Five stories: John Lewis’ vinyl‑driven ad; CBRE’s MAPIC signals; MINISO on Bond Street; retail parks rising; athleisure’s staying power.

Retail is back in force. Alex reports from Cannes at MAPIC on why capital is returning to physical retail. Simone unpacks the new John Lewis Christmas advert and how sentiment sells. We cover CBRE’s data, MINISO’s Bond Street bet, retail parks’ quiet surge, and why athleisure keeps compounding.

The 5 stories

1. John Lewis Christmas advert 2025: Why nostalgia + vinyl is the most effective emotional shortcut this season.

2. MAPIC takeaways (CBRE): Investment is thawing; leasing momentum improves; prime rents keep edging up as footfall normalizes.

3. MINISO on Bond Street: Tourist gravity, pop‑culture IP, and an experience‑first flagship moment.

4. Retail parks’ resurgence: Value + access + parking = resilient openings and low vacancy.

5. Athleisure’s resilience: Demand holds; big‑box footwear/apparel remains a habit, not a fad.

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⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 – Welcome from Cannes

01:45 – Story 1: John Lewis Christmas advert (why it lands)

05:10 – Story 2: MAPIC/CBRE: retail is back

09:00 – Story 3: MINISO opens on Bond Street

11:45 – Story 4: Retail parks are quietly winning

13:30 – Story 5: Athleisure keeps compounding

15:00 – Wrap & what to watch next

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello and welcome to another edition of Five Things Friday
with my fabulous host. Hello Simone, How are you doing?
I'm good happy it's Friday. Happy, happy Friday.

(00:25):
Anyway, it's been it's been a fabulous week.
I'm in the South of France sinceI'm in a hotel room still at the
beautiful, beautiful little townof Cairns, where I'll talk a
little bit more about some of the stuff I learned.
So for those who don't know me, my name's Alex.
I'm an NRF retail voice of 2026.Love it.

(00:49):
I help people who sell to retailers maintain their
relevance and I'm joined by my wonderful Co host Simone Ollivan
from Need It for Tonight and Dave.
Simone what what's Needed for Tonight and Dave all about.
Need it for tonight also as NIFTis I always say easiest way to
describe is it's kind of like delivery but for quality
fashion. So we work with lots of
different stores and brands, mainly in London to do 90

(01:12):
minutes and survey a delivery. We also have a lovely plug in
called Dave which isn't quite assexy as NIFT, but we also plug
into retailers checkouts to givethem rapid and localised
delivery as well. Fantastic.
So listen, why don't we start with you and get straight into
it? What?
What's top of mind for you this week?

(01:34):
You know what's top of mind? And I have to say it made me
cry. Is everybody's talking about it.
You know what I'm going to say, It's the John Lewis Christmas
advert. Honestly, I teared off and I was
like, am I OK? It's a global heart adventure.
For anyone that hasn't seen it. The ad follows a father and son

(01:56):
who've clearly may be grown apart a bit until the Sun's gift
to his dad, which was a vinyl record.
And it kind of shows like the connection and shared memory.
It does a flashback. There's no like, dramatic speech
or anything. But then it ends with if you
can't find the words, find the gift, which I thought, yeah, I.
Don't know, no. It's so good, but we have all

(02:18):
those times at those moments like sometimes, like, I don't
know, it's just thoughtful, meaningful gifts are great, but
I just thought John Lewis, they know what they're doing.
You know, this isn't just about selling products.
It's really about selling the sentiment.
And it's funny as I, we've been doing a lot of yapping and
debating over the past week withvarious retailers, particularly

(02:40):
on the topic of relevance in retail.
And a lot of the time it's aboutwhat tech, you know, what are we
doing? It's an AI like, what are we
doing to stay relevant? And actually, this is a lovely
reminder that sometimes the mostpowerful thing a brand can do is
just really make the customer feel something, which isn't
super easy to do. But John Lewis reminded everyone
of that. And it's not the first time that

(03:02):
the adverts have made me cry. So kudos to John I.
Don't mind, I don't mind saying I I cried to them as well.
And Limerick, I think Alison Limerick's the the song that
they play, they managed to play the original, which people like
myself can relate to. Then they had a newer version
with just the. So I think the music was

(03:22):
phenomenal. And then on LinkedIn, a bunch of
men were like, Oh my God, it's about time we were represented
on, you know, because it's normally we don't get
represented. Yeah.
So that was really interesting. And then one of the guys
actually when I was reading the comments, he said, you know, my
relationship with my son is exactly the same.
I'm, I'm willing up as I talk because Jesus Christ, because

(03:44):
his son always has his headphones on.
And so I don't know why I'm willing up.
But yeah, anyway, he was just relating to the fact that he had
this sort of fractured relationship with teenage boys
because they sort of withdraw. And that's what that advert did
really well. It's, you know, a little boy,
sorry, a teenage boy. And then how you you father see

(04:05):
their parents in general, they see their as as you know, as in
the advert with the baby and stuff.
So phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal.
Maybe one for Christmas, Alison Limerick, who knows, right.
I don't know what other songs are out there, but it's genius.
And I think just just sort of today the five things is going
to be a little bit because I want to talk about what's been

(04:27):
here. But the three I will put out a
report on, you know, after doingover 100 interviews, travel to
13 conferences, being around theworld, in my mind, there are
three transformation elements that are impacting retailers.
That's transformation. Retail at the speed of culture,
retail at the speed of intelligence and retail at the

(04:50):
speed of experience. All three elements have their
own little buckets of things underneath.
And as you rightly said, Simone,it's not just technology and AI
that's just been a distraction. And what this brings me to is a
fabulous. So the conference that I'm at is
basically for the people that build, build shopping centres,

(05:11):
build shopping malls around the world, right?
So we're talking about people with assets in the billions and
they've had a really, really tough time over the last, umm,
four or five years. Assets have been declining, high
streets have been shrinking property commercial development
has not been where people are investing their billions and

(05:31):
it's back baby retail property is back.
And this was from Wakeman and Cushman and a big commercial
property agent in the UK and research from this is a CBRE and
Chris Gardner, it was his words.He said retail's back.
We're more relevant again than ever.
And from a financial perspective, if you follow the

(05:52):
money, the capital is flowing back into physical.
And so the investors are returning.
And what I'm going to do is justdo a quick headline.
I've got about 8 little bullets.I'm just going to give you the
headlines. If you want more, I'll probably
do a LinkedIn post, come back and watch this podcast again or
subscribe or something. But investors are coming back.
Obviously, there's a massive, depending on the geography, but

(06:14):
#1 they're coming back. The Middle East is just
exploding. And that's because places like
Saudi Arabia, something like don't quote on the numbers, 60%
of the population are under 30. Their population is around 36
million because you know, why are people investing in in
Saudi, that population is ain't probably going to grow by

(06:34):
another 10 million over the next15 years.
So shopping malls and retail brands, what a fantastic
opportunity for expansion on expansion, Simone, I think
you're when you talk about your thing, we'll talk about how 1
brand is, you know, doing it so well.
They were also here telling all of these developers to, you
know, have them come into to their things prime cities across

(06:58):
Europe, Madrid, London, Berlin, all hotspots.
Now when you look at London and where capital is flowing, it's
and you see an Oxford St, it's micro property expansion.
So it's not necessarily the whole of Oxford Street, but
there's areas and throughout thewhole of London there'll be that

(07:18):
one part of the street that people like to go in that has
that community that has that engagement that developers are
now developing for specifically retail and FMB.
FMB within retail. So food and beverage, we're
learning from the Asia where FMBtends to be a bigger part of
retail. So you're more likely to go and

(07:39):
eat and have a customer meeting in a shopping centre than you
would do in the UK. You're not really going to go to
a shopping centre to have a business meeting.
But in some of these regions they are.
But what they're mixing these mixed-use developments like
Battersea as an example, which you know, has has that sort of
mixed-use. We're going to just continue to
see more of that. And I think given so, so much
negative negativity that there is today, the fact that the

(08:02):
capital, the money, when you follow the money is coming back
into retail commercial. I I think that's really good.
Some some like other variances, vacancy rates are tight.
So bidding wars are beginning stuff because we've seen so many
empty. And if you're watching this in a
small town somewhere in the UK and you're getting here, but my
High Street isn't like that. You're absolutely right.

(08:24):
I'm that that's, I'm not saying that that's going to change.
What I'm saying is cosmopolitan metropolitan areas are going to
continue to to grow. Retail parks are quietly winning
where they've sort of found their footwear for a while, you
know, people didn't want to go to a retail park.
But again, because of the value conversation, rental growth for

(08:46):
retail parks is have been up 14%since 2018.
So again, when you think about, you know, where do retailers
want to be? You are you do have these retail
parks, but you do have these sort of, you know, smaller
format stores or flagship storesor locations where they're more
experiential culture, cultural. I don't know what they think for

(09:09):
cultural proof, but anyway, that's it.
And then the final one, a premier in luxury streets.
They have climbed 4% in the pastyear, beating most other asset
classes. So although luxury brands are
having a tough time expanding intheir traditional markets as
Asia and the US, they're still doing well.
And, and here's the other, you know, forgetting your politics,

(09:31):
US brands coming into Europe is the driving growth.
Expect to see more. We've spoken about on this show
about how Chinese brands are coming in, but expect to see
more US brands coming in becauseit's becoming quite a hot
environment for them to grow within the US.
And so you've got brands like Skins who will, you know,
continue to grow. And I've got, again, I'm not

(09:53):
going to, for the, for the purposes of this, I'm not going
to get into it. But yeah, so they're the major
key takeaways. I don't know if anything stood
out for you, Simone, as I was with.
No, it's really interesting, really is.
And yeah, I think as you said, we'll continue to really see the
the rise of those brands coming into the into the UK What did
surprise me is about the retail parks.

(10:14):
It's something that I've just never really thought of really
interesting. Yeah.
Yeah, I, I, I felt that they've sort of lost their purpose for a
while because are they value, are they convenience?
Where do they live? And I think what's been proven
is the fact that, yes, there's been vacancies in some of the
retail parks, but they're fact, you know, people are driving to

(10:35):
them because they, they prefer to go in their cars.
Yeah. Our final one, What what what's,
what are you going to close us with?
Yes. Big retail news this week.
Minnesota is opening a new storeon Once is again as we speak
about you know, I love to speak about bricks and martyrs, but
this is meant to be a full blownexperience.

(10:58):
I will say I'm not the mini sorecustomer what I'm but I think
you know it flushed toys and Disney.
Pokémon maybe people love it. They do.
I don't know the. Expo, they were here and there
was a queue for the freebies that they were giving out,

(11:18):
right? And I'm thinking.
I don't get it really lead into pop culture and that kind of
collectibility and it's, I guessquite affordable design as well.
It's not like the cheap stuff, but but it's pretty affordable.
I think I was, I, I guess one thing that I kind of questioned
is them popping up on Bond Street, you know, which is

(11:38):
obviously a. Fairly.
Absolutely. Location and and will that align
with Minnesota's guess quite full of value price ethos.
Yeah, you know, you're gonna go into, I don't know, Louis
Vuitton or Gucci and then go into Minnesota, but maybe that's
that speaks to the power of their brand.
Yeah. I think big.

(11:59):
Collectibles is is one thing that is gonna grow in 26 as is
fanatics, another US brand that's got retail expansion.
So they're coming over and they're they are all that
they're all about collectibles, right?
You know, trading things so. I guess I'm also just intrigued
to see who their customers goingto be.
Is it going to be the tourists you know?

(12:19):
Will the store be able to drive repeat customers?
I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how
it rolls out. Yeah, yeah.
I think in, especially in Bond Street and Oxford St, there is
that like, you know, who is it the is it an anchor tenant?
Are people going to make their way to Bond Street just to get
their get their Libooboo plushy toy?
But then say again. I think they will, sadly.

(12:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much growth?
Another interesting one, the youand I have spoken about the
biggest growth area over the last year has been athleisure
and and fashion, right. So I know we've spoken about JD
Sports, but that whole athleisure area is still
continuing to grow. And I and I, you know, I took
some picture of the slides, but it's really interesting.

(13:03):
OK, listen, obviously I, I spokefor a lot because we're at time,
I don't know, I must have reallybeen speaking a lot.
Yeah, those room got really fast.
OK, Simone, until next week, next.
Week I'll. See you then.