Daily LInks
1. A Gilded Age Is Fading for Luxury Brands. The slowdown is no longer limited to “aspirational” shoppers, as the industry lingo frames less wealthy buyers. Sales of LVMH’s expensive watch and jewelry brands were weaker than analysts expected. – Read More on the WSJ
2. Birkenstock stumbles in underwhelming US market debut. Birkenstock’s stock ended more than 12% below its IPO price on Wednesday in an underwhelming Wall Street debut that signaled investors remain cautious about new listings. – Read More on Reuters
3. RBC Capital Markets Predicts Luxury Sector Downturn. RBC points to the changing equation of price, volume and mix for luxury companies. While these factors have supported luxury companies in recent years, the firm predicts a shift in the equation that may not be in the companies’ favor. – Read More on PYMNTS
4. How to Expand Beyond a Direct-to-Consumer Strategy. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses play an outsize role in disrupting industries. Think of eyeglasses and Warby Parker or mattresses and Casper. But after that initial disruption, industry competitors often adapt. – Hear More on HBR
5. Five ways retailers are building the circular economy. The reverse logistics industry manages the collecting, sorting, repairing and refurbishing of products, components and materials for resale or recycling. It includes managing products returned by consumers, those damaged in transit, and excess and out-of-season inventory. – Read More on NRF
1. LVMH sales growth loses fizz as post-pandemic splurge wanes. “After three roaring years, and outstanding years, growth is converging toward numbers that are more in line with historical average”, LVMH chief financial officer Jean-Jacques Guiony told analysts. – Read More on Reuters
2. The Amazon antitrust lawsuit is likely to be a long and arduous journey for the FTC. A final decision in Amazon case will likely come years down the road, assuming the lawsuit isn’t dropped under a new administration, dismissed by a judge or ends in a settlement akin to the one Amazon reached with European regulators last year. – Read More on ABC News
3. Nike reigns supreme among teen shoppers. Teens’ self-reported annual spending is down 1% to $2,316 compared to last fall, and down 4% from the spring. Male teens report spending 11% more than last fall, while females are spending 8% less. – Read More on CNBC
4. Building the Next Luxury Conglomerate? MadaLuxe Acquires Tequila Enemigo. “We’re a well-diversified, multifaceted luxury platform with multiple operating divisions spanning categories and territories. As long as it’s luxury, that’s our pillar, our stake in the ground.” – Read More on Forbes
5. Luxury Ecommerce 2023. Worldwide personal luxury sales will grow from $415.45 billion in 2023 to half a trillion in 2027. The two largest markets—the US and China—will grow their share to account for 50.6% of total luxury sales by then. – Read More on Insider Intelligence
6. Hong Kong NGO Redress weighs in on fashion’s future. “We are seeing that sustainable design, through upcycling waste materials, is a strong technique and opportunity for Asian and Chinese designers, who are used to high waste rates due to the region’s prolific textile and garment industries, which generate waste even if they are very efficiently run.” – Read More on Jing
1. Prosus-backed fast-fashion startup Virgio, valued at $161 million, to shut down. Virgio’s thesis was that as consumer fashion tastes evolve, many are finding current market options inadequate. The startup sought to refine its design, manufacturing, and procurement procedures to cater more promptly to Gen Z and older millennials. – Read More on TechCrunch
2. The hunt for a new way to tackle clothing waste. “Instead of dyes you could use the structure of the fibre itself, the same for water repellency, rather than coating it, or to make wrinkle-free fabrics.” – Read More on BBC
3. Chanel Increases Prices in China as Concerns About Luxury Demand Mount. Chanel increased prices of its high-end products in China in September. The company also raised prices in Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and Japan. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. More ‘3 Stripes’ Nonsense: Adidas Opposes LIV Golf’s Trademark App For Logo. “I’ve been surprised before, but I truly cannot imagine a world in which the TTAB does not ultimately allow LIV to register this mark. They’re too different.” – Read More on TechDirt
5. Laying the foundation for data- and AI-led growth. Many organizations intend to increase their spending on the wider family of AI capabilities and the data infrastructure that supports them by double digits during the next year. – Read More on MIT Tech Review
6. Governments race to regulate AI tools. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT are complicating governments’ efforts to agree laws governing the use of the technology. – Read More on Reuters
1. CEOs view AI as a “top investment priority.” “I think it’s a recognition that generative AI is transformational and that it’s not hype,” Paul Knopp, U.S. CEO of KPMG, told Axios. “It provides opportunities to potentially grow revenues, but it also will provide opportunities to make workforces and business processes more efficient.” – Read More on Axios
2. Deepfake celebrities begin shilling products on social media, causing alarm. The news comes amid a larger debate on the ethical and legal implications of AI in the media and entertainment industry. – Read More on ars Technica
3. How AI is changing retail jobs at Walmart. AI also suggests optimal product placements on shelves, while a new feature under development will soon prioritize workers’ tasks according to urgency. – Read More on Quartz
4. Amazon reportedly used a secret algorithm to jack up prices. Project Nessie allegedly helped Amazon increase its profits by artificially increasing its prices across different shopping categories until the company reportedly stopped using it in 2019. – Read More on the Verge
5. ‘This Is a False Advertisement’: X Ads Are Being Challenged by Reader Context. Fact-checking notes on X are making some advertisers more cautious about spending on the social-media platform. – Read More on the WSJ
6. SAG-AFTRA Leader: Actors Should Get Same AI Protections As Studios. If authors are able to establish that OpenAI’s scraping of their novels undercut their economic prospects to profit off of their works by, for example, interfering with potential licensing deals that the company could have instead pursued, then fair use is likely not to be found. – Read More on THR
1. Companies race to make AI you can wear. Novel hardware designs are notoriously hard to get right — and the phone, with its ubiquity and built-in cameras and microphones, may be all most users need to harness AI. – Read More on Axios
2. Why tech companies want the government to regulate AI. A set of well-thought-out rules would ensure that AI firms are investing in products they know won’t be regulated out of existence in the future. – Read More on Yahoo
3. US SEC asks judge to deny Coinbase motion to dismiss its lawsuit. The agency said Coinbase was wrong to rely on a recent court ruling that found crypto developer Ripple Labs did not violate federal securities law by selling its XRP token on public exchanges. – Read More on Reuters
4. Boohoo Group’s Shares Drop as Fast-Fashion Retail Industry Faces Challenges. The U.K.-based fast-fashion retailer’s strategy of lowering prices to attract cash-strapped shoppers has resulted in a decline in revenue. – Read More on PYMNTS
5. Meta debuts generative AI features for advertisers. The new products may not be as wild as the celebrity AIs that let you chat with virtual versions of celebs, but they showcase how Meta believes generative AI can assist the brands and businesses that are responsible for delivering the majority of its revenue. – Read More on TechCrunch
6. Eurozone Retail Sales Slipped More Than Expected in August. The volume of retail trade was 1.2% lower in August than in July, when sales also slipped slightly, according to new and revised figures released Wednesday by European Union statistics body Eurostat. – Read More on the WSJ
1. Researchers Tested AI Watermarks—and Broke All of Them. “Watermarking at first sounds like a noble and promising solution, but its real-world applications fail from the onset when they can be easily faked, removed, or ignored.” – Read More on Wired
2. Luxury Fashion Relies on Indian Artisans. The Labels Tell a Different Story. Unbeknown to most consumers, top European labels have, for years, taken many orders to developing countries, including India, Vietnam and China. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. Gucci, Chanel and Other Luxury Retailers Splurge on American Real Estate. “Luxury was one of the first categories to see sales return to pre-pandemic levels. Real estate was a big part of their strategy when it came to continued growth and expansion.” – Read More on the WSJ
4. Why retail shopping is no fun anymore. While retail sales are healthy, the industry sorely needs shoppers to return to stores rather than just buying online, lest the in-person shopping experience — so important to that magic alchemy that bonds consumers to a brand — wither and atrophy. – Read More on Axios
5. “You’ve got to be data-driven.” The fashion forecasters using AI to predict the next trend. These AI tools can detect patterns within large datasets of runway show images, social media posts, search data, and online and in-store sales data – which can help forecasters spot emerging trends more accurately and, crucially, more quickly. – Read More on the Guardian
6. Elon Musk’s X hit with trademark lawsuit from marketing agency. X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, was sued in federal court in Florida on Monday by a legal-marketing company that claims the social media giant’s new name infringes its trademark incorporating the letter “X.” – Read More on Reuters
1. FTC v. Amazon – Three possible outcomes. Potentially court oversight could extend into other areas where Amazon mingles its proprietary solutions and services with its e-commerce operations, such as its Amazon Web Services hosted cloud platform and its burgeoning artificial intelligence program. – Read More on Chain Store Age
2. Gen Z views AI as e-commerce booster. Gen Z consumers globally are optimistic about AI’s role in e-commerce, with 55% of respondents interested in an AI assistant that would make online shopping more convenient by simplifying product discovery and anticipating their needs and desires. – Read More on RCE
3. Tom Hanks says AI version of him used in dental plan ad without his consent. One of the major sticking points of the writers’ strike was concerns that unchecked AI could undermine the work of creatives. The Writers Guild approved an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television that features restrictions on how AI can be used in film and TV. – Read More on the Guardian
4. Germany’s Birkenstock targets $9.2 billion valuation in New York IPO. Birkenstock, the German premium footwear brand backed by private-equity firm L Catterton, said on Monday it is seeking a valuation of up to $9.2 billion in its highly anticipated IPO in New York. – Read More on CNBC
5. Artists Are Losing the War Against AI. OpenAI is claiming to offer artists a way to “opt out” of their work being included among the millions of photos, paintings, and other images that AI programs like DALL-E 3 train on to eventually generate images of their own. But opting out is an onerous process, and may be too complex to meaningfully implement or enforce. – Read More on the Atlantic
6. How Supply Chain Visibility Helps E-commerce Brands Overcome Challenges. Supply chain leaders can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize return logistics systems and reduce costs. – Read More on SDC
1. What Needs to Happen to Tackle Fashion’s Climate Impact. On the one hand, lack of transparency and lack of clear data remain an issue. But more fundamentally there seems to be a lack of perspective in the fashion industry as a whole: stakeholders operate in narrow tunnel vision goal-oriented frameworks that aren’t broad enough to perceive the entire system in question. – Read More on
2. EBay wants to sell your grandmother’s vintage designer handbag as part of its growth strategy. We’re really the pioneers of resale e-commerce … We added authentication to build a new, game-changing level of trust on the platform. It helps protect buyers who, say, are buying a handbag, then will spend more on the site outside of bags.” – Read More on Fortune
3. What major cases are coming before the US Supreme Court? The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday opens a new nine-month term loaded with important cases on issues including gun rights, the power of federal agencies, Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement, the legality of Republican-drawn electoral districts and even one involving the size of Donald Trump’s hands. – Read More on Reuters
4. US Patent and Trademark Office issues 1 millionth design patent. It is for the ornamental design of a dispensing comb — a comb with a bottle attached, which can dispense liquid through the comb. – Read More on WTOP
5. ‘Counterfeit people’: The dangers posed by Meta’s AI celebrity lookalike chatbots. The more users feel like they are speaking with a human being, “the more comfortable they’ll feel, the longer they’ll stay and the more likely they’ll come back.” – Read More on France 24
6. Pakistan welcomes fast-fashion brand Boohoo despite poor staff safety claims. Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, has reportedly asked the British fast-fashion brand Boohoo to increase its presence in the country, despite claims that it has failed to tackle poor conditions at its suppliers’ factories there. – Read More on the Guardian
1. Lina Khan Once Went Big Against Amazon. As FTC Chair, She Changed Tack. The FTC’s complaint doesn’t really tackle, for instance, her earlier claim that Amazon used privileged data about its marketplace sellers to create copycat products that compete with them. – Read More on the WSJ
2. How billion-dollar store makeovers are taking on the “retail apocalypse.” In surveys and focus groups, shoppers continue to emphasize the importance of stores, says Katie Mullen, JCPenney’s chief customer officer. “Our customer tells us that they care about the store environment, product availability, and inspiration.” – Read More on the BBC
3. There’s petroleum hidden in your jeans. “Even when things are marked cotton, and we think we’re shopping for cotton products, we are still participating in a petrochemical economy,” said Paul Dillinger, Levi’s vice president of Global Product Innovation. – Read More on Fast Co.
4. RETRO READ: How Many Gallons of Water Does it Take to Make a Single Pair of Jeans? From growing cotton to manufacturing textiles, water is an essential component. We take a look at the relationship between fashion manufacturing and H20. – Read More on TFL
5. Bank of America Says Luxury Retailers’ Revenue Growth Has Peaked. Analysts at the bank said demand for luxury goods peaked in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2022, and in Europe in the first quarter of this year. – Read More on Investopedia
6. TikTok’s E-Commerce Ambitions Stall as Global Backlash Grows. Indonesia’s curbs underscore how the pursuit of e-commerce dominance is fraught with challenges. Navigating the conflict will be pivotal for TikTok as other governments assess whether the platform harms or helps domestic merchants. – Read More on Yahoo
1. Hollywood Studios Can Train AI Models on Writers’ Work Under Tentative Deal. Hollywood studios are expected to retain the right to train artificial-intelligence models based on writers’ work under the terms of a tentative labor agreement between the two sides, people familiar with the situation said. – Read More on the WSJ
2. Luxury and Technology: Toward the Boutique of the Future. The accelerated adoption of new technologies in the luxury sector has continued, with increasingly sophisticated use cases for the most mature technologies (notably RFID and AI), and a steady flow of experiments to enhance customer engagement (augmented or virtual reality, NFTs). – Read More on Bain
3. TikTok’s E-Commerce Ambitions Face New Regulatory Obstacles in Its Largest Market. Indonesia is prohibiting social media companies from facilitating direct e-commerce payments on their platforms. The move, directed at TikTok, means companies will only be able to advertise products but not conduct direct transactions. – Read More on Time
4. Using Technology to Improve Supply-Chain Resilience. To move forward, supply chain managers need more flexible, dynamic connections between trading partners to replace their current point-to-point, static connections that are unable to adapt to sudden, unexpected supply chain disruptions. – Read More on HBR
5. What Uganda’s war on second-hand clothes means for fashion. Kolade’s efforts to build a new kind of fashion ecosystem operates on the fringes of a broader and increasingly politically fraught global debate over what happens to fashion’s growing waste footprint, and who ends up paying for it. – Read More on CNN
6. Gensler is testifying before Congress and facing increasing lawsuits over his many rule changes. The complaints from the industry have been mounting for over a year: too many rules. No time for industry input. No roundtable discussions. No sharing of data used to make the policy decisions. – Read More on CNBC