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FUTURE OF
CONSUMER PRODUCTS & RETAIL industries

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Chicago

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New York

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Shanghai

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London

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CHALLENGE

shaping business futures

A woman giving a presentation in front of a large screen with a corporate logo and slogan. The woman is gesturing with her hands and speaking to an audience. The room has a desk with a computer setup and various electronic devices. The setting appears to be a modern office or conference room.
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A woman with dark hair wearing a colorful floral blouse holding a microphone stands in front of a blank projection screen.

Over the course of 2024, HACKMASTERS worked with EY Global Partners and insight teams on exploring the future of the retail and consumer products industries.

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Logo for Hackmasters Future Lab featuring a stylized network diagram and text in peach, white, and peach border on a black background.
Logo for a company or project named 'Transformational Scenario' featuring an abstract connected dots graphic.
A logo with the text 'The Royal Treatment' in fancy gold lettering on a black background.
Logos for HBO Max and WarnerBros. in beige and white
The text 'BETTER' in large 3D gold letters with a black background.
The logo features the words 'Cook Beautiful' with a stylized, animated chef's hat incorporated into the text.
A logo with the word "MOTEL" in large, bold, orange letters and a smaller, white text underneath that reads "resort & spa".
Close-up of a logo with a brown background, featuring a triangular shape with a yellow tip and the word 'MISSION' in bold white and brown text.
Logo with connected nodes and the words 'Opportunity Spaces'.

9

For re-imagining the retail and consumer products sectors across multiple regions in APAC, North America and Europe.

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6

That are future set with a backlog of hundreds of new future concepts imagined and conceived.

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Our MASTERS have become an ongoing thought leadership network to support points of view and real world development of the innovation propositions and concepts.

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London Master logo with line art images of Big Ben and the London Eye connected by a line graph.
Group of diverse people posing for a photo at the American Masters event, standing in front of a digital screen displaying the logo and name.
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Some of the innovative propositions produced by this hack

commonground

vytal

wardrob

rosie

SkinSense

lovelocal

Consumer Product Insights

  • Strong Emphasis on Circular Economies and Sustainability

    Shifting toward responsible consumption.

  • Technology-Driven Ecosystems

    IoT, AI, and wearables to enhance product experiences.

  • Health and Wellness Integration

    Tackling wide-scale societal health challenges.

  • Education and Behavioural Shifts

    Re-shape consumer behaviour for long-term change.

  • Personalisation as a Core Offering

    Matching schedules, biometric data, local customs.

  • Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration

    Across distribution, manufacturing, and the community, enabling stakeholders to work towards shared goals.

  • Hybrid Consumption Models

    Subscription models, on-site experiences, and convenience-driven solutions.

  • Democratisation and Accessibility

    Taking previously premium services (personalised health prescriptions) and making these more accessible by scaling through affordability.

  • Balancing Technology with Ethics

    Data privacy, greenwashing, and incentivisation of consumer behaviour.

  • Global Supply Chain Reinvention

    Reducing dependencies on long supply chains to focus on resilience, localisation, and transparency.

A yellow and white logo with the words 'Optimum' and a hexagonal icon.

WORLD RETAIL congress 2025

WRC 2025 OPPORTUNITY SPACES
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A group of people seated in a semicircle in a conference room, engaged in a discussion. Two men stand nearby, one talking to the other. The room has elegant decor with chandeliers, wall panels, and a blue accent light.
Business professionals in a conference room listening to a speaker, with a World Retail Congress banner and skyline backdrop.
A man in a black suit and glasses holding a microphone speaking at a conference, with a large screen behind him displaying a cityscape at night and text about solving future problems with future capabilities.
Woman with blonde curly hair wearing glasses and a black and white patterned vest, talking and gesturing with her hands in a room with a bookshelf and window in the background.

In collaboration with GERALDINE WHARRY, one of the FASHION MASTERS, we shared ‘Shaping Business Futures’ insights in various international publications.

"Diversification of raw materials is the key. Instead of relying on limited natural resources and synthetic fibres that have a negative impact on the environment, we need to move towards more sustainable materials. To deal with increasingly complex sourcing, consistent end-to-end transparency from start to finish is important. Also, consumers' attention to fashion is likely to escalate. Hyper-adaptive mass personalisation that matches the tastes of each individual may become the norm."

-Saher Sidhom

retail industry Insights

  • Seamless Integration of Online and Offline Retail Experiences

    Bridging digital and physical spaces will create hybrid ecosystems

  • Community-Centric Retail as a Competitive Advantage

    Retailers will repurpose their floorspace as hubs for community interaction, learning, and shared values

  • ⁠Hyper-Personalisation Through Technology

    Data-driven strategies will enable micro-tailoring of trends and products.

  • Circular Economies used to Address Sustainability

    Focussing on transparency through reducing waste and promoting longevity in product lifecycles.

  • Data-Driven Decision Making to Enable Agility

    The future of real-time data analysis and forecasting will require agile supply chains to facilitate quick responses to change.

  • Retail Spaces as Experience-Driven Destinations

    The act of ’shopping’ will become secondary to the experience of entering a ‘shop’.

  • Becoming Drivers of Demand

    Predictive analytics will be used not just to meet demand but to drive it, reshaping traditional supply chains into proactive innovation ecosystems.

  • ⁠Localised and Decentralised Retail Networks

    Decentralised supply chains will focus on local sourcing, reducing dependencies on long supply chains.

  • Collaborative Ecosystems Across Stakeholders

    Partnerships between retailers, governments, and tech companies will be critical for building the next-gen retail landscape.

  • ⁠Advanced Fulfilment Models for Speed and Flexibility

    Agility in fulfilment will become a core capability, with innovations like modular logistics, postponed labelling, and on-demand micro-fulfilment centres.

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Building on our deep expertise and a decade’s worth of Future Consulting, we utilise a variety of methods from our HACKMASTERS PLAYBOOK.

EY MASTERS AND FUTURISTS IN TEAR DOWNS AND BUILD UPS OF SCENARIOS, ONE OF OUR CREATIVE SCENARIO VALIDATION TOOLS.

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HACKMASTERS hard cards set with driver cards and thematic cards for business, technology, and consumer on a black background.

To find out more about our methods visit our MASTERY page.

Mastery
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EY logo with black background, yellow triangle shape, and white text reading 'EY'.

“New ideas require a collision of different people from different backgrounds coming together, challenging each other. a hack like this allows you to truly think differently, to challenge your own assumptions. ”

ANDREW COSGROVE - GLOBAL INSIGHTS LEAD, ERNST YOUNG

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