EuroShop 2020: "Every woman is an influencer".

Women's lingerie store Cosabella replaced its digital agency with a virtual AI agency. The largest retailer in the Western world, Amazon, is opening more and more stores. Apple's Vice President Angela Ahrendts once said that the store is Apple's most important product. Google and Facebook participate in trade shows such as the IAA in Frankfurt. The online store for women's lingerie Adore Me opened the first phyical store in Staten Island in 2018. All of them have realized how important the personal encounter is in a digital world.

How to design this encounter communication to create a lasting experience for the store visitor has been the subject of EuroShop for five decades. 

Retail Trade: A Place to Be

In 2000, thought leaders Joe Pine and James H. Gilmore put their groundbreaking vision, which is still valid today, into book form in their bestseller "Experiential Buying: Consumption as Event, Business as Stage, Consumption as Theater." Today, her insights from back then are joined by the topic of digitality or omnichannel, the interweaving of online and offline. Polish e-commerce retailer Eobuwie.pl created an offline shopping experience that seamlessly merges digital and physical in-store (pictured above). For this purpose, it engaged the English experience agency Dalziel & Pow. 

Ulrich Spaan, Vice President of the EHI Retail Institute, with Elke Moebius, Exhibition Director Euroshop 2020.

"Every woman is an influencer"

Needless to say, digital will be a key theme at EuroShop 2020. Many of the trend topics can be found on the total of 8 (!) communication and business stages at the EuroShop 2020. Ulrich Spaan says what modern stores are all about: they are a place to be, not just to buy.

By its very nature, Europe lags dramatically behind the trends in North America, and this is especially the case in the staging of retail. EuroShop makes it its mission to close this gap with its eight convention stages. Blogger Emily Weiss' beauty products store, the $1.2 billion Glossier in New York, is a detailer where the experience is the most important part of the buying act. Its owner recognizes the importance of beauty, and who shapes it: "Every woman is an influencer." And these female influencers want to be educated and entertained in an atmospheric environment, not just buy. 

Trends in retail trade and trade fair construction

EuroShop is inspiring. It is attended by employees and management from all the major stores in Europe and many from overseas such as Adidas, B&Q, C&A, Rewe, Lidl, H&M and many more.

The exhibition area Expo Event traditionally belongs to the trade fair construction. Here one waits with excitement for the own productions of Dammböck, Aluvision or Syma. The concept agency d'art design is also part of it. It now presents itself in Hall 12 in the Retail section, no longer in the Exhibition Construction section. In 2017, 2,368 exhibitors and 113,000 visitors came to the world's largest trade fair.