To conquering the world

Talk • Talk • Talk • Talk • Talk • Talk •

April 2024 • Veronica Orsi

Retail initiatives remain the favored channel through which to penetrate markets, in an increasingly close synergy between physical and digital. Stores become places of values shared by the brand and the client, with the aim of creating a better experience for consumers.

“Retailing” is a continuously changing concept. Once upon a time there were neighborhood stores, then came big retail and mass consumption. Over the last decade direct sale has had to come to grips with e-commerce, meaning new ways of purchasing and new consumer behaviors. Every time period has its evolution. The pandemic led to a new, sudden change of direction, shuffling the cards and generating a different kind of physical-digital interaction. So the present and above all the future of retail are in a phase of redesign, with new logic, including technological innovation, new concepts, new marketing strategies. At the center there is the shopping experience, based on the values of consumers. “Retail can no longer follow the conventional logic of a simple point of delivery and openness towards the market; it has to take on the configuration of a touch point for the customer journey,” says Michele Bianco, a management consultant and professor of marketing strategies, Scientific Director of the Retail Masters program at CUOA Business School, a school that offers advanced training courses. “The world of design, like other sectors, is oriented towards the customer experience, responding to the need for values shared with clients, who are no longer seeking just an object, but also the meaning of that object and what it represents. In other words, the object has to simplify life or generate pleasure, while bringing out the intangible values of the brand such as reputation, reliability, ESG.”

This is a dynamic already being crossed by fashion: boutiques are places of attraction and sharing, in which to generate engagement with services that go well beyond the acquisition of products – for example, people can relax in a café or utilize co-working spaces made available inside the stores. “These are tools to boost brand awareness, which is part of the brand equity in the wider sense,” Michele Bianco continues. “I look at the retail concept as a ‘container of contents,’ an area of interchange where the company presents its own value proposition in a transparent way, in osmosis with the destination market.” This is true for the domestic market and for expansion abroad: the value proposition remains the same, but it is fundamental to understand the target of reference. “To approach new markets it is indispensable to grasp the value systems and relevant variables of local consumers and buyers, to create the right customer experience. It is necessary to study the brand positioning: what is the perception constructed in the mind of the client with respect to the competitors and their system of values.” This strategy is the same one applied by Arrital – which has collaborated for some time with CUOA Business School on the multi-year training project We Share, part of the We.Do Academy,

with internal coordination by Silvia Quaglia and Giuseppe Bincoletto, respectively the HR director and Chief Marketing Officer of We.Do Holding Spa. In the plan of international openings developed by the company, every showroom thus becomes an “embassy” of the concept with which the group opens to the market. And what about the digital side? “We need to be ‘on-life,’ as the professor at Oxford Luciano Floridi outs it,” Bianco concludes. “We are all simultaneously both digital and physical. The experience has to be ‘seamless: to think that we can keep the customer journey inside specific channels or boundaries is simply a utopia, at this point. An evolved company has to think about and map the customer journey of its clients in an objective way to understand how and where to intercept them, and what added value to offer that will be translated into brand awareness in the future: in this way, the physical contact becomes a confirmation or an ulterior experience of perception of excellence. In this perspective, even the price will no longer be relevant, but will simply be a confirmation that the right choice of product is being made.”

Lyon’s New Showroom

Spacious, sophisticated, replete with new ideas. This is the new Arrital Showroom in Saint-Priest, in Lyon’s metropolitan area, recently opened to further expand the brand’s retail network worldwide. In the setting of a district where design and interior decor come first, the shop is an ideal destination for interior designers, architects, and design connoisseurs to let them experience Arrital’s quality. The space is the fruit of a well-considered architectural renovation and was entirely designed by Franco Driusso, Arrital’s art director, both for the interior and lighting design and even the façade design.

The expansive open space is 800 square meters, envisioned as an exclusive stage to spotlight the brand’s signature products. A focal point is the new Ak_Project system with a large central island for events and show cooking. Nine configurations for the Ak_04, AkB_08, Ak_07, and Ak_Project kitchen systems (all designed by architect Franco Driusso) are arranged around them, demonstrating the distinctive versatility and adaptability of these domestic works of architecture. They give interiors definition and present in ever-varying styles.

Expanding in Greece

A new Arrital showroom is bolstering its presence in Greece, strengthening partnerships on the market, and highlighting how central the country is to Arrital’s international expansion strategy. After Athens, Igoumenitsa, Kalamata, and Larissa, now it’s Thessaloniki’s turn. Arrital has opened its new store in this commercially and culturally important city to express its

design vision and show off its many product innovations. The showroom, designed by Dital, covers about 200 square meters with three well-lit windows facing the street. The place is a treasure trove of design and creativity, conceived to facilitate interaction between retailers and customers by letting them explore and experiment with customized materials and designs.

Casa Decor 2024,
Arrital presents “Il Gattopardo”

Arrital is once again the protagonist of Casa Decor, a traveling event that opens the doors of a private building in Madrid every year to stage more than 50 living scenes created by professional and up-and-coming interior designers, bringing together in a broad participatory project the multiple realities of design including designers, luxury and lifestyle brands. Already last year, the company took part in the kermesse by collaborating with award-winning interior designer Manuel Espejo

to create the retròpolitan set-up; this year (from April 11 to May 26, 2024), inside the sumptuous Palacio de la Trinidad, Arrital transferred its concept of living capable of going beyond the kitchen environment and enhancing the transversality of spaces, in a work in collaboration with architect Raul Martins, who created a setting inspired by the novel and the refined atmosphere of the famous Italian novel Il Gattopardo using the renewed Ak_Project and Feeling Home systems.