Aeroporti di Roma: turning physical product into retail experience

Airport retail has a unique problem. The buyer has time but is in a transit mindset. The product has to compete with departure boards, gate calls, and a dozen duty-free brands fighting for the same wallet. A standard retail display does not cut through. A high-impact concept that converts curiosity into purchase does — but designing one that scales across multiple airport stores, ships at retail-grade quality, and lands on a non-negotiable retail timeline is a different kind of project.

The brief

Aeroporti di Roma needed a retail experience concept for its airport stores that increased engagement and sales without changing the underlying real estate. The constraint set: high foot-traffic environment, transient audience, a price-point sweet spot that converts impulse buyers, and a creative idea sharp enough to break the airport-retail visual fatigue.

Why blind boxes

Blind boxes — collectible products sold in opaque packaging where the buyer doesn't know which variant they're getting until they open it — solve several airport-retail problems at once. The mystery mechanic is a strong impulse trigger for time-rich, decision-fatigued travellers. The collectible angle drives repeat purchase across the same trip or future trips. The packaging itself becomes the experience, which means the in-store visual merchandising can lean into the format rather than against it. And the price-point can be tuned to land in the right impulse zone.

How we built it

Concept and product design

Wisewood Srl led the creative work — concept development, product variant design, the visual identity that ties the collection together, and the packaging strategy that makes the blind-box reveal feel intentional rather than gimmicky. The design language had to feel airport-appropriate but also collectible-grade: not a souvenir, an object.

Production at retail quality

Once the concept was locked, our Dubai sourcing operation took the design system into production. Variants were sourced from factories with proven quality on small-form-factor collectibles. The blind-box packaging — the surface that defines the experience for the buyer — was sourced separately from a packaging specialist who could hold registration tolerances on the print finish and resist the wear-and-tear of in-store handling. Quality control ran on every variant individually plus on the packaging build before consolidation.

Retail activation

The blind-box mechanic only works if the in-store experience reinforces it. We worked with the ADR team on display strategy: how the boxes are arranged, how the collection's variants are communicated without spoiling the reveal, how returning travellers can identify which variants they don't yet have. Activation isn't a layer added at the end — it's part of the design system from day one.

“When you turn the product itself into the moment of purchase, you stop competing with the departure board.”— Federico Franceschina, Co-founder & CEO of Wisewood

What this means for retail and experiential clients

• The product, the packaging, and the activation are one system. Treating them as separate work-streams produces shop fittings, not experiences.
• Blind-box and collectible mechanics work in transient-audience contexts because they convert idle attention into purchase. They underperform where the audience returns frequently and the mystery wears off.
• Packaging is product. If the in-store reveal is the moment that closes the sale, the packaging deserves the same QC standard as the object it contains.
• Source variants and packaging from specialists with the right tolerance class. A 1mm registration shift on a collectible's print finish is a defect; on a generic box it's invisible.

Where this fits in the wider Wisewood model

ADR sits inside our retail-experience and merchandising vertical alongside event uniforms, music merchandise, and brand-activation work. Same playbook: creative direction from the Italian studio, production execution from Dubai, all-inclusive pricing across product + packaging + logistics + activation support. The deliverable is never just an object — it's a system that converts.