trends, sustainability, retail experiences

Autumn 2021 London Store Tour

Posted 18-11-21
2 minute read

The Displayplan creative team toured London’s West End looking for the latest innovations in retail display.

We are always aware of what is happening in market, researching what we all live, love and breathe. It’s great to see latest retail trends and understand how shopper behaviours are evolving.

We love to soak up what some of the world’s leading global brands and masters of retail display are doing in-store to respond to these trends, in one of the great retail capitals of the world.

Our Store Tours are both informative and instructive, providing ideas and inspiration on what can be brought into our own thinking – as well as other ideas that might be best avoided.

Timberland

Download the report now

The report from Dudley and the team, “Store Tour London – Autumn 21” can be downloaded here.

What are we aiming to learn?

The aim of our Store Tour is to explore some of the latest trends in London retail display across three key sectors in which we have extensive experience: fashion, consumer electronics and sports.

We found for examples of:

  • Changing shopper behaviours
  • New sustainable approaches being introduced into physical retail
  • How integrated technologies are being applied to deliver engaging experiences.

What did the Store Tour tell us?

There is strong evidence that sustainable thinking is being widely used to bring about a reduction in the use of single use plastics, both through reusable packaging and recycled materials.

We found that in retail, as across most sectors, consumer behaviour has changed significantly in the last 18 months due to the COVID pandemic. As a result, brands are increasingly adapting by making highly innovative use of integrated technologies both to attract shoppers into store and retain their attention whilst there.

It is clear that health and wellbeing are incredibly important to shoppers, and retailers are going to occasionally extraordinary lengths to recognise and cater for this.

Sports direct

Which brands did we visit on our Store Tour?

In total we visited 15 West End stores along the length of Oxford Street and its immediate neighbouring streets of Regent Street and Carnaby Street as well as some new and exciting retail stores outside the immediate environs of these focal shopping areas.

Stores we visited included:

  • Rapha
  • Lululemon
  • Breitling Watches
  • Apple
  • Microsoft
  • Sports Direct
  • Selfridges
  • Sook
  • Samsung
  • Sports Direct
  • Dyson…

…and a range of others.

Next steps

Read our insights and observations from our Store Tour by downloading our short Store Tour report.

Find out how Sook are challenging the very essence of retail presence with a new pop-up retail concept whereby premium high street retail space can be rented for any period – from a single hour to a day or a week.

Learn how Selfridges are using the attraction of an in-store cinema combined with costumes from the movie screenings to draw shoppers in.

And read our comparison of the flagship stores of two giants of consumer electronics Apple and Microsoft as they battle for shopper attention and in-store dwell time.

There’s lots more food for thought and inspiration as we draw our own conclusions from this Store Tour. We hope you enjoy it!

About Displayplan

Displayplan are retail display experts who can help you create showstopping in-store experiences for your retail premises, brands and products, whilst also helping to minimise their impact on the planet.

To find out more, contact our team of retail display specialists today.