Iron Merchant and The International Retail Design Conference Come to Seattle
Can someone tell me the difference between window dressing and Brandscaping? After attending the IRDC in Seattle this month, its clear that my definition has grown a beard, gotten weird and disappeared into the mountains of The Grand Hyatt Seattle. Other than window dressers being heralded as big heroes, I enjoyed two surprises at IRDC.First, even though every speaker opened with “In this economy we must provide ROI,” I learned that conference attendees were not actually freaked about the recession. Most of them consider it their role to do great work with little resources despite the challenging circumstances. Their work ethic and unspoken patriotism impresses me.
The second surprise was a roundtable lunch with Jim Megerson, and Les Hiscoe on the topic of LEED. Certification (easily the most engaging dialoue of the conference). After an hour it all boiled down to the fact that US. Green Building Council has done a mediocre job of getting useful information out to the people who can influence change: engineers, architects, retailers, designers and clients. I encouraged these passionate thought leaders to start a blog about it, even volunteered to contribute when appropriate. I hope they do because the sooner people like that get involved the sooner Green will be the norm.
Some final thoughts on the conference; One of my long time heroes, Tim Girvin was the closing keynote. And while I disagree with his philosophy on branding in the modern world, I think he did a great job of engaging the crowd and getting them to think about how brand can drive design.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, my team, led by Macy’s Head of Visual Merchandising (pictured above), won this years Iron Merchant Contest.