Andrew Yeo, publisher of Retail Asia (covering 14 Asian territories) invites this year retail/retail experts for the traditional Top 500 Award Ceremony and Gala Dinner to Singapore. Retail Asia together with Euromonitor International and KPMG continued their survey of the best of the best in Asia.

Additionally an international jury is examining how the best retailers have overcome the present challenges and by what strategies they should seize the upcoming opportunities. The Forum "Retail Revolution" will be hold together with the Gala for the award- winners at October 28th 2016 (more by e-mail: kaylee@retailasia.com.sg )
 

In 1964 the exhibition centre Duesseldorf/Germany and the Institute for Self-Service/today EHI Retail Institute signed a contract to promote together self-service and shop-fitting jointly under the logo "EuroShop"-exhibition. In 1966 the first trade-show EuroShop was run with 19.500 squaremeters.

Today EuroShop is worldwide the number 1 exhibition for shopfitting, in-store-electronics, security-systems and POS-Marketing. It covers 110.000 sqaremeters net : the next tri-annual show will be in 2017. Its annual special EuroCIS meanwhile has 10.000 sqaremeters for store-techniques and will be integrated in the 2017 EuroShop Exhibition. The European Retail Academy was founded at the EuroShop 2005 as a link to academia. "Happy Birthday Greetings " from the European Retail Academy and Prof.Dr.B.Hallier http://cms.berndhallier.de).
 

Borgholm Castle at Oeland/Sweden was mentioned first time in 1281; becoming later a famous renaissance castle and finally a barock palace in the 17th century. In the 19th century it unfortunately burned down - but its fragments are still an attraction promoted by the local city marketing as a historic monument.

This historic location was in summer 2016 the Genius Loci for a joint exhibition of the Swedish Neon artist Hans Frode and his Japanese wife Tokiko Ishiguro Frode who is an Origami artist - and who is at the photo with Prof.B.Hallier explaining her Stag Bettle exhibit
 

Trade around the Baltic Sea was very well organized already in mediaeval times. The city of Luebeck/Germany was the power-house of the Hanse-Club (1358-1669) , a network of cities around the Baltic Sea like Bergen, Rostock, Riga, Tallin cooperating via special trade agreements like today nations do within the EU or the WTO .

In Kalmar/Sweden the Kalmar Union (1397- 1523) united Denmark, Norway, Sweden ( to which at that time also Finland did belong - like the castle on the photo) . Learnings : already 800 years ago farsighted leaders did overcome the local/ national segmentation for international trade. Even when the Kalmar Union lasted only for a century it did have an impact onto the ethnological behaviour which today we call the Scandinavian profil.
 

The IGDS Global Department Store Summit 2016 voted in its Zurich Meeting in Switzerland for La Rinascente from Milan/Italy to be the Best Department Store of the World. At the picture are Monica Monsch (Jelmoli), Katie McGrath & Stephen Sealey (Brown Thomas), Alberto Baldan (LaRinascente), Anne Pitcher & Beverley Devonish (Selfridges), Asli Karadeniz (Re-Orientation)

IGDS is the largest worldwide association of department stores and has 40 members from 36 countries on five continents. The Zurich Summit was attended by more than 370 leading international executives and stakeholders.