The Store Is Everywhere All at Once

On February 26, 2026, a select group of senior retail and brand leaders gathered to discuss the Future of Retail, a kyu House forum focused on how commerce is being reshaped across discovery, experience, and loyalty. Hosted by kyu at its New York headquarters, in partnership with Kepler, Haigo, and IDEO, the afternoon brought together operators, creatives, and technologists to examine how the future of retail is taking shape in real time.

The Omnichannel Retail Barometer Breakdown

The event opened with a preview of Haigo and Kepler’s latest offering, the Omnichannel Retail Barometer, an upcoming assessment of consumer insight and behavior. The session zeroed in on making omnichannel feel frictionless. Customer journeys now stretch across physical stores, mobile experiences, brand sites, marketplaces, social platforms, as well as emerging AI-search. When those handoffs aren’t smooth, customers immediately feel it.

“Omnichannel has to flow from how a brand shows up, into the experience customers have, and through every marketing touchpoint that connects those moments,” said Kepler CEO Remy Stiles. ​“The connectivity consideration here is thinking about all the touch points that your consumer experiences on their journey, not just the in-store and online piece.”

The conversation also challenged the tendency to prioritize new features rather than meet basic consumer expectations. Guewen Loussouarn, Haigo Global CEO, offered a grounded take on what the research revealed. 

“Our job is to turn human needs and shopper needs into business opportunity,” he noted. ​“It’s not about taking all the shots, but taking the right shots.”

Retail Tensions

From there, IDEO invited the room to challenge the idea that the future of retail is singular or obvious. IDEO partner Heather Boesch walked through signals she’d been tracking: a reinvestment in bricks-and-mortar and the return of the ​“third space”; the rise of the ​“anti-brand”; and the race to build ​“containers for virality” — infrastructure that lets brands quickly capitalize on a trend before the window closes. After each observation, guests voted with paddles: confirm or complicate.

The third-space question split the room almost exactly in half. A guest grounded her skepticism: Her parents owned a bookstore that served as a community hub — but a gathering space still has to convert. A bookstore isn’t a library.

The divide also had a generational undertow. Boesch noted a ​“flip” in consumer behavior: older shoppers have adopted the digital habits once associated with youth, spending more time with their faces in phones, while younger consumers are increasingly drawn to in-person experiences. The stores being rebuilt right now may be designed for a different customer than retailers expected.

Panel: The Future of Retail

The afternoon closed with a panel moderated by IDEO Chair Emeritus Tim Brown, and featuring Anthropologie CMO Barbra Sainsurin; Snap’s Global Head of Creative Lab, Rudi Anggono; and Aesop Marketing SVP, Rob Imig. The conversation explored what seamless experiences now demand of modern retail organizations as consumers move across physical stores, web, mobile, loyalty programs, and media as a single ecosystem. The panelists reflected on the tension between speed and intention, noting that momentum alone is not a strategy, and made space for the importance of discovery, given how personalized it can be.

Sainsurin described Anthropologie’s approach: embedding surprise and discovery across its customer journey, while still keeping clarity in mind so that the surprises are additive, not ​“dilutive.” 

Bringing organizations through change — particularly around new technology — requires buy-in from the top. The panelists agreed that the real work is less about the tools than the culture: building enough trust and psychological safety that teams feel comfortable acquiring new skills. AI, Anggono noted, has a way of surfacing capabilities people didn’t know they had — and putting institutional knowledge to uses that weren’t previously possible.

When discussing AI’s impact, Tim Brown said, ​“What excites me about this technology — the way I describe it — is that it can make our brains bigger and our arms longer.” 

Retail is not moving toward a single destination. The work ahead will be about making deliberate choices, staying attentive to change as it happens, and building experiences that fit a brand’s ambition, customer context, and operating reality.

The full Haigo x Kepler Omnichannel Retail Barometer will be released later this month.