Movers & Shakers Q&A – Nick Thomas, founder, Built

Nick Thomas, founder, Built What is the greatest opportunity for your business? E-commerce in the building materials sector has many challenges and complexities, not least that most building products are heavy, bulky, low margin and costly to move. To resolve these difficulties, we devised a new builders’ merchant format which supports an assisted, time of…

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Digital Leisure & Hospitality Innovations Q&A – Vita Mojo

Following the launch of the Digital Leisure & Hospitality Innovations 2018 Report (sponsored by Webloyalty) a series of Q&A’s with the leading figures behind some of the key entries in the report are being published. Here is the Q&A with Nick Popovici, co-founder, Vita Mojo 1.How did the original idea come about? Some years ago I was…

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Time to redefine department store

It is hardly revelatory to inform you that department stores are under great pressure as Debenhams, House of Fraser and even John Lewis are feeling the cold winds of change blowing through the retail sector as a result of consumption patterns changing dramatically. Spending in UK department stores has fallen for the past 13 consecutive…

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NRF Review – Some Thoughts From Retail’s Big Show 2019

Retail’s Big Show, also known as NRF, rolled into New York for what is the big annual retail technology jamboree, which this year brought together 37,000 people – including 16,000 retailers from 3,500 different companies. There is no disputing the fact that it is an extremely big show and that as such it arguably has…

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Lessons for the High Street: Ikea Planning Studio

Welcome to our brand new series of articles on retailers that are operating in ways that provide some interesting and valuable lessons to the wider industry. Name: IKEA Location: Tottenham Court Road In a nutshell: Ikea recently released revenue figures which showed a plummet in its profits by 40%. However, this is not down to…

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Innovative Retailer: K11 Art Malls

Name: K11 Art Mall The Place: In the far flung mysterious centre of the East, part of the oriental landscape of the land of the rising sun. Or is it setting? Is it China again? Yes. The Story: Prepare yourself for a high-falutin’ tone to this latest Innovative Retailer. Oh really: We are leaving the…

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Lessons for the High Street: How to make sustainability sexy

In the middle of Carnaby quarter there is an unusual looking shop. 20 Beak Street is currently home to a pop-up which will be open until the middle of January and is dedicated to showing people the effects of plastic on the oceans of the world. It sounds very worthy and possibly a hard sell…

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Sneakers fuelling revolution in luxury goods sector

Nike raced into the running shoe market in the 1970’s to displace incumbents Adidas and Puma among others but what really cemented its position as a game-changing brand was releasing a version of its innovative ‘Waffle’ training shoe in blue to match the colour of jeans. This apparent small move turned what was a pure…

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