StoresWhat we saw at Shoptalk Europe 2026
Retail to See spent three days on the floor in Barcelona. Postcards from the main stage, the exhibition halls, and the conversations in between.
Section
Stores
Formats, footprints, and the future of physical retail.
StoresThe luxury department store is shrinking, on purpose
From Selfridges to Galeries Lafayette, Europe's grand magasins are cutting floor space and leasing entire wings to mono-brand tenants. The economics behind the retreat.
Small-format flagships: the unit economics behind the trend
From beauty to athleisure to grocery, retailers keep shrinking the box. We break down whether the smaller footprint actually moves EBITDA or just trades problems.
Europe's fashion mid-market is getting squeezed from both ends
Between Inditex pushing up and ultra-fast-fashion pulling down, Europe's mid-priced fashion retailers are running out of room. The consolidation has started.
Why grocery is reinventing the self-checkout - again
After a decade of self-checkout, grocers are quietly rebuilding the front end. The new design borrows from convenience stores, not airports.
Store-as-fulfillment: the labor cost retailers don't put on the deck
Ship-from-store solves a lot, but the labor it consumes inside the four walls is rarely included in the omnichannel ROI story. We tally what's actually getting absorbed.
StoresClosures of 2026: the Q1 tracker
Retail closures are running hotter than 2024 but cooler than 2020. We track who's pulling out of which markets and what's replacing them.
Store of the future, Q3 2025: most pilots aren't going national
The "store of the future" pilots that drew headlines through 2024 are being quietly evaluated. The data on which ones earn a national rollout - and which ones don't - is finally landing.
Store labor in 2025: the shortage didn't end, the math just changed
The post-pandemic labor crunch has eased, but minimum wage step-ups, scheduling rules, and tighter shrink controls have pushed effective labor cost above where most operators planned.
Shoptalk Spring 2024 recap: what the hallway talk was about
Beyond the keynote schedule, the conversations at Shoptalk this March kept coming back to three things: store labor, retail media measurement, and what to do about returns.