Will Covid-19 Kill Experiential Retail? Not So Fast | Retail Reborn Episode 4
The Business of Fashion Podcast
The Business of Fashion
4.6 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2020
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Will a newly minted generation of germaphobic, socially distanced consumers put the kybosh on touchy-feely retail?” In episode 4 of BoF’s Retail Reborn podcast series, Doug Stephens examines how the concept of reimagining the store as media can be applied even during a pandemic, with guests including Neighborhood Goods’ Matt Alexander, Story founder Rachel Shechtman and Ben Kaufman, CEO and co-founder of CAMP.
Subscribe now to never miss an episode.
Sign up for BoF’s Daily Digest newsletter.
Ready to become a BoF Professional? For a limited time, enjoy 25% discount on an annual membership, exclusively for podcast listeners. Simply, click here, select the Annual Package and use code PODCASTPRO at the checkout.
For all sponsorship enquiries, it’s: [email protected].
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Understandably, amid the fallout of COVID-19, the retail industry has been a buzz with speculation |
| 0:07.8 | about the future. One question in particular seems to surface repeatedly. While 2019 became the |
| 0:15.4 | year of experiential retail, will the pandemic of 2020 mark its downfall? Will a newly minted generation of |
| 0:23.7 | germophobic, socially distanced consumers put the kibosh on touchy-feely retail? |
| 0:30.1 | Will the free-flowing capital that experiential retailers benefited from seek more conventional |
| 0:36.2 | and transactional-based refuge amid new levels of uncertainty. |
| 0:41.3 | I'm Doug Stevens. And in episode four of Retail Reborn, the Business of Fashion's new podcast series on redesigning the retail industry presented by Brookfield Properties, |
| 0:51.7 | I speak with three retail leaders who share their unique perspectives |
| 0:55.7 | from the front lines of the experiential retail movement. The pre-pandemic world of retail |
| 1:04.6 | seems almost a distant memory now. Today, amidst the massive shift to online shopping and deficiency-based retail, many in the |
| 1:14.3 | industry are questioning the health of a trend that only several short months ago was the darling |
| 1:19.4 | of the industry and being hailed as the key to its reinvention. Experiential retail, once a potential |
| 1:26.7 | panacea for the ills of an industry, is now sidelined. |
| 1:32.1 | Meanwhile, we hear reports of Amazon aiming to turn physical stores into local mini-logistics centers, |
| 1:38.2 | and retailers far and wide are scrambling to remain afloat in a churning post-pandemic sea of disruption. |
| 1:45.5 | It all got me thinking, |
| 1:47.9 | what is experiential retail anyway? |
| 1:51.6 | Did the industry ever really get it? |
| 1:54.6 | And what truly differentiates it from all other forms of retail? |
| 1:59.6 | And finally, will history list the pandemic as |
| 2:02.7 | experiential retail's cause of death, or the powerful elixir that made it stronger and more |
| 2:10.0 | valuable than ever before? A good place to start, it seemed to me, was by talking to three |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Business of Fashion, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Business of Fashion and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.