In recent years, the role of the store has been quietly renegotiated. Online has absorbed much of the purely transactional load, but it has not removed the need for physical spaces – it has changed what we ask them to do.

The most progressive environments are no longer built just to ring up sales; they are designed to bring people together and deliver richer brand experiences. That idea sits behind the opening keynote at this year’s Malls & Stores of the Future Summit in Melbourne – ‘Built for more: The future of retail is creative, connected and human’, delivered by CXO, The General Store, and Reid Nakou – and it’s a useful lens for thinking about where store formats are heading.

Flagships, rewritten

One of the clearest signs of this shift is the quiet reinvention of the flagship store. Flagships were once essentially supersized shops – more range, more fit-out, more marketing. Now they are being treated as living brand worlds and experimentation labs, doing work that a website or standard box simply cannot. The Malls & Stores of the Future Summit features three case studies that speak to precisely that.

Rodd & Gunn’s four-storey flagship at 280 Little Collins Street is a case in point. Rather than bolt a bar onto the side of a shop, the brand has built a vertical journey that blends retail, dining, cocktails and members’ spaces into one narrative.

At the other end of the market, Baby Bunting’s rebrand and next-generation store concept is reshaping what a “flagship” looks like for a value-driven, essentials retailer. The focus is on making the space calmer and more navigable for new and expecting parents, with clearer zoning, better tools and more empathetic service design.

Fisher & Paykel’s experience centres add another angle. They present appliances not as static displays, but as part of a working ‘social kitchen’, with cooking, conversation and education woven into the visit.

Seen together, these examples suggest that the flagship’s job is shifting from ‘the biggest store in the fleet’ to ‘the clearest expression of who we are’ – for customers, staff and partners.

Creativity as differentiation

If the flagship is the clearest expression of a brand, creativity is increasingly what sets that expression apart. As product, price and delivery options become more transparent, the distinctive value of a physical store lies less in what it stocks and more in how it feels.

Story-led design, bold material choices, unexpected adjacencies and hospitality-style rituals are becoming tools of strategy, not just decoration. In fashion and athleisure, that might look like fixtures that can flip from retail to event mode overnight or fitting rooms that feel like small studios. In home and tech, it increasingly means spaces where products are genuinely in use, not just lined up under bright lights.

What unites these moves is the recognition that creativity isn’t just about looking different for a launch campaign. It is about creating environments that are emotionally resonant enough to cut through the digital noise and make a visit feel worthwhile – even for customers who could just as easily tap “buy now” on their phone.

Community as commercial value

The other thread running through the most interesting physical retail today is community. Customers have more choices than ever. What keeps them coming back is often a sense that a store is “their” place: Somewhere they are known and able to connect with others who share their interests or life stage.

Athleisure brands hosting run clubs and training sessions, parenting retailers offering information nights and peer groups, experience centres running classes and product clinics – all of these sit somewhere between marketing and service. They rarely deliver the week’s biggest sales spike, but they deepen the relationship. They turn occasional shoppers into regular visitors, and regular visitors into advocates.In a world where time and attention are under pressure, spaces that help people feel part of something have a structural advantage.

Across its keynotes and case studies, the Malls & Stores of the Future Summit will dive into these themes in detail – from Rodd & Gunn, Baby Bunting and Fisher & Paykel unpacking their latest formats, to broader conversations about how retailers and their partners can co-create environments that are, in every sense, built for more.