founder
Retail Factory
Does the idea of receiving your lunch box by drone directly at your
work place seems foreign to you? And yet…
Like the rest of our culture, our relationship to consumption is
rapidly developing, and new technologies have changed the way
we work, network, love, and particularly, buy.
The NRF Retail’s Big Show, one of the biggest Retail show in the
world, is held every January in New York City. This is where the
leaders of global distribution are meeting with the most
innovative startups, stores not afraid to experiment, and all Retail
professionals. Bringing in their own cultures, the latter are here to
analyze consumers’ global buying practices. In 2018 – under the
influence of the digital actors – the accent was clearly put on the
new retailers’ moto worldwide: make it simpler to engage better.
You will find in this report a detailed panorama of the retail
ecosystem’s major actors, new in-store experiences, pure players
opting for the brick-and-mortar solution, top-notch technologies,
and many more useful insights into this ever changing world.
Want more? We will also provide key in hand solutions to sharpen
your Retail strategy.

3.
12
French Tech
gifted children
400
Interventions
from experts
10Global Leaders
Amazon, Google, Facebook,
Apple, GE, Ebay, IBM, Microsoft,
Walmart, Alibaba
5Great International
Delegations
(Brazil, Canada, France United-
Kingdom, Mexico)
35 000
Participants
18 000
Retailers
N R F 2 0 1 8 I N N U M B E R S

4.
‘‘
’’
Retail is asking what can we offer to
the consumer that they couldn’t get
from their couch.
RACHEL SHECHTMAN
Founder of Story concept store, NYC
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In 2020, 80% of brand interactions will be devoid of human interaction.
And 60% of French people declare that they want the stores to offer something
more than just a buying experience(1).
How can we solve the paradox permeating retail and brand problematics?
Hyperconnectivity, omnichannel, payment, transparency, and experience…
These are among the trends that the NRF Retail’s Big Show aims to decrypt to
understand retail in 2018.
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1 2 T R E N D S
Community Retail
1
In-Store Services
2
Instagrammable
Stores
3
Customization
4
One-to-one
Appointment
5
Educational
Retail
6
Sustainable
Retail
7
Autonomous
Stores
8
Easy Payment
10 11
Back Office
Innovations
12
Augmented
Stores
6
Voice ordering
9

7.
Community Retail
1
In-store Services
2
Instagrammable
Stores
3
Customisation
4
One-to-one
Appointment
5
Educational
Retail
6
Sustainable
Retail
7
Autonomous
Stores
8
Easy Payment
10 11
Back Office
Innovations
12
Augmented
Stores
6
Voice Ordering
9
1 2 T R E N D S

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F U L L V E R S I O N H E R E
Discover the 12 trends in our full report.

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C O M M U N I T Y R E T A I L
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10.
More and more brands chose “Community Retail” to engage with their clients.
The idea behind it? Foster a community of consumers by bringing them
together around values, habits, or services provided by the brand.
If the point of Community Retail is to foster customer engagement around the
brand, there’s also a real desire for the employees to be involved in the creation
of this community. “Customer experience is on par with employee experience”
is a more and more popular mantra, outlining the symmetry between client
and staff so that they both get a premium experience.
Community Retail is on the rise and reaches all sorts of brands: mainly
sportswear, but also concept-stores, the car industry, etc.
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1 - C O M M U N I T Y R E T A I L
R A P H A
1 5 9 P r i n c e S t r e e t , S o H o
THE BRAND
“There’s no need to look like a clown while cycling.” This is the catch phrase of Simon Mottram,
English creator of the brand Rapha, dedicated to cyclists since 2004.
Thus was created the first brand inspired by luxury standards revolving around cycling. A blend
of masterful communications, a distribution network across 17 stores opened worldwide, and
development projects in Europe and the US.
WHY IS THAT INTERESTING?
Rapha’s stores are one of a kind: you can have a coffee, watch live cycling races, attend
exhibitions, buy a cycling outfit, or rent a bike.
Riders benefit from personalized assistance by expert sellers – technical advice, tips, etc. The
brand also regularly organizes group races for their best customers, to gather passionate
cyclists and emulate the brand.
Rapha offers a membership for $200 per year, giving access to a newsletter about the brand
and the community, discounts on rides, and a free coffee per day at any Rapha store among
other advantages.
The brand completely embraced the Community Retail trend: gathering clients around shared
interests and activities.

12.
13
The store becomes a place for
living, sharing, meeting, and
experiencing with people
sharing a common culture and
passion.
“Community Retail” is based on a
symmetrical attention to clients-
employees, who in turn become
the brand’s best ambassadors.
The principle of vertical
communities is mainly seen in
the sport industry at the
moment, but is reaching the
sectors of food, lifestyle, and
decoration.
,,,
K E Y P O I N T S T O R E M E M B E R

13.
I N - S T O R E S E R V I C E S
2

14.
I N S T A G R A M M A B L E S T O R E S
3

15.
t
Brands have no doubt about the fact that engaging their clients on social
networks is a massive asset. Newcomers in retail shout it loud and clear: stores
have to be designed to be “instagrammable”, and fit in the social media culture.
The aesthetics are minutely designed to create stores that encourage
customers to take pictures and selfies, and to share them with their online
community on social networks.
These social media strategies show results, and are a good way to advertise and
create brand visibility for free, especially when stars like Beyonce – 111 million
followers on Instagram – take a selfie onsite…
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3 - I N S T A G R A M M A B L E S T O R E S
M U S E U M O F I C E C R E A M
2 0 1 8 E 7 t h P l a c e , L o s A n g e l e s
THE BRAND
Museum of Ice Cream, launched in 2017 in New York as a temporary exhibition, is an interactive
museum-store offering ice creams and candies in a maze of colorful and quirky rooms.
Now in Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco, Museum of Ice Cream is the success story of a
25-year-old entrepreneur dreaming of a “new Disneyland”. Visitors can buy their tickets online
for $29 and spend as much time as they want in this place decidedly designed for millennials.
WHY IS THAT INTERESTING?
Museum of Ice Cream is a perfect example of in-store social media strategy: all the rooms have
been thought out to trigger the visitor into taking pictures in a magical environment. To date,
more than 135,000 posts can be found on Instagram displaying the hashtag
#museumoficecream. And the project is showing no sign of recessing since its founder,
Maryellis Bunn, plans to eventually open 180 Museums of Ice Cream worldwide.
In the rooms composing this maze you can find, among other things, a rock-candy cave, a
unicorn, and a rainbow sprinkles pool. The exhibitions are the perfect backgrounds for selfies,
and the numerous pictures displayed on Instagram, Flickr, Facebook, and other social media
platforms help promoting the brand.
Visitors get a number of samples throughout their visit. Tickets must be purchased in advance
for a specific time slot. And it’s working! Tickets are sold out in few hours, and the clients/visitors
have to queue before they can get in.

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C U S T O M I Z A T I O N
4

18.
O N E T O O N E A P P O I N T M E N T
5

19.
E D U C A T I O N A L R E T A I L
6

20.
S U S T A I N A B L E R E T A I L
7

21.
A U T O N O M O U S S T O R E S
8

22.
V O I C E O R D E R I N G
9

23.
E A S Y P A Y M E N T
10

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Many companies try to get rid of queueing and checkouts that are the buyers
main deterrent. That is why new, faster checkout concepts based on self-service
are appearing on the market.
The main idea is to provide the customers with a global service that allows
them to pay for their chosen items directly without having to wait: they are
autonomous and free within their buying experience.
Very advanced technologies are also being launched, like biometric payment.
80

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A L I B A B A S M I L E T O P A Y
Smile to Pay is a new Alibaba service, tried out at partner KFCs in Hangzhou, China. Unlike the fingerprint activated Visa card, this method requires investment from the
distributors that wish to implement it.
Alibaba is already using the Face++ facial recognition technology for its employees badging in. Developed by the Beijing based startup Megvii, you can also use it to pay
for your taxi or book a train ticket. Face++ is currently worth $1 billion and was singled out among the 10 ground-breaking innovations of 2017 by the MIT. China is an
advanced laboratory for facial recognition, which uses are investigated by companies as well as public authorities.
At KFC, clients can pay with facial recognition. It still works if you change hairstyle or color. This technology has only been implemented in China so far.
1 0 - E A S Y P A Y M E N T
WHY IS THAT INTERESTING?
H a n g z h o u , C h i n a

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A U G M E N T E D S T O R E S
11

27.
B A C K O F F I C E I N N O V A T I O N S
12

28.
F U L L V E R S I O N H E R E
Discover all the Retail trends from the NRF Retail's Big
Show in our full report.
12 retail insights
deciphered
All the key figures you cannot miss
More than 50 concrete cases
Take-aways that can be activated for your brand

29.
YOU WERE NOT IN NEW YORK?
Adeline ÇABALE
CEO & Co-Founder
adeline@retailfactory.fr
+33 6 83 63 31 64
R E T A I L F A C T O R Y
Office @ WeWork
33 rue Lafayette
75009 Paris
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