Madrid, Spain based El Corte Ingles is Europes largest department store chain with over euro 17 billion in sales.

In a daunting retail environment, where in-store purchases, around the world, continue to plummet, one of Europe’s largest family-run companies has assigned ICON Worldwide to revamp its online wedding registry by introducing innovative Social Media Marketing applications.

ICON has proposed a multi-layered program focussed on establishing ECI as an integral part of the wedding planning process. The website will include community features, expert wedding commentary as well as full commerce opportunities.

“It’s not just an ordinary web redesign,” says Sandro Gamazo, Managing Director of ICON Spain “this will become a completely new interactive social experience with personalized applications for couples and their guests.”

The Spanish retail giant  has realized that size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to harnessing the power of online social networks to drive e-commerce. As the virtual monopoly on retail activity in Spain, ECI has a huge online commerce opportunity to corner the market.

Wedding registries are the holy grail of recession-retail, and the only category that is not shrinking. Moreover, in a recession, where couples typically take a longer engagement period, thereby increasing the length of the wedding registry commerce window.

Online wedding websites have become an essential part of a couples wedding planning.  El Corte Ingles is in the unique position of being able to provide a complete range of planning services, as well as the complementary products, to guide a couple from the engagement, through the wedding, to the honeymoon, and eventually settling into a new home.