With the theme of “The Power of Luxury Redefined”, this year’s Global Department Store Summit in London covered many topics that are impacting both the department store sector and luxury category – but also the retail industry in general. Here are my Top 10 List of key takeaways from the two-day event.

1. Placemaking

Much focus has been paid to the challenges faced by department stores. What’s often forgotten is the unique placemaking role department stores play and what a valuable asset it is. By bringing together a broad range of people; locals and tourist of different genders, ages and demographics; department stores hold a unique and enviable place in the social and business fabric. Department stores future relevance will in many ways be shaped by how this unique asset is leveraged.

2. Play

Growing out of the modern consumers expectation of product experimentation and exploration the landscape of the department store beauty department is evolving. What was once primarily a landscape of global mega brands, the cosmetic department is now making room for experiential multi brand “Workshop” play areas, allowing consumer to explore and make educated choices on their own terms.

3. Transparency

Technology has dramatically changed the balance of power between consumers and brands. Empowered with near limitless access to information, consumers expect brands to not only treat them as equals but to embrace this new relationship and lead with transparency. Brands that show they have nothing to hide are rewarded with devout and evangelical customers.

4. Honesty

Refreshingly it seems consumers don’t expect perfection but they do expect honesty. Smart and confident retailers are learning to give their customers the benefit of the doubt, taking to heart that their customers understand that everyone screws up sometimes and that ultimately you are judged by your honest and how you respond to adversity.

5. Values

We are shifting from the age of “authenticity” to the age of ethics where brand values are often more important to consumers then storied brand histories. Sophisticated consumers are often voting with their money and in doing so are looking for brands that they align with, culturally and ethically, whether the brand is 1 or a 100 years old

6. Voice

An authoritative voice is key in today’s retail, often replacing depth of selection and even cost as the most important retailer attribute. Generalist retailers don’t excite or sway today’s consumer, you better have a strong POV to win over the autodidactic consumers of today.

7. Focus

With Amazon pretty much covering the “everything for everyone” category, small brands with very limited SKU’s and narrow category focus are hitting their stride in this age of retail extremes. From mascara to mattresses, new brands are showing their expertise by celebrating their narrow deep product focus and expertise.

8. Luxury Online

Once an anathema and now commonplace, online luxury retail has forever changed who can purchase luxury goods. Dramatically broadening the once exclusive customer base by no longer limiting it to only those with access to big cities and airports, luxury goods are now a click away every day of the year.

9. Sustainable Luxury

From exotic animal skins to sumptuous packaging, luxury has traditionally celebrated rarity and excessiveness as key aspects of its value and allure. However, with the growing buying power of more ecologically concerned consumer, luxury is being seen by some through a different lens. For this consumer, “sustainable”, “innovative” and “service” are the new “rare”, “extravagant” and “exclusive”. Luxury is relative to the values of consumers, when values shift, so must luxury.

10. Omnichannel Actually Works

The numbers are coming in and are showing that when retailers can create a compelling bundle of on and offline services, consumers reward them. Most notably, the boost in sales that BOPIS (buy online pick up in store) delivers instore, offsets the high return rate of pure online sales. Shifting the typical avg online net sales of 77%, to an omni channel avg net sales of 103%, as consumers are enticed to buy more when they are actually in a store.

We are excited to share that four NELSON Worldwide projects were honored this year during ASID Georgia’s annual Design Excellence Awards Celebration. Congratulations to our teammates and partners for bringing these amazing spaces to life and to thanks to our friends at ASID for a wonderful (virtual) evening of celebrating great design. Check out the winners below and watch the full ceremony here.

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[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”19″ display=”basic_imagebrowser”]GOLD, Retail: Nina + Leigh is a high-end women’s clothing boutique located at The Halcyon development in Alpharetta, GA. Working closely with the owners of the boutique, our team established the store’s design from a blank slate providing direction from construction to color palette. As a result, the boutique has been transformed into a bohemian inspired oasis featuring a variety of mixed patterns, organic style furniture, and eclectic accents.

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”17″ display=”basic_imagebrowser”]SILVER, Corporate Office: We partnered with international nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity to design their new Atlanta-based headquarters. The goal was to create a space that focused on culture, translating the brand’s global story through key design elements, while offering employees a more open and collaborative work environment. Our team led programming, design, and furniture selections, in addition to creating a comprehensive environmental graphics package.

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”18″ display=”basic_imagebrowser”]SILVER, Contract Budget: Partnering with a small local business, our design team was tasked with taking Catina One41, a European inspired restaurant, to the next level on a budget. Getting creative with cost effective design solutions, we installed breeze block dividers, new tile, and new lighting to make the space shine.

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”20″ display=”basic_imagebrowser”]SILVER, Hotels and Resorts: We partnered with Hyatt Place to develop a unique lobby experience that would set it apart from other hotels in the downtown area. Acting has a haven to guests after a long day or week of work, the space wraps guests in a simple, clean, and modern aesthetic. Other design elements include a 14-foot-long saltwater aquarium and lots of locally commissioned art that pays homage to the city’s history and the Georgia Aquarium, an iconic attraction just a few steps away.

Advancements in technology have been improving workplace productivity for years, allowing us to work virtually from anywhere. Now that a global pandemic is forcing us to work from home, the question being posed seems to be, why return to the office at all? According our “Evolving Workforce Expectations” study, only 7% of employees want to return to work a full five days a week. If employees are a company’s most valuable asset, employers must make the workplace a sought-after destination for everyone, one that people are excited to return to.

Brands will need to reevaluate their office portfolio and determine a plan to ensure their employees can take advantage of new technologies that make communicating, collaborating, and connecting, more seamless than ever before.

But while technology continues to rapidly evolve to better bridge the gap between physical and virtual workers, the most critical element for successful adoption and activation of these tools will be a robust change management strategy. Employers must provide holistic awareness, training, and buy-in to effectively activate these new, digitally focused offerings.

Here are the four ways technology can be used to make the workplace a sought-after destination:

Instant communication

Brands are having to communicate with their employees more than ever before, and because so many things are constantly evolving, the need for immediate communication is imperative.

Integrated workplace management systems like iOffice and their employee experience app Hummingbird, previously considered luxuries, will be necessities. With technology like this, employees can reserve workstations or conference rooms, submit service requests, be alerted to incoming mail, visitors, and more, all from their own mobile devices. Employers can also keep a close eye on who is in and out of their facility each day, constantly monitoring capacity to keep their employees safe.

As wearable technology gains more popularity, many employers are realizing these tools offer a unique opportunity to communicate with employees. With the traditional, in-office nine to five likely becoming extinct, a singular means of communication like email won’t be enough. And with employees working from a variety of environments including coffee shops, home offices, hotel lounges, and even their cars, wearable technology is something they’ll always have access to.

As the mobile workforce and risks of cyber security attacks continue to increase, innovative solutions like Samsung Knox are changing the way companies use wearables, embedding their software within workers’ mobile devices and smartwatches to secure company data, and help mitigate breaches of private company information.

Real-time collaboration

Collaboration tools will only gain more popularity during and after the pandemic. From video conferencing, to file sharing, there are numerous tools that will make the hybrid work day more seamless. It is no longer just about meeting virtually anymore, it is about going a step further to integrate with multiple platforms, support blended teams, provide robust collaboration opportunities, and the ability to accommodate smaller, breakout groups virtually.

Even before the pandemic tech giants like Microsoft were perfecting their cloud-based collaboration tools, but the social distancing, work-from-home mandates are accelerating this trend. These brands have taken a close look at how consumers have had to change their behaviors drastically in a short period of time and made improvements to their tools to make the digital experience as close as possible to the real-time experience.

Today, digital meeting facilitators can set up automated emails connected to their meetings, making it easier to manage attendance. They can also view a dashboard after to get a big picture report of attendee engagement. Video webinars can be recorded and later shared with the group along with a full transcript, file attachments, and any discussions from the chat window of a video or call. From custom backdrops, and screen sharing, to virtual chalkboards and collaborative documents, there isn’t much you can’t do remote anymore, making tools like these imperative when returning to the physical office.

Other tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams reduce the amount of emails needed in a work day, by offering one, cohesive platform for teams to communicate. Mural is another online tool for ideation sessions, providing a more visual-based platform to facilitate blue-sky thinking.

Connection without distraction

Video conferencing technologies like Zoom are here to stay. Especially since many white-collar corporations are extending the work-from-home period until as late as next summer. This means many workers will need a hybrid environment to connect with clients, colleagues, and business partners. Many will still want their own desk space to retreat to for heads down work, but the popular open concept environments aren’t conducive for lengthy zoom meetings or other new-age virtual tasks.

Rethinking conference rooms of all sizes is one way to accommodate these new hybrid environments. Because guests, clients, and other visitors from outside of an organization are less likely to go into an office that isn’t theirs, large conference rooms, both within the tenant space, and the shared building, sit empty and unused.

These underutilized meeting rooms can be transformed to a few different types of meeting areas:

• Production Pod – For one-on-one video conferencing meetings, a place where employees can go to chat with their colleague who may be working from home, or their client who may not be comfortable coming into the office. Although there isn’t much square footage needed, the room must be sound proof, and equipped with all the AV technology needed to perform a seamless video call, including a large monitor with easy connection to a laptop, a power source, and good lighting for video visibility.
• Collaboration Suite – A little bigger and can accommodate a larger group. This room comes with everything the smaller production pod includes, but with an even bigger monitor with an auto-framing video camera to track and focus on who in the room is speaking and stacked theater seating for visibility. Creating a physical destination that puts blended teams on equal footing.
• Presentation Studio – A production room equipped with podcast equipment, a green screen, advanced sound and recording tools, will be beneficial for employees creating more elevated, digital content that will continue to remain the norm, years after the pandemic.

Essential safety
Revolutionary technologies are improving quality of life for millions of Americans living through this global pandemic. Telehealth services are increasing in popularity due to COVID-19, offering a safe way for patients to stay out of overwhelmed healthcare systems and prevent the risk of exposure. Smartphone and wearable technology tracking has even been used to trace contact of those infected with the virus.
When employees return to work, these types of technologies can make a huge difference. Employers and landlords can start small with zero-touch adjustments like automated doors and motion sensor lighting. Steelcase’s RoomWizard is a completely hands-free solution for meeting room reservations. Employees simply walk into an available room and begin working and the smart technology marks the room in-use.
Larger investments include innovative technologies such as body temperature walk-through kiosks, germicidal UV light, and more. Investing in technologies that make employees feel safe can go a long way and hold significant value.

In the end, the key to success when returning to work will be change management. Think about how quickly we’ve all adjusted to day-to-day routines like working from home, going to the grocery store, and dining out at restaurants. Wearing masks, temperature checks, and social distancing were once foreign behaviors none of us ever had to practice, a few short months later, it seems normal. Managing expectations and offering the tools and environment needed to communicate, connect, collaborate, and stay safe will set employees up for success and get them excited to return to the new workplace destination.

New York Market Week is here and as retail continues to rapidly transform, we’re looking beyond the immediate industry, to environments and concepts inspiring the retail of tomorrow. Today’s consumers engage with brands in a fluid manner, the traditional sectors of the retail, restaurant, hospitality, and entertainment have blurred as the consumer-desired experience has become a mosaic of expectations, influenced heavily by engagement, access, and authenticity. Embracing these new expectations presents brands with a greater opportunity to differentiate, cross-sell and expand the breadth of their brand experience. So, this year while in the city we’ll be exploring some of the city’s most innovative new concepts across multiple industries, that we think could be a driving force in the retail experience of the future.

Our final Fluid Retail segment will focus on concepts revolving around Art + Recreation.  Below you will find the best spots in and around NYC to immerse yourself in a creative experience whether it’s an art show, concert, or tour. (And if you missed our first two posts in the series make sure to check them out here: Food & Beverage and Hospitality + Wellness)

Snark Park | Sensory Park in Hudson Yards

Snark Park is a permanent “immersive installation” venue designed by New York City architecture firm Snarkitecture. Located at The Shops at Hudson Yards, the “park” is open to the public allowing visitors to interact with “aesthetically pleasing architectural experiences”. Inside, one can find plenty of photographable moments in the two-way mirrored room decorated with glowing tiles and an array of other materials that play to the senses.

The New Pier 17 + South Seaport District | Lower Manhattan Developmen

The revitalization of Pier 17 and South Seaport District has been in the cue for years, and this year the restoration has begun to unfold. Spreading across 1.5 acres, the new Pier 17 Rooftop and mixed-use center is a concert venue, restaurant, park and more all in one. A variety of new shops have also opened near the Pier creating a new space for locals and tourist to enjoy the water.

Brooklyn Grange | Rooftop Farm

Although Brooklyn Grange is not a new concept, it is growing. If you haven’t heard of it yet, the Grange is the world’s largest rooftop soil farm. Along with harvesting fresh produce, the farm offers tours, workshops, yoga, and educational programs. Private events and weddings are offered for reservation. Altogether, the Grange provides people with a fluid experience that inspires people to experience something they usually wouldn’t find in the city.

Showfeilds | SoHo Pop-up Home

Shopping can be art too, especially at Showfeilds where you get to explore a variety of brands through colorful, immersive pop-up experiences. From the bottom to the top of this four-floor studio, visitors can find a parade of rotating workshops, events, and retail concepts where you can play or observe a number of brand experiences.

The Shed | Hudson Yards Venue

Called the “new center for the arts”, The Shed is an architectural wonder that plans to host established and emerging artists under one roof. The coolest thing about this venue is its adaptability. The venue can transition from indoor to outdoor with a sliding roof on wheels.  Here you could see your favorite artist, watch a new film, or attended a speaking event.

The Value Of Good Design | MoMA Exhibit

This Spring the MoMA is featuring an exhibit that highlights and explains the functional design elements that go into everyday items such as furniture, electronics, sporting goods, and more. The purpose of this exhibit is to explore the potential of design all the way from the 1930s to today. The exhibition also raises questions about what Good Design is and invites visitors to try out a few “good design” classics still in production.

A/D/O | Brooklyn Creative Hub

This repurposed warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn has been transformed into a creative workspace, restaurant, and design store all-in-one. A/D/O memberships allow individuals and businesses to access events, art installations/exhibits, launch parties, and a coffee/lunch bar. At the center of the 23,000 sf experience the “Periscope“, a prism-shaped mirrored skylight window, becomes the focal point, allowing light flow throughout the space.

Chelsea Music Hall | Underground Concert Venue

In fall of 2018, Chelsea Market opened an underground music hall offering dinner theater, concerts, comedy and food. Unlike most music venues,  Chelsea Music Hall does focus on one specific genre of entertainment. The 250-occupant space will give performers and entertainment seekers of all kinds a unique venue to try new things. The music hall is also home to a highly anticipated menu brought to you by one of the Market’s upstairs vendors.