THE BRAINCHILD OF A CREATIVE COHORT OF RETAIL THINKERS DURING COVID19
During the last 10 weeks of pandemic lockdown and under the impetus of retail strategist Carl Boutet from Studio RX, a rag-tag group of retail thinkers, leaders and designers from around the world got together - remotely - to envision the next generation of the Commercial Retail Destination.
The eclectic global think-tank includes (in no order) Hussam Raouf from Mont Hill (Dubai), Sarah Page from Honest (London), David Gester from L Catterton (London), Jean-Sebastien Bourdages from B+H (Singapour), Isabelle Gonté-Blondet from Decathlon (Lille), Claude Sirois (Montreal), Eric Foster from Foster Real Estate (Montreal), Maxime Cohen from the McGill Bensadoun School of Retail (Montreal), Stacey Shulman from Intel (Santa Clara), Richard Chang from Gensler Asia (Shanghai), Annie Daniel from Kiva architecture & design (Montreal), Matt Judge from Sonder (San Francisco) and myself from LAAB collective.
Some memorable sound bites include:
“We need to rethink the financial model to unlock new opportunities for an asset rather than aiming to get a return on the asset’s theoretical value” - Eric Foster (Montreal)
“Malls’ Developers should become a‘Solutions Providers’ above and beyond the Real estate aspect." - Hussam Raouf (Dubai)
"The unicorns who will spur the next value leap in retail real estate will be the platform creators as well as community and city builders." - Michel Lauzon (Montreal)
“It isn't enough just to create an experience; we need to create more experiences that are less repetitive ” - David Gester (London)
The group goes beyond incremental mindsets and explores new ways of fundamentally rethinking Retail Real Estate's value proposal to make it not only resilient and relevant but more so irresistible to a wider constituency of shoppers, consumers - and citizens.
The Manifesto believes in a positive future for the CRE industry where it is advantageously positioned in a prosperous and revised casting where it collaborates and thrives in an interdependent ecosystem with the online platforms, the brands and local communities.
Find out more by downloading our (R)evolution of Retail Destinations Manifesto here :