Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research centre, holds a symposium on September 5th entitled The Future of Retail at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, the world’s top interactive arts event. The symposium’s aim is to outline new approaches and opportunities for improving customer experience in clothing stores.
Starting from the observation that digital, interactive and network technology constitute an as yet unexplored world of possibilities for fashion retailing, especially as regards customer experience, the symposium will attempt to define possible ideas and future scenarios conducive to offering customers an increasingly advanced, engaging shopping experience.
The Future of Retail is the fruit of a partnership involving Fabrica, Telecom Italia Future Centre, Ars Electronica FutureLab (Linz) and the London College of Fashion. This collaborative effort will continue after the symposium for a year, during which the partners will work together to create a range of innovative clothing store prototypes.
The symposium will include talks by eminent members of academia and established professionals from the business and design sectors (from writer and designer Sabine Seymour to designer Reed Kram, from the head of Telecom Italia Future Centre, Roberto Saracco, to the head of Ars Electronica FuturLab, Horst Hoertner). The speakers’ wide-ranging areas of expertise will provide a comprehensive overview of fashion store concept development, focusing in particular on such aspects as the history of fashion retailing, in-store design, branding, visual merchandising, shopping’s emotional aspects, and potential future developments.
