Welcome to the New Europe Chapter!
- Retail Design Institute
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Hi RDI Europe Members & allies,
Heidemarie Kriz and I, Elisa Servais, are so happy to introduce ourselves, respectively as your newly appointed Vice President and President of the Retail Design Institute’s Europe Chapter.
Throughout her career over the past three decades, Heidemarie has held senior in-house leadership positions with international retail brands, making significant contributions to the development and rollout of retail concepts across various European markets. For more than 10 years now, she has been running her architecture and design studio in Vienna. She also works with universities and institutions to support knowledge exchange, education, and innovation within the industry. She takes a holistic approach to retail design and its evolving ecosystem, including digital transformation and AI. She is driven by curiosity and a strong passion for art, design, architecture, and exploring cultures and countries.
My side, I have been passionately practicing as a retail designer for 19+ years in Brussels, Shanghai, and London. I have worked both in-house and as a consultant, across the full range of retail formats, from SIS’s to pop-ups, flagship stores, outlet centers, shopping malls and even city center rejuvenation schemes. In 2018, my boundless passion led me to conduct a PhD on “valuable in-store experiences”, where I developed tools for practitioners to create such environments. I am now a Doctor of Retail Design. The time spent on academic research and teaching, combined with my field experience, provides me with a unique perspective on the retail design discipline. As a neurodivergent individual, I also strongly believe in and advocate for more inclusive retail practices. My goal today is to share my passion and expertise by promoting a more strategy-driven, holistic, omnichannel, collaborative, and inclusive approach to retail design practices. As you can see, I am a true retail design geek at heart with a wish to connect to like-minded professionals. I thus feel extremely honored and overjoyed to be able to assist in the launch of our very own European chapter for the Institute.
Heidemarie and I are both committed to advancing the RDI’s mission of promoting retail design across Europe and beyond. Our key hope is to bring our European communities together, including all retail design fans, be they established and new retail designers, partners such as visual merchandisers, lighting designers and contractors, but also students, academics and content creators. Having held many of these positions myself, I strongly believe that coming together can only make us all stronger and benefit our field at large.
It is through this unity that Heidemarie and I also hope to collectively elevate our discipline and bring it more visibility in the coming future. We very much look forward to organizing online and in-person events, store and factory visits, hosting webinars, fostering collaborations, encouraging learning opportunities, and supporting any other valuable initiatives within our own local community. We also very much hope to create strong bonds with our sister chapters.
As we wish this community to be as enriching to all its members as possible, we hope to hear from YOU about what you’d like to see from this Europe chapter in the coming two years. Your contributions will be most welcome to make it an enriching and supportive space for all our retail design enthusiast members and supporters.
We are both very excited to build this new chapter with you and hope to keep it fun and accessible as well as inspirational, of course. We truly wish to work together to make these coming years a time for connection and growth for all our members, so that collectively we may also continue shaping the future of our beloved retail design discipline.
We look forward to connecting with you soon.
From Vienna and Brussels with love,
Heidemarie Kriz, RDI, Chapter VP, Retail Design Institute Europe
Elisa Servais, RDI, Chapter President, Retail Design Institute Europe