More than 12,000 visitors descended on London’s Olympia to visit the inaugural Retail Design Expo and the co-located Retail Business Technology Expo (RBTE) last month, with over 1,500 people traveling from overseas to attend.
The show was deemed a runaway success by both visitors and exhibitors, with CJ Retail Solutions marketing director Mike Houghton commenting: “It was, without a doubt, the best show we have exhibited at in 20 years, in terms of the volume and, crucially, the quality of leads we picked up,”
Here at Gifts & Greetings Review we found the event to be a hotbed of ideas with some fantastic free content on offer across several seminar and demo theatres.
Topping our list of unmissable presentations was Dominique Phillips, Senior Visual Stylist at Liberty Home, a graduate of Goldsmiths College, Dominique who took up her role at Liberty just before Christmas.
Encapsulating the great experience she’s gained with some of the country’s most prestigious retailers Dominique advised that: “To deliver something well departments should work well together, I call it the Magic Triangle. It’s not just about visual merchandising and buying, my golden rule is always talk to ops! Be in communication with the person who actually sells stock on your shop floor every day.
Dominique highlighted Six Key Points of successful retailing:
• Visual merchandising, buying & operations are all one team!
• Every detail gives a message
• Statistics can help you make good decisions
• Density is a decision to be made
• Great storage design helps deliver standards for VM and sales
• VM is a key communicator
“We’ve received great feedback on Retail Design Expo,” says event director Annie Swift. “Lots of people couldn’t believe it was a launch event as the show looked so good and the atmosphere was buzzing. We’ve already enjoyed a great rebook and in light of this we are set to double in size for next year.”
