Lighting and Architecture: EuroShop 2017

The fair, which welcomes visitors from 5 to 9 March, is celebrating its 50th birthday this year and attributes its success to its fairly unusual cycle of being held every three years. In view of the medium-term nature of innovations in shop-fitting, the trade show was switched from a two-year to a three-year cycle as long ago as 1975. This proved to be a good decision, because it has since then provided exhibiting organisations with enough time to drive forward their ideas and product developments while at the same time providing visitors – shop operators and planners – with innovations that will really benefit them.

In an age when online retailing is becoming more and more widespread, the retail industry is responding intelligently, highlighting its USPs and presenting its best features in modern shopping worlds that can have a breathtaking impact. Brand shops, retail chains and individual specialist stores are pulling out all the stops to create customer appeal that is both emotional and functional, leaving nothing to chance and applying the services of skilled shop-fitters, architects, interior designers and lighting specialists – who for their part are always in search of impact-making, individual and exceptional solutions. Apart from the surfaces of the ceiling, wall and floor, which determine the character of a sales area, it is above all the lighting that blends all the various materials into an effective whole.

What EuroShop offers is wide-ranging: it shows shop operators in particular what the current possibilities are, while architects, designers and shop-fitters find out what is on the market and what can be achieved with the available resources. It is not without pride that Elke Moebius, Director EuroShop and Global Head Retail & Retail Technology at the Düsseldorf trade fair organisers, remarks: "In general, EuroShop is of course about generating moments of revelation and fascination, but from the point of view of planners the main focus is on providing inspiration and exchanging ideas."

It's no accident that around ten per cent of visitors to the trade show are architects and designers. This makes them the third-largest group, after classical retailers and manufacturers. According to the statistics they spend two days in the trade fair halls, with seven experience areas either keeping them moving or retaining them when they find what they're looking for. The categories are POP Marketing, Expo & Event Marketing, Retail Technology, Visual Merchandising, Shop Fitting & Store Design, FoodTech & Energy Management and Lighting.

The theme of lighting, which covers one and a half halls in itself, can be regarded as the superordinate aspect in relation to architecture and retail design. In the final analysis, every design concept depends for its effect on the lighting that is applied, deriving its dramaturgy, showcasing, dynamism and overall impact from a combination of artificial and daylight. At the same time, the lighting industry offers a continuous flow of new tools, with the technological advances provided by LED light with all its technical and design facets raising the lighting of sales premises to an entirely new level. Nowadays, the possibilities even enable the mood of the lighting in the sales area to be customised with precision for the known preferences of the specific group of shoppers that is being targeted.

Within this context, the so-called "Specials" offered by EuroShop – the long-established Designers´ Village, the Lighting Designers´ Zone and the Italian Lighting Lounge – are the ideal locations for professional networking. Here, international corporations as well as independent planning and design companies present not just their product and service portfolio, but also provide timely and useful advice relating to the concrete challenges presented by everyday planning operations in shop-fitting and trade-fair-stand construction.

"What also gives us great satisfaction is the popularity among all target groups of our lecture forums, at which practical application takes priority over theoretical teaching,” explains Elke Moebius. There will be six forums, with the ECOpark Forum (energy management, sustainability, etc.) and the EuroShop Forum Architecture & Design probably the most interesting for the target group of architects and related professions. Those who are interested in attending these presentations don't need to leave the fair for this purpose, because they are not structured like an accompanying congress in the classical sense. On the contrary, the events can be attended at any time in the exhibition halls themselves, free of charge and without prior registration – enabling visitors to fit them flexibly into their individual programme.

A further highlight of the trade show – and a feature which is already generating considerable suspense – is the presentation of the EuroShop Retail Design Awards in recognition of the world's best shop design concepts.

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