What to expect from WIRED RETAIL 2015

Wired Retail

Luxury conferences and tech conferences are all the rage so it’s no surprise whatsoever to see Conde Nast stepping up its conference game. Its recent hire of Suzy Menkes as a global online Vogue editor was influenced by her expertise at hosting the International New York Times luxury business conferences, and her first luxury conference for Conde Nast (‘Hard Luxury’ next April) was widely advertised on the back of her ‘Suzy Menkes Report’ free sheet at all the fashion weeks.

Conde-nast-luxury-conference

But before that there’s this… Conde Nast is hosting WIRED RETAIL (together with Valtech) on November 24th in London, bringing together startups, tech giants and established players to discuss the converging trends and technologies disrupting retail today. Among those on the speaker list are LYST’s Chris Morton (one of the most dynamic speakers around), Amber Venz from RewardStyle (the affiliate service that helps bloggers earn commisson from their blog posts), Jose Neves, CEO of Farfetch, Nicole Vanderbilt, VP, international at Etsy, and Runar Reistrup, CEO of Depop. There are loads more, those are just the ones I’m most interested in.

Topics to be discussed include the emergence of microbusinesses overtaking retailers, the burgeoning maker-movement, new digital payments and the global customer. On that subject, Scott Malkin (founder of Value Retail which runs outlets such as Bicester Village) will discuss being in the experience business with a focus on the Chinese market, while Sacha Poignonnec, co-CEO of online platform Africa Internet Group, will discuss breaking into new markets and leapfrogging from no phone to smartphone.

Also on the agenda: shopping on multiple devices; socially curated marketplaces; how online behaviour shapes in-store experience; personalised advertising (my pet hate!); mobile wallets; augmented and virtual reality and instant delivery.

For more information and updates on speakers, head to the WIRED RETAIL site and watch this space for the debrief.