1,800 exhibitors, 18 exhibition halls – and countless innovations for the retail industry of tomorrow. If you want to keep track of everything at EuroShop, you need a trained eye. That’s exactly what trend scout Alex Gehle and retail expert Chris Zorn from Interior design company Knoblauch with her expo tour “Spotting the bold” at the Düsseldorf trade fair for retail innovations.
Her goal was to lead retailers to places where materials surprise, systems are rethought and digital solutions take shopfitting to a new level.
Gehle has summarized his highlights for FashionUnited.
About the author:
- Alexander Gehle is a retail expert and part of the “ideas workshop” of shopfitting specialist Konrad Knoblauch. This department accompanies customers from the retail, hospitality and office sectors with impulses, strategic know-how and creative workshops on the way to their spatial concept. The trend scout takes customers on curated tours through stores, trendy cafés, studios, offices and hotels in various cities and also provides insights behind the scenes.
Hay flower scent in the store
While the sustainability topic was highlighted at EuroShop 2023, three years later it seems to be more deeply rooted – at least when it comes to the exhibitors’ offerings. For example, there is Organoid, a Tyrolean company that brings nature into stores with surfaces, wallpapers and acoustic walls made from rose petals, hay flowers, moss and much more. Brands like L’Occitane, VW and Microsoft work with Christoph Egger and his team. Here sustainability becomes a real sensory experience, because the rose wallpaper, for example, even has a scent.
Bricks made from recycled clothing
Recycling has been a difficult issue in the fashion industry for years. But what if you put textile fibers back into the cycle to produce materials for shopfitting? This is what the Spanish artificial stone manufacturer PanelPiedra does, whose products are widely used not only in retail but also in gastronomy. For example, PanelPiedra has a brick on the market that has made it into Zara stores in the form of product tables. The stones consist of 50 percent recycled clothing fibers, which are mixed with cement and other materials. Real eye-catchers – in ‘fire protection class 1’ (non-combustible building materials without combustible components)!
Things get even more striking at Paneco, a platform for the circular economy of textiles from the Japanese company Workstudio Co., Ltd. Paneco produces surfaces from waste. Clothes, leftovers, food – everything is shredded and processed into surfaces. For example, they can consist of 90 percent clothing and are used in shopfitting, but also in the interior design of offices, hotels and restaurants. Pop-up furniture was also shown.
Beautiful mannequins
Craft Mannequins from the Netherlands showed a really exciting concept. The dolls are made of papier-mâché and are 100 percent biodegradable, apart from the metals found in the shoulder areas of the dolls. Recycled paper that is ultimately processed in a super aesthetic way, sometimes in eye-catching colors. Perfect for pop-up spaces!
Outform amazes
At this point the contrast couldn’t have been greater: out of the material halls and into the digital world. “Together we shape the World of Retail” is the motto of the US display manufacturer Outform. And even though Americans are often prone to exaggeration, you are definitely right here. With huge LED formats on which razor-sharp content was displayed, they caused many “Ahhhs” and “Ohhhhs” at EuroShop. There are already branches in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands; after all, the aim is to supply customers such as the coffee machine provider Nespresso, the beauty brand Vieve and the household appliance manufacturer Miele.
Real-time customer analysis
Data-based decisions have long been an issue at the point of sale (POS). Do you remember the time when someone used a manual frequency counter to track how many customers entered a store? These days are of course over, as there are now operating systems that enable customer analyzes in real time. Like Ariadne, based in Munich. The system enables indoor and outdoor localization in many industries and uses algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to precisely – and at the same time anonymously – track customers. There is no doubt that AI will take retail to another level. And there are many solutions for the “how”.
Digimago, which brings digital signage solutions to the POS, shows what can happen with real-time analysis. A camera analyzes the customers in the area live – and in accordance with data protection regulations – according to gender and age. With the help of AI-supported software, content that is suitable for the respective customer – and perhaps even the weather situation – is shown directly on displays in the store. Stefan Richter, managing director of the Usedom-based fashion retailer Pier14 Group and participant in the tour, has already had his first experiences with Digimago. Visual experiences in stores implemented smartly!
First impression – from the DJ booth to retail
Three DJs, one idea – this is how the company history of First Impression, a Dutch digital company, begins. First Impression designs, develops and implements audiovisual concepts and solutions. At EuroShop they showed rooms that combine digital signage and audiovisual technology with interactive content – an exciting mix!
