Retail Gazette Loves: Westfield London’s Trending Store

Many shoppers want to know what’s trending in terms of fashion, so it’s certainly a feel-good moment when they find the perfect “outfit of the season”.

If you find yourself in Westfield London this weekend, you’ll notice it has unveiled a “Trending Store” which uses artificial intelligence to allow customers to find the exact fashion statements trending in real time across social media.

The store opened its stores on July 3 and will be open until July 7.

Not only does it offer some of the biggest emerging trends, its proceeds also go to the Save the Children charity.

The store tracks over 400,000 early adopters and innovators from 150 countries and 1000 cities from across the globe to identify the biggest trends.

Some of the biggest emerging trends include “Romantic Heroines”, “United Activewear” and “Design Therapy”.

The store has sourced items on demand from retailers within Westfield London including Topshop, Reiss, Whistles, and Stuart Weitzman to feature in Trending Store space.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has partnered with AI trend experts NextAtlas to create the store.

NextAtlas is able to predict the biggest breaking trends before they happen by monitoring over three billion data points from over 400,000 “trend innovators” globally by analysing both visual and text content from social media sources.

“At Westfield centres, we aim to bring the newest concepts, first to the market brands and best experiences to our customers,” Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield chief marketing officer Europe and group director Myf Ryan said.

“Through our How We Shop Research platform we know that shoppers increasingly want to experience both online and offline retail in a seamless journey.

“Online, shoppers are inspired by influencers and used to being guided by AI, with products served to them based on their behaviour. Usually this guidance does not translate to a physical retail space, however, working with data analysts, NextAtlas, we are able to bring our shoppers products that are trending in real time – a true reflection of social conversation brought to life in a physical space,” she said.

The store also features a “Trending Vending Prize Machine” where customers can tap to donate £5/£10/£20 to Save the Children in return for a top trending prize valued up to £100.

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