Digital Up Magazine Over the year, retailers have been finding that Mobile enhances Physical. That Physical complements Mobile. And that serendipity and discovery still have a definitive and sometimes magical role in the retail mix.The scare of “showrooming” (going to a store to look and touch, then researching and buying online for price) was turned on its head. According to Claude de Jocas, research director at digital think-tank L2 Inc., what happened was the opposite: “Consumers are more likely to do what we call webrooming, which is to research a product online and then go in store to make that final purchase.” In the end, digital and the physical are not either/or propositions. Brick-and-mortar stores continued to surpass expectations. The Dublin retailer Primark opened stores over Europe and they have been a phenomenon everywhere. The opening of the Madrid store led to historic traffic jams and the need to hand out numbers to control the crowds. As one tweet said “Getting into #primark is like trying to get into a nightclub when you’re 17.” “Digital” entrepreneurs continued to congregate in shared co-working spaces like WeWork, which has had phenomenal success as the go-to place for, breaking the accepted paradigm of people not wanting to work together. With locations in the U.K., Israel and the Netherlands, their next move is Berlin and already sources say they are currently set on China. Records were broken in unconventional ways… Adele’s decision not to stream her new Album on Spotify or other platforms led to record-breaking single-week sales set by N’Sync’s No Strings attached in March 2000. Just this past week, the tickets to her US concerts sold out in minutes, proving that momentum drives all channels. Fast Company named Eataly, a “supermarket,” the #3 Most Innovative Brand in their Top Ten List for the year. FC wrote: “EATALY is an Italian grocery market/restaurant emporium/enoteca/bakery/cheese shop, and business is booming.” If you have ever walked into an Eataly, you will understand when I say that everything about the place makes you never want to leave. Not surprisingly, Warby Parker was Fast Company’s #1 most innovative brand. While online pushed for one-click-to-buy everything, brick and mortar stores discovered that in the real world customers aren’t in such a hurry. TOM’s shoes, a footwear retailer that started as an onlineonly business, opened a 2,000-square-foot, two-floor London store designed to capture the brand’s aesthetic and philosophy — it includes a barista, large area for events, comfortable seats and complimentary WIFI so people can sit with laptops and work —it’s a place to hang, not just buy. Apple’s Retail genius became contagious, and the longstanding back-and-forth between Apple and Microsoft logged in a new dialogue. Microsoft opened a five-story new flagship store in New York City in