I know.

Absolutely.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

I prefer Halloween.

No, I love Christmas and I love Christmas windows.

I like getting into the spirit.

I just don't really like it when we skip a holiday altogether.

So that does mean something, that there is hope somewhere.

We live in sophisticated times.

Exactly.

You know, the wars and illnesses and AI is scaring people and blah, blah, blah, blah.

So I'm not like doubting or questioning or whatever that is the state of the world.

I do, however, personally believe that media and negative media and everything that we are feeding people in negativity is also driving this crisis, right? And so I like to think that as somebody who contributes to retail, I don't want to feed into this negativity.

I actually want to go the opposite way and be constructive and be positive because I think that then we can try to counterbalance and hopefully bring people back into a more positive mindset where there is less fear and there may be less wars, etc.

But that's personal.

Was it mitigated? Was it negative?

Do you confirm that assessment?

Definitely.

I mean, first of all, you have to consider that here you have tons of different exhibitors showing beautiful products and like just the way that they're displayed is already inspiration, right? If you're in physical retail, you're always looking at ways to display products, to how can you highlight certain things? How can you create brand universes? Here you have all of that like in one place.

So even if there wasn't a retail focus, it would be interesting.

But they have started to put a retail focus by introducing retail coaching sessions.

So they have like a dedicated stage where they have experts who are rather known in France that give talks on various aspects of retail marketing, communication.

space, et cetera.

So for physical store, for sure, my assessment or my hunch was correct that Maison Herbier is an interesting way to get inspired as a physical retailer.

But then also what has been published on the shows that you have been visiting in Paris, because you had your little time playing, putting on your beret and going to Paris to visit both Maison and Objet and NRF.

Yes.

So as you know, we launched the Retail Design Institute Europe chapter.

And for the past month, one of the main goals was let's try and meet these shows that would be relevant to us.

So we spent actually a lot of time this summer and it's been a long time.

and somewhat demanding but also exciting time preparing this visit for our members.

And so we attended Maison & Objet on the 14th, we had our own event for the Retail Design Institute in the evening of the 14th, and then we attended as a group NRF on the 15th of september so quite uh uh an intense a couple of days um but at the same time of course i i took some notes for 20 cent retail and we shared um both of them during uh different podcasts um in short i think meso and objet i would say it's not a show that people would expect for retail but they should let's put it that way and you should listen to the podcast to find out why nrf um i think we can put it by saying that it's um definitely one of still like the name is so well known and it still remains like a reference in terms of retail shows but the the french show is still i think trying to find maybe its positioning its identity its uniqueness um and so people are still sort of you know questioning some of those things at the moment

Speaking of tour, you still have some space left on your retail tour that you organize next week?