Daily LInks
1. After acquiring Shopbop in 2006, Amazon is pushing its big-name brands onto the platform to build its fashion credibility: “There are some brands that create restrictions. It’s almost a negotiating point; you can negotiate to not let them [sell your brand on Amazon], but we didn’t see anything wrong with being on Amazon.” – Read More on Glossy
2. Gucci’s creative director: “Fashion is not only about garments.” Michele has been an industry sensation since 2015, when he radically transformed Gucci, then a fading icon of glossy noughties glamour, into a purveyor of quirky, eccentric maximalist chic. – Read More on the Guardian
3. Forever 21’s New Owners in Talks to Keep Most U.S. Stores Open: The company is planning to launch or expand wholesale lines in jewelry, footwear and handbags. It’s also planning to expand the Riley Rose beauty brand. Authentic Brands’ owner envisions “multiple” collaborations with other brands, both his own (Juicy couture, anyone?) and outside ABG. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. Amazon Will Be a Pale Imitator of Alibaba’s Luxury Look: The U.S. tech giant is readying a new fashion site to rival Tmall Luxury Pavilion. But it will have a harder time luring important brands than its Chinese rival because outside of their non-native China, many brands prefer to do the work themselves. – Read More on WSJ
5. Why the Solution to Fast Fashion Might Be Luxury Goods: Despite the massive success of fast fashion brands across Southeast Asia and the world, consumer sentiment is gradually shifting as companies become more conscious. – Read More on Entrepreneur
6. How Victoria’s Secret Lost Its Grip: Victoria’s Secret became a powerhouse lingerie retailer thanks to the vision of executives at its parent company. But amid changing consumer tastes, harassment accusations and ties to Jeffrey Epstein now under scrutiny, the once iconic brand’s stock has been tumbling and it has signaled it may be looking for a buyer. – Watch More on WSJ
1. Consumers are now viewing cell phones as a luxury item: Today, smartphones can last considerably longer and have infiltrated nearly every waking second of our lives, making it seem reasonable to invest as much in a phone as you might for a high-end suit. – Read More on WSJ
2. Are We in the Golden Age of the ‘Influencer Brand’? A crop of these OG bloggers (made up in large part by millennial women who have spent the greater part of the last decade hawking products on social media) have started to pivot away from pure influencer marketing to start their own fashion, beauty and wellness brands. – Read More on Fashionista
3. RETRO READ: Influencers Are Launching Businesses of Their Own, But How Will They Fare Compared to Established Fashion Brands? As part of a larger trend, fashion bloggers-turned-Instagram figures have placed their bets on their own lines, hedging their bets as the notion of influencer fatigue continues to loom. – Read More on TFL
4. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon wants to crack the code on apparel and home goods: “These aren’t just private label brands,” he said of Walmart’s fashion/apparel-centric acquisitions. “They have a soul, a social media following. They give us the DNA to create these digital native brands in-house.” – Read More on CNBC
5. Speaking of Walmart, here’s how Walmart will take on Amazon in 2020: Sales growth for its e-commerce site is up and the number of unique job listings at Walmart’s recruiting websites is down suggesting that the world’s largest retailer has its future pinned on digital as opposed to brick-and-mortar retail. – Read More on Thinknum
1. The shelf life of creative is getting shorter for DTC brands: Now, less than two years after Great Jones officially launched, its founders already feel like the maximalist approach that was once unique to Great Jones is back in fashion again among startups. – Read More on Modern Retail
2. What Brandless’ downfall says about brand building in the digital era: “To me, it highlights the importance of having a strong brand … Brandless was almost trying to do a double-step there, which was to introduce a new direct, digitally led brand and to do so with a relatively novel marketing technique of low touch and low information.” – Read More on Marketing Dive
3. Victoria’s Secret dumped hundreds of bras outside a recently closed store, and it reveals a dark truth about the fashion industry: Throwing or incinerating inventory that can’t be sold but could be donated is a big issue in the retail sector and stores often resort to extremes measures such as these to protect their brand image. – Read More on Business Insider
4. RETRO READ: Burned Bags, Destroyed Watches … There is More to the Alleged Destruction of Luxury Goods Than You Think. By destroying unused products, brands that import goods into the U.S. stand to benefit from the “drawback” or the return of certain duties, internal and revenue taxes and certain fees collected upon the importation of products into the U.S., for instance, from France. – Read More on TFL
5. The decline of the basketball shoe: Basketball shoe sales are down for the fourth consecutive year, and the industry is being crushed by the athleisure wave. Basketball shoe sales currently represent less than 5% of the athletic shoe market, a huge drop from their 13% market share in 2014. – Read More on Axios (via Redef)
6. Global fashion industry facing a “nightmare.” Chinese consumers make up 80% of growth in the market. “We’ve never seen a situation like this, where sales go to zero. And it affects everybody, whether you’re a big or small brand.” – Read More on BBC
1. Gucci parent Kering closes half of China stores, takes sales hit from coronavirus: Kering has closed half of its stores in mainland China and the locations that are still open are operating on reduced hours, CEO Francois-Henri Pinault as the company warned investors of a drop in sales. – Read More on CNBC
2. Online luxury fashion retailer MyTheresa reportedly plans NYSE listing: The Neiman Marcus-owned firm, which sells clothes from 250 of the world’s most covetable fashion brands including Prada, Gucci, Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana, may be valued at around $500 million in a potential deal. – Read More on NASDAQ
3. Teens are hacking Instagram into a modern-day eBay: Instagram has made shopping your feed a near-seamless experience, which has spawned an endless stream of brands that only exist on the app. But thrifting accounts, which auction off old clothes on the Facebook-owned app, is a very 2020 part-time job, and it follows in the footsteps of other ways teens use social media apps outside the norm. – Read More on Input
4. Want to know if your clothes are ethically sourced? Theory’s new labeling system is for you. It is currently working with its partner mills to trace each fabric all the way back to its raw materials. By 2025, 100% of its signature fabrics will be traceable. – Read More on Fast Co.
5. Jennifer Lopez Partners With DSW Owner On Footwear Line: Lopez and DSW are forming a joint venture, which represents a step beyond the licensing deals that celebrities are typically involved in. It will give Lopez the chance to earn shares in the company based off of her products’ performance. The deal is structured in a way that puts no cap on how many shares Lopez can own – so if the project pays off, the entertainer could end up becoming an important stakeholder. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. Figuring Out Fashion Week’s Carbon Problem: According to a new report, the New York shows are the biggest carbon culprit when it comes to buyers for boutiques and department stores who fly around the world to select items from catwalk shows and showrooms, as well as the designers and brands who move their collections from studios to display shelves to sell the shops their wares. – Read More on the New York Times
2. Victoria’s Secret Added New Safety Measures. Models Say It’s Not Enough: In the spring of last year, Victoria’s Secret imposed official rules to protect its lingerie models for the first time in its four-decade history. Management could no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the perils its models faced on the job — being alone with photographers or executives who wielded power over their careers, feeling pressure to bare more of their bodies or participate in private photo shoots. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. How young designers create powerful brand identities: It’s not just major legacy companies that have managed to create powerful brand identities. Upcoming fashion designers like Marine Serre, Telfar and Matthew Williams’s Alyx — all of whom found success in the age of Instagram iconography — have managed to establish logos that are clearly associated with their brands. – Read More on Vogue Biz
4. RETRO READ: Marine Serre Has a (Legal) Trick Up Her Sleeve: A Tiny Crescent Moon. When consumers see a sneaker with a swoosh on it, they know that shoe was made by Nike because the Portland-based sportswear giant has consistently used that graphic in a way that is synonymous with its brand – aka it has consistently used it in a trademark capacity. Marine Serre is aiming to achieve the same thing. – Read More on TFL
5. Schick Owner Abandons Takeover of Harry’s Following FTC Suit to Block It: Edgewell will continue to pursue its own direct-to-consumer efforts but it will take longer to build than it would by buying Harry’s. He also said Edgewell will continue to look for smaller brands it can acquire. – Read More on WSJ
1. Can retailers combat consumer desire for counterfeits? “With the rise of social media, with the rise of Instagram and people trying to show very aspirational lifestyles, that’s a big driver of it. Realistically, these people that are buying counterfeit goods are never going to buy the legitimate good.” – Read More on Retail Dive
2. Apple is Really a Luxury-Goods Stock, Analyst Says: Categorizing Apple with other large technology companies is problematic because Apple’s business model is weighted toward selling hardware, rather than software. Clustering Apple with consumer and luxury goods makes more sense. – Read More on Barron’s
3. RETRO READ: The company has evolved from its roots as a technology operation to more of a lifestyle-centric endeavor, complete with more expensive iPhone models, which some say “is a sign the smartphone maker is moving further into the luxury market.” – Read More on TFL
4. Here’s why malls in America might not be dead after all: Consumers have increasingly favored buying products online or at strip malls where it is easier to quickly enter, shop and then leave. But some high-end mall operators have found ways to fend of the decline, offering luxury tenants and other amenities to lure in shoppers. – Read More on CNBC
5. Artist Phillip Toledano To Sell Tweaked Rolex Submariners for $25,000: It’s a project with King Nerd that is unsanctioned by the watchmaker, but Toledano is channeling the spirit of the timepiece with artwork depicting a Jules Verne-era submariner. – Read More on Bloomberg
6. Speaking of modified Rolexes, Rolex has something of a history of suing over this precise thing since the Swiss watchmaker looks beyond the traditional definition of counterfeit to include watches that come out of its workshops but that have been altered to the point that they look or function differently than the original. – Read More on TFL
1. Gwyneth Paltrow Won’t Get Pushed Around by Venture Capitalists: “If you look at stores like Nordstrom, for example, who have that pop-in model and they’re driving foot traffic in different activations — that’s really going to be the savior – bringing experiential elements into retail, get that throughput by giving people a reason to go somewhere that they can’t do online.” – Read More on Bloomberg
2. The Era of Antisocial Social Media: They’re saying that after years spent constructing carefully curated online identities and accumulating heaps of online “friends,” they want to be themselves and make real friends based on shared interests. They’re also craving privacy, safety, and a respite from the throngs of people on social platforms. – Read More on HBR
3. Idea burnout: As more DTC brands enter the fray, founders struggle to differentiate. In the early days, it was enough to be a digitally-native brand that sold a product that was hard to find online. – Read More on Modern Retail
4. Luxury Goods Will Test Investors’ Immunity to Coronavirus: Stocks like LVMH and Burberry remain expensive despite their heavy exposure to the growing outbreak … even though strong brands like Hermès and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton will be equally hurt by declining footfall in China. – Read More on WSJ
5. Kim Kardashian West breaks down a bad business deal: In her 2011 partnership with Sears, Kardashian got a 6% cut and despite, “flying from city to city, country to country” to promote the line, she had little to no control over the quality of the products. – Read More on CNBC
6. Our obsession with “color trends” is killing the planet: The fashion industry has found many clever ways to cultivate demand for clothes, and color is one of them. – Read More on Fast Co
1. When Chinese Consumers Stay Home, the World’s Retailers Take Hit: “Reliance on the Chinese consumer is about to be fully exposed.” The stakes are especially high for luxury-goods companies like Burberry, LVMH and Kering, which have ridden a wave of Chinese demand. Mass-market chains, such as Starbucks and Uniqlo, have also pinned their hopes on the fast-growing market, full of consumers eager to splash out on foreign brands. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. How Glossier turned itself into a billion-dollar beauty brand: When Glossier founder and CEO Emily Weiss first had the idea of launching a beauty startup, she began with 4 products and a simple question: how could you make a beauty brand whose sweatshirt people would want to wear? – Read More on Wired
3. Future of New York’s garment district in doubt as manufacturers driven to Paris, Milan and London – or simply just shut: Exorbitant rate increases have forced many manufacturers to move production abroad – not to China but to Paris, Milan and London. Those European cities are home to more prestigious fashion weeks than New York’s and receive more government support. – Read More on SCMP
4. U.S.-China Trade War Reshaped Global Commerce: China’s loss was Vietnam’s gain, accelerating a long-term trend of Chinese factories moving to Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries where labor costs are lower. Vietnam’s apparel trade with the U.S. has been growing for years, and clothing made up about a third of the $66 billion in imports from Vietnam last year. – Read More on WSJ
5. ‘Clothing designed to become garbage’ — Fashion industry grapples with pollution, waste issues: “The urge to sell more and more, produce more and get consumers to buy more is still the DNA of the industry. Clothes have a short life span and end up in a garbage dump. That has to change.” – Read More on CNBC
6. RETRO READ: Can the Fashion Industry Ever Really Be Sustainable? Can ethical consumption really exist in the mainstream fashion market? Psychology and behavioral science may suggest that ethical fashion consumption is a pipe dream. – Read More on TFLShare
1. White House adviser accuses Amazon’s Jeff Bezos of backing out of meeting on fake products: Navarro said Trump is also angry over the trade of counterfeit goods on Amazon and “thinks it’s outrageous what the e-commerce platforms are getting away with” at the expense of brick-and-mortar retail stores in the United States. – Read More on the Washington Post
2. The North Face’s latest quest? Clothes that last forever: “As designers, we’re thinking about how to design products that will perform when the customer uses it, but … we’re thinking about what happens at the end of the garment’s life. We can focus on extending the product’s lifespan and finding new purposes for it when it’s finally beyond use.” – Read More on Fast Co.
3. This was the worst holiday for Macy’s foot traffic since at least 2016: Virtually all department stores closed stores in 2019, and some — like Barney’s — called it quits entirely. And while Macy’s foot traffic outpaces that of other department stores, this downward trend in holiday pickup will not be a good thing for the business when it reports holiday sales in its next earnings report. – Read More on Thinknum
4. Why LVMH Invested in a Beauty Brand Sold at Target: Versed, a ‘clean’ beauty range that debuted last spring, has an unlikely new backer: the world’s largest luxury conglomerate. The investment in Versed signals new priorities for LVMH: a desire to get into clean skincare, and, potentially, a new focus on mass-market beauty. – Read More on BoF
5. Amid climate crisis, fashion rethinks the runway show: Brands are increasingly offsetting the impact of runway shows and some are treating fashion month as an opportunity to convene and rethink the industry’s business model for greater sustainability, but critics argue fashion week still perpetuates the bigger problem of overproduction and conspicuous consumption. – Read More on Vogue Biz
1. Why some DTC brands are pulling out of Amazon: Concerns include increasingly competing with counterfeit items, as well as difficulty handling customer service independently from Amazon. All three companies had frustrations with the opaque algorithm that favors some items over others, along with a lack of access to their own customers’ data. – Read More on Modern Retail
2. With lipsticks, Hermes branches into competitive cosmetics world: The roll-out of its nearly $70 lipsticks brings more accessible ranges to a company known for bags that can sell for over $10,000, while cosmetics are often a highly profitable sideline for fashion firms. – Read More on Yahoo
3. RETRO READ: What is the State of Luxury’s Hundred Million Dollar Licensing Deals? Forget the runway. What consumers across the globe are buying – and buying a lot of – you are not going to find there. Instead, you will find them coming from Coty or Luxottica or Interparfums. – Read More on TFL
4. LVMH set to raise $10 billion-plus from bond markets for Tiffany deal: The company is also set to achieve an extremely attractive funding rate with a portion of the debt likely to carry a negative yield, by Reuters calculations. Such a rate could potentially provide encouragement for other companies planning acquisitions. – Read More on Reuters
5. On TikTok, who owns a viral dance? “Renegade” and the thorny ethics of the world’s most popular dance memes. The Renegade is just one of the dozens of viral internet dances whose choreographers have gone largely unacknowledged as they take over the world. – Read More on Vox
6. The drive toward sustainability in packaging: Consumer awareness to packaging waste in oceans and landfills is driving change, and some of the largest and most developed countries and regions are taking significant steps to introduce regulations to drive sustainability. – Read More on McKinsey