World Retail Congress

The 2025 Future Retail Challenge aims to gather insights from you, as vital members of Gen Z, regarding your perspectives on career opportunities within the global retail sector. Please review the competition details in the link below and consider joining us! Seize the opportunity to represent PolyU SFT in London for this competition!

Submission Deadline: 27 Jan 2025
Submission: Scan QR code to upload your portfolio

This year, the PolyU team is made up of four SFT students: Herbie Chan (Year 3), Rika Lui (Year 4), Muskan Shah (Year 4), and Dora Xu (Year 3). The quartet flew to Barcelona, Spain with their supervisors, Dr Magnum Lam and Dr Huang Tsai-chun, to participate in the exciting and intense event.

The Future Retail Challenge student competition is a key component of the World Retail Congress. This year, students from five other universities, including the EDHEC Business School (France), ESCP Business School - Turin campus (Italy), Fashion Institute of Technology (USA), London College of Fashion (UK) and University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), competed in the challenge against the PolyU team. The teams were required to select a shopping mall in a non-prime position in their own city or country, which has a closed department store anchor and a large number of empty shops. The PolyU team proposed a new retail business model for the Arcade shopping mall at Cyberport on the southern side of Hong Kong Island. They adopted the latest AI technology, ChatGPT, as a means to attract shoppers to return to the mall by offering novel shopping experiences and seamless customer services.

Drs Lam and Huang would also like to take the opportunity here to thank the PolyU advisors for their valuable advice to the team, including Mr Jimmy Chan, Head of Account Management of Farfetch; Mr Anthony Keung, President & CEO of Fenix Group Holdings Ltd; and Ms Tiffany Lam, Vice President – Marketing and Communications at Lane Crawford.

There was much excitement leading up to the final audition of the team for Future Retail Challenges 2022 on 27 Jan 2022. Four ITC students are shortlisted to participate in the event at the World Retail Congress, which will be held in April 2022 in Rome, Italy. This year, an industry panel with experts from prestigious companies selected and co-supervised the student representatives, including:

Mr Jimmy CHAN, Head of Account Management, Farfetch Ms Morgane PARIZOT, Education Director, Redress Mr Anthony KEUNG, President and CEO, Fenix Group Holdings Ltd Ms Tracy WONG, General Manager, Trinity Chain Holding Limited

Apart from the industry expert panel, ITC academic supervisors - Dr Eunsoo BAEK, Dr Magnum LAM, Dr Tsai Chun HUANG and Dr Salvatore LO SICCO jointly selected and provided guidance to the candidates. Four outstanding students were selected as the competing team: Muskan SHAH (Year 3), LO Wai Chun Katniss (Year 4), TSE Chun Ho Harvas (Year 3) and Simran GULATI (Year 4) from the Fashion Retail and Marketing specialism. They will participate in the competition as a team virtually on behalf of PolyU. Congratulations and good luck!

About the World Retail Challenge

The competition is a key component of the World Retail Congress, which seeks to promote future talents in the retail industry across the globe by providing an international platform for new ways of thinking and innovative retail ideas.

This year's challenge is titled Refashioning Fast Fashion: “How Fast Fashion Can Serve the Needs of Customers and the Planet”. Students are asked to develop a strategic plan that would help fast fashion retailers generate 25% of their income from activities that reduce or replace the use of new products by 2027.

ITC students will be participating in the prestigious Future Retail Challenge student competition which will be held in October 2020 in Rome, Italy. The team will receive sponsorship and professional advice from Li & Fung. The competition has become a popular component of the World Retail Congress, which seeks to promote future talents in the retail industry across the world and help talented students by allowing them to come together to facilitate new ways of thinking and generate new ideas.

This year's challenge is called “Project Retail Phoenix: Making a Retailer Relevant Again” which involves the development of a survival plan and strategies for a local store in distress or facing serious competition.

The panel of judges of the second audition included a guest judge - Mr Richard Lee, Senior Vice-President of Li & Fung, and ITC academic supervisors - Dr Eunsoo Baek, Dr Sun Young Choi and Dr Chris Lo. A total of 11 students participated in the first audition, and six were shortlisted for the second audition. Among them, the panel selected four students to represent PolyU as the competing team in the Future Retail Challenge. The team consists of Rachel Leung, Jenny Ching-yee Choi, Jessica Wan-hei Tsang and Sammi Wong. Congratulations and good luck!