In this episode of The IADS Retail Park 🎧, Maya and Anchita explore the Metaverse beyond the buzz. ✨ What do Demain Beauty, L’Oréal, and luxury pioneers have in common? They’re experimenting with virtual experiences that educate, engage, and convert. 🛍️ From 75% memory retention through gamification to digital twins that reshape store planning, our hosts unpack the real business case for immersive retail. Learn how €200K and 7 months built a metaverse that blends commerce and learning—and what separates hype from ROI.

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🔗 For updates and more can’t-miss content, follow us on LinkedIn at International Association of Department Stores – I.A.D.S., explore our Substack, or visit www.iads.org for extra resources and the full article.

In this episode of the IADS Retail Park 🎙️, Maya sits down with Anchita, Head of Analysis and Prospectives at I.A.D.S. and author of this week’s exclusive, to examine why the advertising infrastructure retail built over the last decade is hitting a structural ceiling 📱.

Based on👉 IADS Exclusive: The End of the Nudge by Anchita Ranka.

For more insights and updates, follow us on LinkedIn at International Association of Department Stores - IADS, check out our Substack, visit our website at www.IADS.org for additional resources, and learn more here!

They're not in the keynotes. They're not in the strategy decks. But when a retail transformation actually lands — when AI gets adopted, when a store team holds together under pressure, when corporate strategy turns into something a frontline team can actually use — there's almost always a middle manager making it happen. In this episode, Maya sits down with Christine, to unpack why middle managers are retail's most underestimated asset — and what happens when you stop investing in them.

👉 Read the full exclusive here !

For more insights and updates, follow us on LinkedIn at International Association of Department Stores - IADS, check out our Substack, visit our website at www.iads.org for additional resources, and learn more here!

In this episode of The I.A.D.S. Retail Park 🎧, Maya and Christine, explore the 2024 IADS Academy’s work on AI decision-making for retailers. A cohort of next-gen executives tackled “machine customers,” built the AIRI readiness framework, and created Lola — a retail-specific AI chatbot. 🤖

👉 Read the full exclusive here !

For more insights and updates, follow us on LinkedIn at International Association of Department Stores - IADS, check out our Substack, visit our website at www.iads.org for additional resources, and learn more here!

Every January, retail's biggest names descend on New York for the NRF Big Show 🎙️ — and 2025 was reportedly a record edition: 40,000 attendees, 1,000 exhibitors, and more AI claims than you could count. In this episode, Maya sits down with Selvane, who was on the floor and in the rooms. They cut through the noise together — from agentic AI and "fantailing" to Target's culture strategy, Macy's bold transformation, and what Foot Locker's 50th anniversary says about where retail is actually heading 🌊.

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For more insights and updates, follow us on LinkedIn at International Association of Department Stores - IADS, check out our Substack, visit our website at www.iads.org for additional resources, and learn more here!

Zara has closed 600+ stores since 2019—but total selling space has grown. Their new flagships look like "monobrand department stores" with local architecture, cafés, and luxury-grade design. What can department stores learn from this transformation? Maya and Selvane explore the "fewer, larger, better" strategy, the experience trap, and where Zara's limits create opportunity for department stores. 🏬🌍

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In this episode of IADS Retail Park 🎙️, Maya and Selvane, Managing Director of IADS, dissect this week's exclusive on the $10 trillion cost of manager disengagement. Drawing on Gallup's 2025 and 2026 State of the Global Workplace reports, Maya unpacks why $40 billion in enterprise AI investment is producing near-zero returns — and why both failures trace to the same layer.

➡️Click here to read the full Exclusive!

For more insights and updates, follow us on LinkedIn at International Association of Department Stores - IADS, check out our Substack, visit our website at www.iads.org for additional resources, and learn more here!

Department stores have run two business models simultaneously for over fifteen years. The result is a financial architecture that punishes omnichannel behaviour from the inside out. In this episode, Maya and Selvane, unpack why the bottleneck was never technological, what a 7–10% ship-from-store cancellation rate reveals about incentive structures, and how the omni-cluster model redefines what the store is actually for 🏛️.

➡️Click here to dive even further into this week’s IADS Exclusive: The Next Chapter of Omnichannel

What does it take to build a retail empire on a single address? Maya and Christine examine the strategic logic behind the world's most iconic single-location department stores. From Royal Navy ship timbers to circus performances after closing hours, this episode explores why singularity can be more defensible than scale—and what La Samaritaine's €750 million lesson reveals about when it fails.🔗 Click here to read the full exclusive!Stay connected: Follow us on LinkedIn · Read our latest on Substack · Explore www.iads.org

Zara has closed 600+ stores since 2019—but total selling space has grown. Their new flagships look like "monobrand department stores" with local architecture, cafés, and luxury-grade design. What can department stores learn from this transformation? Maya and Selvane explore the "fewer, larger, better" strategy, the experience trap, and where Zara's limits create opportunity for department stores. 🏬🌍

👉Click here to read the full exclusive.