NRF 2025 Retail’s Big Show Europe: Unified commerce and inspirational entertainment

France – On the opening day of NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show Europe, the spotlight turned to unified commerce and the evolving role of physical stores in omnichannel strategies.

Gathering together global executives, industry experts and thought-leaders, the conference set out to address major challenges and opportunities facing the European and North American retail markets. This year’s theme, Retail Together, emphasised collaboration across the industry – from supply chain partners to in-store teams – to create more connected, resilient retail eco-systems.

Mauro Anastasi, partner at Bain & Co, shared findings from the firm’s latest report  exploring the central role of the store in retail strategies. The study revealed that 75% of retail executives are planning large-scale store transformations within the next two years – signalling that bricks-and-mortar remains a critical growth driver, even in an increasingly digital-first market. In our Future Forecast 2025: Retail report, we unpack how consumers are fostering a renewed love of in-store experiences – from pop-ups to AI storefronts.

Also speaking on the importance of physical stores, Guillaume Motte, global CEO of Sephora, reminded attendees that ‘retail is a people business. It is all about our teams – that’s where the magic is.’ In his keynote address, Motte challenged the traditional distinction between physical and digital purchases, pointing out that a customer who buys online but collects in-store blurs the boundaries of the channel.

Laura Toledano, general manager, Western Europe, at Zalando, built on this theme by highlighting how customer expectations are shifting beyond convenience. ‘Today we have to go to the next level. Customer expectation has changed – the new generation want entertainment, they want engagement,’ she said.

Framing what she called ‘inspirational entertainment’ as the next frontier of retail, Toledano highlighted Zalando’s natural language search, which allows customers to ‘speak with their own words’ through its fashion assistant AI tool. This feature is designed to make shopping feel intuitive and conversational – a shift we explored in our Mood-matching Fashion report, where we underlined how emotionally attuned shopping tools are reshaping fashion discovery.