Robots to become commonplace

First appearances at the Common Room restaurant in the Brunswick Centre in London’s bookish area of Bloomsbury can be rather deceiving as it looks like any other cafe and healthier QSR venue with its pale wood interior and airy vibe created by young diners tucking into bowl food. But a glance behind the counter reveals…

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Availability problems explode

Reading a recipe involving a new product, Gunpowder Potatoes, in the Waitrose excellent weekly newspaper Weekend sufficiently piqued my interest that I went in search of the tasty-sounding Indian-spiced spuds. Visits to major Waitrose branches at King’s Cross, The Brunswick Centre, Holloway Road and on Oxford Street in the John Lewis store simply threw up…

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Sustainable Retail: Recommerce moving in the right direction

Welcome to the latest sustainability column that takes a look at what retailing is doing to address the issues in its industry. Much of the ongoing focus will be on fashion but not exclusively. This month’s column takes look at the progress of the markets in renting, reusing and reselling of goods that is beginning…

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Lessons for the High Street: Samsung KX

Welcome to our series of articles on retailers that are operating in ways that provide some interesting and valuable lessons to the wider industry. Name: Samsung KX Location: Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross In a nutshell: Samsung has hopped onto the retail-as-theatre train in a big way with its latest huge space in London’s hottest…

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Lessons for the High Street: Trending Store at Westfield with Nextatlas

Welcome to our series of articles on retailers that are operating in ways that provide some interesting and valuable lessons to the wider industry. Name: Trending Store from Nextatlas Location: Westfield Shopping Centre, London W12 In a nutshell: This concept pop-up, which has just finished its run in Westfield, aimed to only sell the top…

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Klarna opens pop-up to bring online brands to the consumer

  Quirky Swedish bank Klarna has opened a week-long pop up in the centre of Covent Garden designed to give some of its online brand partners a showcase to connect with their consumers directly. The showcase, laid out over two floors, is divided into sections such as Sports and Wellness, Interiors, Contemporary Fashion and Beauty…

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Lessons for the High Street: Natoora

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: Natoora Location: Four units across London in Chiswick, Fulham Road, Sloane Square and Bermondsey. In a nutshell: In 2004 Franco Fubini founded Natoora in the UK – at…

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What next for the UK’s busiest High Streets? Part 2

Six months ago, we surveyed two different  high streets: Crouch End Broadway and Wood Green High Road both in the borough of Haringey, North London, to see in what ways they differ and what the emergence of the Wood Green Business Improvement District (BID) might mean for the fortunes of struggling Wood Green.  Now we…

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Lessons for the High Street: 5 Carlos Place

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: 5 Carlos Place Location: Heart of Mayfair, London W1 In a nutshell: MATCHESFASHION.COM is trying to reinvent what ‘shopping’ might mean for the Insta generation who define a…

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Master of One: H Forman & Son

Welcome to our brand new series of articles on those retailers who choose to concentrate only on one very specific product or expertise. In a world where so many are jacks of all trades – we meet the masters of one. Name: H Forman & Son  Location: The aptly named Fish Island, London E3 Specialism:…

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Lessons for the High Street: Goyard

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: Goyard Location: Mount Street, Mayfair, London In a nutshell: Forcing people to come to come to the high street and queue to buy their goods as they are…

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Coffee shops: A parallel retail universe

Time, we are always being told, is of the essence. People don’t have it anymore. They are time-poor. They want convenience above all else. Even punching their PIN number in to a payment terminal is too much waiting around, they want facial recognition and they want it now. Grab and Go is the mantra. Which…

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More than shelf stacking: Let’s move on from our retail past

It sometimes seems as if every single month brings with it more predictions of doom and gloom in the UK retail sector. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) seems to record declining levels of retail employment each quarter without fail – in the last three months of 2018 it reported 70,000 less jobs than at the…

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Lessons for the high street: Crabtree & Evelyn’s Islington Townhouse

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. Location: Upper Street, Islington In a nutshell: Everyone’s favourite hand cream provider is going off piste with its newest incarnation – a shop called the Townhouse in North London…

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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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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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Lessons for the High Street: Peckham Palms

We continue our new series of articles on retailers that are operating in ways that provide some interesting and valuable lessons to the wider industry. Name: Peckham Palms Location: Peckham (where else), London SE15 In a nutshell: A good example of where local people and a progressive council can together create a hub of the…

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Healthy High Streets at all costs.

Haringey in North London is a borough that hosts both the healthiest and unhealthiest high streets in London, according to recent research from The Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH), and since Retail Insider is a local resident we decided to investigate. The survey certainly received a great deal of publicity for its second ‘Health…

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Lessons for the High Street: 50m

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: 50m Location: Eccleston Yards, London SW1 In a nutshell: Running a co-operative shop model where each contributing member is given a 50 metre space for their goods.…

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What next for the UK’s busiest High Streets?

Some of the current discussions on the direction of the British High Street can be neatly encompassed within the London borough of Haringey. It is home to two shopping destinations which are geographically close but very different in terms of shoppers and retailers – Crouch End in the west of the borough with a population…

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Five theses about the future direction of grocery retailing

FMCG/retail sector is in a phase of transformation, the likes of which we have not seen before. Business stakeholders drive some of the changes while others are clearly coming from the outside. Business models nimble enough to adapt will thrive, while many others will be caught flatfooted and perish. Here are five theses for the…

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Addressing structural changes in interior design industry

Interior design has undergone something of a revolution as digital technology has given consumers access to products and the ability to create ‘looks’ through the likes of Pinterest and Instagram. This has reduced the number of interior designers and undermined the position of retailers that supplied them with product. Andrew Martin is one such operator,…

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Variety keeps The Fine Cheese Co. nicely maturing

Newly opened The Fine Cheese Co. store in London’s ultra smart Belgravia typifies the flexible retail formats that are becoming increasingly visible on high streets across the UK and not just those in the country’s flashier enclaves. It focuses mainly on cheese – as its name rather obviously suggests – but as well as selling …

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Start-ups need to show a clean pair of heels

Making a return visit to the young meat retailer Muddy Boots as it begins to grow-up has thrown some interesting light on the challenges faced by a typical start-up and how important it is to constantly flex the model. Having initially been a branded supplier to Ocado and Waitrose of meat products the company 15…

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The Art of the Pop-up

Fundamentally, pop-up shops are about creating an experience that allows you to connect with customers in a physical space and communicate your brand message. When you are a newly launched brand, the clarity of that message is crucial. Your first pop-up is also the first face-to-face impression you will create with the press and customers,…

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Primark heading for brick wall

Primark continues to deliver strong performances from its stores and as such its growth strategy remains wholly wedded to opening more big stores. For a fast fashion business that sells to a young demographic – the digital natives – this is surely highly questionable. This group of shoppers are increasingly choosing to shop online and…

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Mothercare throws baby out with bathwater

There are enlightened individuals in every retailer in the land who will recognise that the journey from simply running stores to operating a seamless multi-channel business is very painful and extremely long (and getting longer it seems). What it also requires is support and commitment from the very top. The big problem here is that…

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Travel Retail – the perfect high street environment

Bill Grimsey is  the latest person to wade into the debate about the future of the high street – joining Mary Portas of course. His report highlights the potential solutions to addressing the demise of this once great shopping forum. The only solution might be to convert the high street to an aeroplane runway because…

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