Looking Back:
Retail in 2017

One retail trend that came to the fore in 2017 was the idea of democratising quality and bringing premium products to the mass market through online dollar stores and well-designed private label offerings.

Hollar is one brand that is democratising quality by taking the business model of a traditional bricks-and-mortar dollar store completely online. With 80% of its shipments sent to locations outside New York and California, it celebrates the idea of making essential products accessible for Middle America.

Brandless is another online retail destination that is selling high-quality essentials for £2.39 ($3, €2.54) or less by removing Brand Tax, as it calls the premium paid for a branded product that is indistinguishable from a non-branded equivalent. Tina Sharkey, co-founder of Brandless, said the company’s offering ‘is about the true democratisation of goodness’.

Opening at the beginning of 2017, Filter Space is the Dr Jart+ brand’s Seoul-based flagship store, which combines high technology with high design to create a refuge from the city’s huge pollution problem, in which 25m South Koreans inhale unsafe levels of microscopic particles on a typical day.

The store comprises three floors, each level focusing on a specific element. Dedicated to water, the first floor offers a water bar with advanced filtering so visitors can wash their hands and rehydrate.

The second floor, dedicated to air, has filter pipes that pump filtered air into the space, and the third floor, focused on light, is designed so that it is entirely naturally lit.

In our exploration of the changing meaning of experience, we outlined how pivotal it is for retail brands to move beyond simple branded activations. In this interview, Joseph Pine II, who coined the phrase ‘experience economy’, discusses the bastardisation of experiences and why their future lies in transformation.

‘An experience has to rise to a level of memorability,’ he explains. ‘If you didn’t create a memory, then you didn’t create a real experience.’

On transformation, he explains that by staging experiences designed for a particular person, a transformation has the potential to take place within a person. ‘The experience itself becomes a raw material to guide people to change,’ he says, ‘to help them achieve their physical, mental or spiritual aspirations.’

Now that you know the best in the year for retail, find out what is on the horizon for 2018. Download our Future Forecast 2018 report here.