Reimagining the shopping mall

Regardless of how smart and glitzy some shopping malls are on the inside, the exteriors of pretty much all such structures resemble unsightly aircraft hangers with few redeeming features. In contrast, the beautiful buildings that house the stores, and the surrounding landscaped gardens, are key components that set Kilver Court Designer Outlet Village in Somerset…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Virginie Charlès-Dear, founder, Toucan Box

Virginie Charlès-Dear, founder, Toucan Box 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Our biggest opportunity is to be able to deliver outstanding products to our customers. We use technology and personalisation to create hands-on creative arts and crafts projects, today focusing on children aged three-to-eight years-old and in the future developing to other age…

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Fashion rental firms not the threat many retailers envisaged

One of the big trends among Millennials is the embracing of a mentality of renting goods rather than purchasing them outright – hence the growth in market leaders like Rent the Runway. The obvious assumption here is that these organisations will take sales away from traditional retailers. This is not entirely correct. Hence the counter-intuitive…

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Dunelm makes serious digital play

The CEO of home-wares retailer Dunelm Group, John Browett, certainly has plenty of digital credibility – dating back to his days running the online business of Tesco in 1999 and then on to turning around the troubled Dixons business as it grappled with, and then embraced, the internet. His ease playing across multiple channels was…

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Innovative Retailer – Enclothed

The Name: Enclothed The Place: The office is in Islington while the warehouse is in deepest Berkshire, well Slough actually. The Story: This is a tale of men, pants and a reinvention of the way males shop through the subscription model. Crikey. You’d better start: Three years ago two young women decided that it was…

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