Future
The New Shopping Experience
News
Edition 98
01.10.2020
At the end of a year that has been out of the ordinary, like 2020, Icon presents a special issue dedicated to the present and future of the shopping experience. An in-depth report and 360-degree overview of the new strategies undertaken by retailers, who, through digital technology, are ready to reinvent stores, transforming them into interactive and multichannel spaces, as well as bona fide driving forces of style, socialization, and vitality. 

Interactive mirrors and smart dressing rooms that allow clothes to be tried on virtually. Applications for booking one-to-one appointments in boutiques accompanied by sales assistants, stylists, and brand ambassadors. Plus, concierges who make home deliveries of online purchases, digitalized sartorial customizations, live streaming presentations of new collections, mobile payments and B2B relations. The store of the future is a multi-interactive space, which takes changes into stride along with the new needs of consumers. It envisions separate pathways in the store, integrates user-friendly technologies, and rereads everything in a sustainable key.

Discover what the shopping of a future already at hand will be like, by browsing through Icon’s special issue

Here is a focus on three of the brands starring in the special issue: 

Berwich
Trousers with a digital identity card
Synonymous with research, in terms of both fabrics and wearability, Berwich has made customer care the cornerstone of its first flagship store in Milan. A concept that reflects the sustainable soul of the brand. Attention to the environment is emphasized, for example, through energy-efficient air conditioning and low consumption lighting. At the same time, the new shopping experience calls for the use of special software that identifies purchases: a kind of identity card of the trousers, to which the store will have access to maintain an order history of each customer, so it is possible to reprogram a new purchase in a digitalized way.
Doucal's
The Quality Experience of footwear manufacturing excellence
A space with noble taste. Velvet and wood, elements that recall the craftsmanship and history of a long tradition, merge with a geometric design, made up by interweavings of linear brass that design an elegant labyrinth. Doucal’s offers all of its wholesale customers and its own flagship brands, artisanal services like antiquing and the customization of footwear. Plus, during the “Quality Experience” days, customers can discover the processes of shoe construction, raw material selection, and steps in customization, through the hands and stories of master artisans. The event will be held in October, in the Milan boutique.
L.B.M. 1911
Where desires take shape and substance
One hundred selected stores will participate, from October to November, in the L.B.M 1911 Partnershop project. A story that describes the soul of the brand and the desire to support customers during the sell-out phase. One hundred store windows, showcasing a display kit, where three looks dedicated to the ethical and esthetical values of the brand are alternated. From Clan Upstairs (Milan) to Corso 15 (Verona), and then Dandy’s (Rome) and Montaldo (Genoa). The idea arose from the desire to create a worldwide retail network that can promote every store in the territory, while arriving at customers in their own cities. The central element is a cardboard tree. A symbol of life and growth, evolution and sustainability.