Retail strategy and creative agency The General Store presented its latest list of the world’s coolest retailers at this year’s World Retail Congress. We look at the top 10 in detail
What makes a retailer cool? In their report announcing the 50 top retailers by this metric, The General Store said three elements were important: creativity, cult status, and commercial impact.
In short, does the brand have something that makes it stand out? Does that resonate with shoppers? And is that leading to positive business incomes?
“What unites this year’s 50 is not category, scale or geography. Its intention,” says Matt Newell, partner and chief executive at the General Store. “Each of them has made a deliberate choice to stand for something specific, to build something that couldn’t easily be copied, and to treat their customers as participants rather than transactions.”
#1 Louis Vuitton
The world’s leading luxury fashion brand was picked largely because of its amazing new store in Shanghai. Giving new meaning to the word flagship, the brand’s Wujiang Road near-100 ft tall store is an actual ship named “The Louis”.
The exterior of the store (or hull of the ship) is clad in metallic panels, embossed with Louis Vuitton’s famous monogram pattern. As the General Store points out, not only is this a nod to Louis Vuitton’s origins as a trunkmaker for 19th-century travellers, “The choice of Shanghai – a great port city – mirrors Louis Vuitton’s own origins in travel and movement. There is nothing else quite like it anywhere in the world.”
#2 Haus Nowhere
South Korean brands finished in first and second position last year, and it is IICOMBINED, the parent company of 2025’s second-placed Tamburins, driving the haus nowhere retail concept.
Opening in Seoul last year, the Haus Nowhere concept houses all of IICOMBINED’s brands, which also include Gentle Monster, Nudake, Atiisuu and Nuflaat in the first three floors of its brutalist 14-storey tower. Travel up further, and you’ll find a Nudake teahouse on floor five, with a rooftop terrace with 360-degree views of Seoul up at the top.
Each floor carries its own distinct spatial identity and rotating installations, with products from fragrance house TAMBURINS and headwear brand ATiiSSU woven throughout. Products are present, but spectacle comes first. The sunglasses are almost an afterthought. Nowhere has looked quite like somewhere,” says The General Store.
#3 Printemps
Another legacy French brand sits in third position, and once again it is because of an experimental approach in a new market. Printemps is best known for its 27-floor Printemps Haussmann building on the iconic Parisian shopping street, but last year it opened its New York flagship in Manhattan’s financial district.
The General Store says that Printemps’ “first US address is a statement of intent”, highlighting the beauty corridor, couture salon and the Red Room, which the New York Post described last year as a “dazzling example of maximalism.”
#4 Pop Mart
Late last month, Pop Mart opened the doors on its Charing Cross Road London flagship, a 5000 sq ft destination for fans of its collectibles. The company is definitely delivering on the business impact portion of its coolness rating, with the Labubu maker nabbing an 187% increase in revenue in 2025 versus 2024 and a 307% increase in operating profits.
It was actually another London store, the company’s Brick Lane location, which stood out to the General Store, which flagged how it “keeps the original red brick, references local vintage markets, and treats the HIRONO character as a wearable design proposition rather than a shelf collectible.”
#5 Casetify
If you have not heard of them, Casetify manufactures and sells premium-level phone cases with eye-catching designs. The Hong Kong-born brand opened a boxy five-storey flagship in Seoul’s Dosan Park in late 2024. The store hits different immersive retail concepts on each of its floors, including a customisation lab, a café, and a dedicated travel luggage space.
#6 Anta
Nike and Adidas are the only sportswear companies in the world to make more revenue yearly than the Chinese brand Anta. The sportswear brand may not be so well known in the UK, but it opened a flagship in Beverley Hills earlier this year and counts Winter Olympics star Eileen Gu among its brand ambassadors.
There is something of Harry Potter in its Shanghai Sneakerverse store, which was highlighted in the report by The General Store. “Select a shoe on the first floor and a box descends from the warehouse above, gliding down the chute to your hands. A mirrored ceiling makes the whole apparatus appear to float infinitely upward.”
#7 Mecca
Speaking at WRC, Matt Newell argued that Australian brand Mecca was, in his view, the best beauty retailer in the world. The company’s Melbourne flagship sits in a building that, in a nice touch of retail history, was once the largest bookstore in the world. It now houses over 200 brands and 80 services. The company runs a DTC business in the UK and had a pop-up in Covent Garden back in 2024.
#8 Nothing
The top UK brand in the list, Nothing, is known for their quirkily-designed and well-reviewed phones with LED “Glyph” screens on the back that light up based on notifications, games, or markers like battery level.
Interestingly, its biggest market is India, and The General Store highlighted a flagship in the country’s tech capital, Bengaluru, in its report. “Factory-inspired interiors feature mock production lines and live hardware durability demonstrations, making the store feel like a behind-the-scenes experience rather than a conventional electronics shop.”
#9 Vans
No brand is arguably as intertwined with skater culture as shoemaker Vans is. It is the headline sponsor of the iconic punk rock music festival, the Warped Tour, which returned last year after a six-year hiatus. Its bold decision to put an actual skate ramp in its London flagship was one of the reasons it made the top 10 list.
#10 Olive Young
Closing out the top 10 is another Korean brand, Olive Young, which announced a worldwide partnership with beauty retailer Sephora in January of this year. Driving the selection by The General Store, though, was its Seongsu store in Seoul, which reportedly drew 2.5 million visitors in its first year of operation, including 75% of foreign tourists visiting Seongsu.
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