Insider Trends
Trend Consultant and Content Creator,
During my time at Insider Trends, visitors to the retail innovation website I helped to manage increased by 1300%. I secured interviews with leading retail disruptors for Insider Trends’ blog, including Hussein Chalayan, Stephen Godfroy the Co-President of Rough Trade, Sophie Postma, CEO of recycled bag company Reclaim, and the UK MD of BirchBox.
Excerpt:
The spaces are exciting and sensory, without being overwhelming. Did you deliberately set out to create a kind of ‘third space’, and how does that help you as a record store to thrive where others have been failing?
Yes, back in 2006 when planning Rough Trade East, we decided to recalibrate modern expectation of what a record store can be. We wanted to return the record store experience to a place where people hang-out, combining what many purists considered to be conflicting ingredients – independent store sensibility with a big, expansive interior. To successfully achieve this, we looked at our own history, but also researched third-place concepts such as Seattle coffee shops and Victorian Gin Palaces.
As a business, we have the minds, history, authority, artists and customer relations, that all work together to help us differentiate from competitors. So we’re a bit of a freak in some respects, capable of championing the unknown and to take risks where others may fear.