10 things we learned at EuroShop 2014, the world’s biggest retail trade fair

This year at Düsseldorf’s EuroShop, the massive (triennial? — next one is in 2017) Global Retail Trade Fair, there were over 2.200 exhibitors from 57 countries spread across 16 halls. To give this year’s event a more intuitive, navigable structure (this show is BIIIIG), EuroShop was subdivided into four independent but complementary areas: EuroConcept (shopfitting and equipment), EuroSales (visual merchandising and sales promotion), EuroCIS (communications, information, security technology) and EuroExpo (retail design and construction).

Between the almost 20 acres of interior convention space at the Düsseldorfer trade show grounds and the boundary-pushing architecture and banging nightlife that have made North Rhine–Westphalia’s capital one of Germany’s most dynamic cities, it would take a week to share all  of the shopper marketing, retail branding, and cultural insights our Charlotte marketing agency gathered during our time there.

So here’s our 2 minute Top Ten things we took home from the 2014 EuroShop:

  1. The point of sale is changing from a place of product transfer to the scene of an experience. 
  2. In terms of retail design, we saw a lot of cement tiles, textured panels and highly textured woods accented by dramatic lighting.
  3. White remains the dominant color with accents of bright bold color and natural woods.
  4. LED technology continues to advance with more appealing warmer kelvin temperatures, and its streamline nature has translated into more creative applications.
  5. In a retail environment, lighting, which is easy to overlook, creates ambience and accents like nothing else!
  6. Multitouch digital technology built into tabletop experiences is blossoming in a big way.
  7. Fashion retailers now deploy mannequins equipped with same video technology used to identify criminals at airports.
  8.  Made from a combination of 90 fruits, berries, herbs, and spices and spilling out of the bottle in a gorgeous blood red hue, Killepitsch, a cult brew native to Düsseldorf, is best drunk ice-cold and at a bar close to where you’re spending the night.
  9. From free Wi-Fi access to interactive signage to bar code scanning, European retailers are continuing to make heavy investment in technologies that will strengthen the customer experience at the store and enable the gathering of customer data.
  10. Germans are health obsessed. Their eggs need to be organic and come from free-range chickens. Millions cycle to work and then stop off for some yoga on their way home. And in between all this health and exercise, they smoke pack after pack of cigarettes

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