The digital economy means that some brands will actually need to undigitise to entice people in. Ibrahim Ibrahim discusses: This whole idea of facial recognition, for me is really, really interesting. There is an issue of privacy but it’s inevitable and as Mark Zuckerburg said, it will be entirely normal for everybody to know everyone’s location at any time, and that’s what will happen. It’s how we deal with that and I think also as we live these increasingly digitised lives, people will crave, sort of, compensatory intimate physical experiences. And there’s an opportunity there for brands to undigitise, to unconnect. And just as an anecdote, there’s a great club called The Do Nothing Club. You go there and do nothing. There’s a school of life and you can see this growing explosion really of markets and of charity shops. There’s much more intimate physical, nostalgic places. I think retail will have to take part of that on. I think there’s going to be a move from what we call back of house to front of house where customers want to see behind the brand, see transparency, see things being made. They don’t want them now, and more in the future, being made in Vietnam or in China. They want things, yes, partly made but then finished off in the shop where people can see the craft and the kind of skills. And there is I think, more and more of a return to crafts. Every trend has a counter trend, and I think there’s going to be a counter trend.

The digital economy has created an opportunity for nostalgic brands

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