To store and offer goods is no longer the main task of stores. Innovative retailers need to reinvent themselves – and for some, that’s like curating an art gallery.

While online shopping is well established and retailers mutate into logistics experts, the question of sense or nonsense of brick and mortar stores remains pending. Some innovative retailers respond by regularly questioning their own perceptions. They have realized that, to many people, high streets have become sources of inspiration rather than just stockrooms to satisfy their needs.

On the one hand, mass consumers do their own online research for the widest assortment, quickest availability and best offers. On the other, valuable customers become fans of brands by exploring unique, offline shopping experiences. Here are some (already long existing) examples of artistic multi-brand store concepts that feel more like curated temporary exhibition spaces – may boring vertical brands find some inspiration!

10 Corso Como, Milan.

When Carla Sozzani founded her store vision in Milan’s Corso Como no. 10 back in 1991, she probably didn’t expect the hidden garage to turn into one of the world’s most important cult concept stores. Today, there are subsidiaries abroad as well and what they all do is to change face constantly, curating new brands and product worlds, but combine them into a strong and unique store brand story. Here, the customer shops the local brand 10 Corso Como, no matter how prominent the single product is labeled.

Dover Street Market, London.

Driven by the fashion label Comme des Garcons and its entourage, Dover Street Market London has also expanded to Asia, France and the US. For design lovers, DSM is a must-visit-stop at least twice a year when the spaces are rebuilt entirely. Everytime the setting is inspiring more like an art exhibition than a multi brand fashion store.

Fabrikat, Zürich.

The location of the Fabrikat store for traditionally manufactured products is a surprise in itself: The Fourth District in Zurich has long been better known for its urban red light aura and its multicultural inhabitants than for upscale shopping. But here, the story of carefully produced items is staged like in a gallery with a store design that could have been developed by Jules Verne.

It’s not a store, but it should be.

The scene above was not retail. It was part of an art exhibition at Documenta 14, taking place 2017 in Kassel and Athens (Daniel García Andújar, Installation: The Disasters of War, Metics Akademia, 2017, EMST Athens). But I can well imagine products to be presented like this in a store, made buyable. And I think I’m not the only one who longs for a little more creativity from retailers. Particularly considering that our day-to-day needs are entirely covered online already.

Top picture: The Paul Smith Store in Los Angeles, which is regularly posted on Instagram by international visitors. (Photo: Paul Smith).

This post was first published slightly different in Brand Experts Blog in August 2017.