Retail never dies, and Barcelona's commerce looks to major global trends to explore new ways to gain appeal and attract its audience. Hand in hand with the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, some fifty companies have participated in a virtual journey that has visited groundbreaking proposals from around the world, materialized in more than 70 practices from businesses that are excelling in their respective markets.
These proposals respond to new global trends, while also generating them. Faced with all of them, one conclusion: "The physical point of sale is necessary and urgent," guaranteed trend analyst Francesca Tur, who served as a guide on this journey along with retail expert Barbara Jagger and DMentes Agency director, Berta Segura.
The three experts transported attendees to other cities, such as Shanghai, London, and New York, where pioneering stores with great power of attraction are emerging. An oak store in Amsterdam that looks like a luxury jewelry store but sells chocolate cookies; workshops that maximize customization in London; a centenary optical shop that shows its processes from modernity in Shanghai; clothing stores with studios for streaming, are examples of innovative proposals to connect with the public, with formats that combine the unexpected with proximity and technology.
The practices and innovations of these businesses that are standing out internationally outline trends destined to also mark local retail, especially in a city like Barcelona. One of them is ultra-convenience in retail: optimizing and simplifying systems so that customers have everything easily at hand, such as large and modern wooden compartments that house vending machines in Germany.
But the product is not everything, and it requires toppings to stand out. Thus, leading commerce tends to offer extra ingredients that allow for a unique and exclusive experience. "Many people no longer just buy physical things, but they buy time, above all, time dedicated to fun," like the Canada Goose brand specializing in cold-weather clothing, which allows trying on its garments in an immersive room at low temperatures and with a simulated snowstorm. Cases like this are "pure experience," according to Jagger: "Only then can you get the customer out from behind the computer."
These differential elements also facilitate generating links with audiences, a need consolidated as another global trend. And links can also be sought by crossing audiences, especially by collaborating with other brands that have a different public. These practices allow capturing the values of the other firm and reaching new clients, with initiatives such as opening corners or pop-ups of other companies in one's own store.
The conference has been organized at the headquarters of the Barcelona Chamber as a free pilot testTo address all these audiences, commerce uses a language that must adapt to a time when "one should not be afraid to be disruptive," according to Tur.Retailers must dare to play and appropriate codes from other sectors, as well as use contemporary narratives that break away from the usual.Additionally, as Segura has remarked, "there must be different narratives for each type of client," and client types do not vary only based on the person, but also based on the moment: the same client may seek a certain experience when in a hurry, and a very different one when visiting the store in their leisure time.
Furthermore, global brands are moving towards circularity, and its application to all areas of business. This is evidenced by proposals such as a sports shoe laundry that repairs them in Glasgow; the Freitag brand that manufactures bags and accessories from reused advertising tarpaulins, and the second-hand store in Germany Nochmall, with a careful design that "brings the trend of apps like Wallapop to a shopping center."
The conference has been organized at the headquarters of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce as a free pilot test, financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by the Secretary of State for Commerce of the Ministry of Economy, Commerce and Enterprise. After this first conference, the corporation plans to convene new sessions in this format biannually, to provide updated monitoring of global trends that are constantly changing.
"The goal is for this to be the first of many," said the Director of Commerce of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Laura López. These meetings allow for providing useful and innovative tools to business owners, she argued. At the same time, they facilitate the creation of synergies among actors who can collaborate, through meeting spaces and reflection on the sector and their own business.
To delve into this reflection, business owners have addressed these trends in a workshop to analyze them and apply them to their own businesses. Representatives of the businesses did so distributed in six groups, one for each of the major trends discussed during the conference: ultra convenience; toppings; creating bonds; crossing audiences; contemporizing the narrative, and circularity.
The workshop has allowed putting the "collective intelligence" of entrepreneurs at the service of their projects, as Tur highlighted. Thus, participants have addressed how to transfer these global trends emerging from the international landscape to their businesses, in a context where physical stores have asserted themselves against those who predicted their disappearance due to e-commerce. Even, as Jagger emphasized, "big brands that were born online have later sought a presence in physical stores." And the truth is that retail never dies; it reinvents itself.