“Since the pandemic, the world has changed drastically in the last 5 years, not only from a geopolitical perspective. We have seen a lot of changes in the behaviour of customers, we have observed the omnichannel trend. People are spending a lot of time online and now the role of the stores is questionable.

Should we do more and more stores to be visible as a retailer or not? This is a real question that we have. In Romania we are not sure that we need 100 stores to be successful but with a powerful ecommerce site we can probably gain a lot of market share,” Frederic Lamy, CEO XXXLutz Romania said at Retail Forward 2025 organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

Key statements:

• Customers are looking for more and more customized products for their needs and for their home especially in the furniture industry.
• Customers are now searching for long-term products and quality products. Romania has moved very quickly from a hard discount approach to a qualitative approach. We will play a huge role in this. We observe this trend also in Western European countries and I do believe that it will be reinforced in the coming years with much more expectations and strong expectations from customers.
• We said before that the customer was the king. I now think it will be an emperor.
• You need to always have entry-price products in the food market, the home improving market, the electronics market. But we see a change where customers want to consume less but better. I don’t believe in a very hard discount concept in the future, even we see some companies being successful implementing this concept. It can be an approach, but I really do believe that customers will be more and more exigent regarding the quality of the products.
• The expectations of customers are growing more and more towards a sustainable approach. We are talking about an ecosystem, about suppliers, what are the sources of your products. For example, we are not selling furniture that is coming from China. It’s a choice, it’s a strategy. We probably lose a bit of margin, but we are sure that we are providing some quality and sustainable products.
• I was reading recently a survey about artificial intelligence replacing people. In the retail world we can’t do without AI, but we also can’t do without people. People are very important; they are the most important pillar of the strategy.
• The sustainability approach must be done with a lot of sincerity. We can do a lot of good things with small actions. I believe in small things and small victories. If we make common efforts towards sustainability, it will create additional value.