Daily LInks
1. Europe Luxury Stocks Slide. Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert said inflation is starting to dent demand across the region. And LVMH, which was recently dethroned by drugmaker Novo Nordisk A/S as Europe’s largest company, fell 3.6% to its lowest since early Jan. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. India’s Digital Fashion Disruptors. The fashion and lifestyle space is India’s second largest consumer category, valued at $110B with approximately 10% online at $11B. The online fashion market overall is expected to grow to approximately $35B by financial year 2028 at a 25% CAGR. – Read More on Bain
3. Inditex’s Zara to launch its second-hand platform in France. The service, which will be available through Zara’s stores, its website and a mobile app, already exists for its British customers since October, and will be launched in Germany also this year. – Read More on Reuters
4. China’s Appetite for Luxury Is Back. Despite a sluggish increase in China’s overall retail sales in the first half of the year, Chinese consumers have been a major driving force behind growth in the global luxury goods market. – Read More on Caixin Global
5. AI and the New Digital Cold War. When it comes to AI — arguably the most decisive technology in this global contestation — we are heading toward two hermetically sealed ecosystems: one that supports open systems but is also associated with democracy, privacy, and individual rights, versus one that supports state control, information-flow restriction, and politically imposed limits on openness. – Read More on HBR
1. Luxury goods a handy alternative to getting rich. For the more limited and special watches, they simply will not allow you to purchase the watch as you don’t have a previous purchase relationship with the brand. In the world of luxury goods that’s an incredibly important distinction. – Read More on SMH
2. Affordable Luxury Sales Gets Caught in Middle-Tier Crunch. Leather goods label Tapestry saw its market share drop 2% between 2017 and 2022, with Tory Burch and Ralph Lauren dropping as well. So-called “aspirational goods,” lower-priced merchandise put out by luxury labels, are also seeing slower sales. – Read More on PYMNTS
3. What OpenAI Really Wants. Tom Rubin, an IP lawyer who officially joined OpenAI in March, is optimistic that the company will eventually find a balance that satisfies both its own needs and that of creators. One hint of OpenAI’s path: partnerships with news and photo agencies to provide content for its models without questions of who owns what. – Read More on Wired
4. What lawyers and consultants are saying about the UAE’s new e-commerce regulation. The UAE’s e-commerce law has been primed for a revamp for some time now, as the complexity of technology and the usage of e-commerce platforms has grown tremendously over the past decade. – Read More on the National News
5. Survey: Experts favor new U.S. agency to govern AI. AI experts at leading universities favor creating a federal “Department of AI” or a global regulator to govern artificial intelligence over leaving that to Congress, the White House or the private sector. – Read More on Axios
6. Shelved L’Occitane buyout is no win for Hong Kong. Reinold Geiger has given up on his tentative plan to buy out the minority of shares he doesn’t already own of L’Occitane, a move that would have delisted the European skincare group from Hong Kong in the Asian hub’s largest take-private. – Read More on Reuters
1. Fast fashion firms prepare for EU crackdown on waste mountain. Between 6 and 7 billion euros of investment will be needed by 2030 to create the scale of textile waste processing and recycling that the EU is aiming for, consultancy McKinsey estimated in a report last year. – Read More on Reuters
2. What if silent luxury was not a trend, but a symptom of a shift in the fashion industry? Taking into account the different types of capital established by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, dressing in expensive and yet boring clothes, in addition to granting cultural capital among the like-minded, also incorporates other capitals: economic (purchasing power) and social (connections). – Read More on El Pais
3. RELATED READ: What Does Quiet Luxury Mean from a Trademark Perspective? The rise of “stealth wealth” is a call for companies to lean more heavily on/develop alternative or additional trademarks. – Read More on TFL
4. Google hit with copyright lawsuit by Danish online job-search rival. This is the first lawsuit in the Danish courts under new EU copyright rules regarding platforms’ liability for content uploaded to their services that came into force in 2021. – Read More on Reuters
5. From China to Brazil, here’s how AI is regulated around the world. Some countries, including Israel and Japan, have responded to its lightning-fast growth by clarifying existing data, privacy & copyright protections — in both cases clearing the way for copyrighted content to be used to train AI. Others have taken a wait-and-see approach. – Read More on the Washington Post
6. Foreign luxury brands flock to India ahead of festive season, as big labels look to tap into growing affluence of Indians. There is an influx of new brands like French luxury retailer Galeries Lafayette, which is entering the Indian market through a partnership with the Aditya Birla Group, while Spanish luxury fashion house Balenciaga SA is planning to open stores in collaboration with Reliance Brands. – Read More on the Times of India
1. Luxury Stocks Are Going Out of Fashion. It’s the China Syndrome. Luxury stocks are at risk from China’s slowdown after riding high for months on optimism that the rich would return in force to shopping in the world’s second-largest economy and to traveling abroad to browse in the finest stores. – Read More on Barron’s
2. UK publishers urge Rishi Sunak to safeguard intellectual property from AI. The Publishers Association (PA) urged the prime minister to ensure that “UK intellectual property law … be respected when any content is ingested by AI systems and a license obtained in advance”. – Read More on the FT
3. A.I.’s un-learning problem: Researchers say it’s virtually impossible to make an A.I. model ‘forget’ the things it learns from private user data. It’s nearly impossible to remove a user’s data from a trained A.I. model without resetting the model and forfeiting the extensive money and effort put into training it. – Read More on Yahoo
4. RELATED READ: Using Generative AI in Europe? How to Mitigate Legal Risks. Data privacy is a critical issue when training, developing, and using AI tools. Generative AI models carry high risks because of the vast amount of data used to train them. – Read More on TFL
5. Companies Will Use Generative AI. But Will They Tell You About It? Companies have been looking to generative AI for a range of customer-facing applications, including generating ad slogans, crafting news releases, producing billboard images, and helping to brainstorm new names for products and services, as well as things like planning photo shoots or summarizing customer product reviews. – Read More on the WSJ
6. Two sides of the same coin: analyzing the recent Ripple and Terraform decisions. In July 2023, two federal district court judges in the Southern District of New York issued rulings that touched on a crucial question for the digital asset space — whether secondary market digital asset sales through trading platforms constitute securities transactions subject to the federal securities laws. – Read More on Reuters
1. There’s a New Way to Prove a $38,200 Watch Is the Real Thing. Luxury houses are now tracking the authenticity and origin of their most-coveted products using crypto’s underlying technology. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. RETRO READ: Blockchain and NFTs Are Smart, But Can They Revolutionize Fashion? Increasingly, fashion and luxury brands have turned to the latest advances in blockchain, nanotechnology, and the internet of things to authenticate their products, combat increasingly sophisticated counterfeiters, and guarantee supply chain transparency. – Read More on TFL
3. How luxury brands are wooing the new-age consumer. India’s luxury market is expected to grow to 3.5 times the current size and reach the USD $200 billion mark by 2030, according to a Bain & Company—Altagamma Luxury Study report from November 2022. – Read More on Campaign Asia
4. MPs criticize UK government’s handling of copyright policy related to AI. A group of MPs has criticized the government’s handling of a proposed copyright exemption that would allow developers of artificial intelligence free use of copyrighted books and music for training. – Read More on the Guardian
5. Google launches watermarks for AI-generated images. The SynthID tool can also scan incoming images and identify the likelihood they were made by Imagen by scanning for the watermark with three levels of certainty: detected, not detected and possibly detected. – Read More on CNN
6. Driving Sales Through Exclusivity Takes Time, Says Brunello Cucinelli. “Overexposure has always worried me as it is not exclusivity, and luxury is exclusivity, rarity and uniqueness, when customers feel that a product was made almost solely for them,” Mr. Cucinelli said. – Read More on PYMNTS
1. Can the fashion industry move from recycled bottles to reused threads? Some U.S. states are advancing legislation on textiles recycling, while proposals launched by the EU in July will make producers responsible for the full life cycle of textile products. – Read More on Reuters
2. RETRO READ: Up Next in Fashion: Extended Producer Responsibility. The aim is to incentivize manufacturers to extend the life of their products and to shift some of the environmental costs associated with product disposal from the consumers and the environment to the producers themselves. – Read More on TFL
3. Gucci cedes throne to Chanel in Korean used luxury market. Chanel topped the list for the January-July 2023 period, followed by Louis Vuitton, while Prada and Dior ranked No. 4 and No. 5, respectively. – Read More on KED Global
4. Luxury Bets on China’s Wealthy Shoppers to Maintain Growth. According to Bernstein, due to a 30 percent pricing difference and tax-free incentives, Chinese shoppers will allocate 50 percent of luxury spending abroad — but this is below the 70 percent before the pandemic. – Read More on Yahoo
5. Why Banned Cotton From China Is So Hard to Keep Out of the U.S. The U.S. has banned many cotton imports from China over concerns it is harvested by forced labor in Xinjiang, but the complexity of the global supply chain might explain much of the cotton is still making its way to the U.S. – See More on the WSJ
6. Luxury Retailers Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue Discuss Potential Merger. This potential merger comes as Neiman Marcus has been actively seeking a buyer due to a downturn in its business. – Read More on PYMNTS
1. Consumers Are Spending Like It’s 2019. “Consumers still have good savings, but they are being more judicious in how they spend,” Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette said. “More of their money is going to services and experiences.” – Read More on the WSJ
2. Can fast fashion kick its dirty habits? By 2030, the EU wants textile products imported into the market to be “long-lived and recyclable, to a great extent made of recycled fibers, free of hazardous substances and produced in respect of social rights and the environment.” – Read More on the FT
3. RELATED READ: What a New EU Human Rights Law Means for Global Companies, Their Supply Chains. The European Union will soon require thousands of large companies to actively look for and reduce human rights abuses and environmental damage in their supply chains. – Read More on TFL
4. YouTube & Universal Music Join Forces to Address AI Threat. The newly formed Music AI Incubator will explore and offer feedback on AI-related tools with the goal of getting more artists involved with the technology, Universal CEO Lucian Grange said in a blog post. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. Chanel’s Unexpected CEO Is Reinventing the Company. Nair’s ability to implement new ideas will be somewhat circumscribed by Chanel’s unwavering retail strategy. Unlike many of its competitors, the company does not sell products online, apart from eyewear and a fraction of its beauty and fragrance lines. Instead, it relies on a network of its own stores. – Read more on the WSJ
1. AI is so hot even KFC and Williams-Sonoma execs are talking about it. More than 1,000 companies mentioned the technology in their quarterly reports this summer, up from just 36 a decade ago. – Read More on the Washington Post
2. Thought You Saved $60 on That Vacuum Cleaner? Think Again. A number of large retailers face legal challenges for allegedly deceiving consumers by tagging products as being on “sale,” even though their prices weren’t always discounted. This common marketing tactic is making a comeback as struggling retailers try to appeal to price-conscious consumers. – Read More on the WSJ
3. EU monitors Myanmar labor rights as fashion brands exit. The EU is assessing human and labor rights in Myanmar, leaving the door open to a possible change to the trade preferences, including its “Everything But Arms” scheme that removes tariffs and quotas for imports of goods coming into the bloc from 47 least developed countries including Myanmar. – Read More on Reuters
4. H&M Group to reopen stores in Ukraine. H&M Group temporarily closed its stores in Ukraine as of 24 February 2022. The company has been in close dialogue with partners and authorities and is now planning to gradually reopen most of its stores in the country from November 2023. – Read More from H&M
5. FTC proposal would significantly add to M&A approval prep time. The amount of time it takes to meet pre-merger compliance requirements could skyrocket if US regulators move forward with a proposed rule that would overhaul the process. – Read More on S&P Global
6. Kohl’s Needs to Find an Identity Beyond Sephora — and Soon. Investors cheered as a key measure of profits exceeded forecasts, suggesting the company’s 2-year-old strategy of giving luxury beauty retailer Sephora space in its stores as a way of attracting shoppers is paying dividends. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. Asian garment makers call for more help from brands to adapt as Europe calls time on fast fashion. The framework proposes that by 2030, all companies selling textiles – clothes, mattresses, car upholsteries, and the like – will have to meet certain standards in order to sell their wares to customers in the EU. – Read More on Reuters
2. Google and YouTube are trying to have it both ways with AI and copyright. There’s really only one solution that the music industry — especially UMG — is going to accept here, and it’s not toothless AI councils. It’s creating a new royalty system for using artists’ voices that does not exist in current copyright law. – Read More on the Verge
3. Deepfake Imposter Scams Are Driving a New Wave of Fraud. Cloning a person’s voice is increasingly easy. Once a scammer downloads a short sample from an audio clip from someone’s social media or voicemail message—it can be as short as 30 seconds—they can use AI voice-synthesizing tools readily available online to create the content they need. – Read More on Yahoo
4. RETRO READ: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Deepfakes? The deepfake video of Kardashian “transforms [the original] substantially.” More than that, a potential fair use argument is bolstered by the fact that the less-than one minute-long deepfake video makes use of only a small portion of Vogue’s 11 minute version, and does not serve “as a replacement for the original video.” – Read More on TFL
5. Luxury goods demand is normalizing: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO. “The very exuberant demand patterns for luxury goods that we have all seen right after the pandemic are normalizing. And that is not only true for the U.S. States, but also for Europe, for Asia.” – Read More on Yahoo
6. How ChatGPT turned generative AI into an “anything tool.” Until recently, AI models were specialized tools. Using AI in a particular area, like robotics, meant spending time and money creating AI models specifically and only for that area. – Read More on arstechnica
1. “In trying to slow down fast fashion, regulators should focus on overproduction.” Emissions from fashion would need to fall by 50-60% within the next seven years to stay below 1.5-degree increased warming. – Read More on Reuters
2. With TikTok and Lawsuits, Gen Z Takes on Climate Change. With active lawsuits in five states, TikTok videos that mix humor and outrage, and marches in the streets, it’s a movement that is seeking to shape policy, sway elections and shift a narrative that its proponents say too often emphasizes climate catastrophes instead of the need to make the planet healthier and cleaner. – Read More on the New York Times
3. Chinese E-Commerce Giants Pivot to Selling Inexpensive Goods. China’s biggest e-commerce firms are moving toward selling more discounted goods as Chinese shoppers increasingly hunt for bargains amid economic uncertainty. – Read More on the WSJ
4. Levi’s first-ever chief digital officer is ‘focusing on the fundamentals’ to triple e-commerce sales. “If the consumer wants to shop in the metaverse, then for sure, we’re going to test that. For right now, though, we’re focusing on the fundamentals.” – Read More on Modern Retail
5. US Consumers Are Just Bored, Not Strapped. Retailers say customers are starting to tighten the purse strings. That may be due less to shoppers feeling stretched and more to a sort of post-pandemic hangover. – Read More on Bloomberg