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How boutique retailers won by discarding the department store playbook

Inside Retail

While household-name department stores are downsizing and closing their doors, multi-brand retail boutiques are succeeding by focusing on personalised shopping experiences. Of course, e-commerce has a crucial part to any brand, but in-store retail shopping gives you a sensory experience that online can’t.

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The Department Store dilemma

Retail Focus

Unfortunately for many department stores, the pandemic has been a final blow in the battle with online retail, spiralling real estate costs and difficulty serving up physical retail that is consistently experiential, engaging and adaptable. So, what is to become of these extinct department stores?

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Japan’s department stores: What’s left when the tourism tide goes out?

Inside Retail

Japan’s storied department stores are riding a wave of overseas tourists, and although there is no sign yet of a wipeout, the cautious pronouncements of company executives indicate that it’s a wave they can’t ride on indefinitely. On the surface of it, department stores still have their mojo: sales in October rose by 5.3

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Multi-dimensional, story-telling design for South Korea’s largest, luxury department store

Retail Focus

Lotte enlisted London luxury retail designers Shed , known for a distinctly contemporary and progressive international design style, to reimagine a ‘different kind’ of department store, Lotte’s first major project in 7 years. The brands sit playfully in a re-imagined lunar city scape of the future.

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“Not surprised”: Experts react to Amazon’s reported department store plan

Inside Retail

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that online retail giant Amazon is looking to open large bricks-and-mortar stores in the US to sell clothing, homewares, electronics and other products, much like a department store. And it would come at a time when some long-running department stores are closing up shop.

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After the golden age: Why department stores are no longer glamorous

Inside Retail

When Laura Peden was growing up in the 1970s, department stores were a special place. Decades later, she still vividly remembers how she and her grandmother would travel into Myer’s city store at Christmas to see the “insanely fascinating” windows. The department store was no longer the star attraction.

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A-COLD-WALL* Lotte Department Store, Jamsil, Seoul set to launch

Retail Focus

A-COLD-WALL* has announced the launch of a second Seoul concept store-in-store this month. Following the opening of a bold and distinctly industrial space inside the world-renowned Hyundai COEX, the brand unveils yet another site in the Korean capital, this time located in the famed Lotte Department Store, Jamsil.