Daily LInks
1. How Primark Built a Thriving Fashion Business Without Selling Online. Last year Primark made $9.5 billion in sales revenue, without a single penny from online shopping. It has gained a foothold in the U.S. fashion industry by pushing customers to shop in-store. – See More on the WSJ
2. Failure to lift ‘exploitative’ wages tests fashion firms’ commitment to human rights. The glacial progress of change was further exposed last month, with the publication of the Fashion Transparency Index, which revealed that 99% of major fashion brands were still not disclosing the number of workers in their supply chain who were being paid a living wage. – Read More on Reuters
3. Birkin bag demand sees Hermès profits soar to new heights. Analysts consider Hermès to be in a category of its own as far as pricing power is concerned as demand for its handbags consistently surpasses its capacity to produce them. That means many bags enjoy higher resale values. – Read More on SCMP
4. The phygital phenomenon: Luxury’s next ‘it’ products target Web3 communities. “I think we’re going to see every brand trying different approaches to the space. Over the next few years, we will see different variations as companies test the model out.” – Read More on Jing
5. Congress unlikely to pass sweeping new AI laws, key GOP senator says. The Indiana Republican anticipates the Senate will equip federal agencies with the people and other resources needed to implement laws already on the books in a world that is increasingly being transformed by algorithms and artificial intelligence. – Read More on Politico
6. If You Thought the Market for Yeezys Was Dead, Think Again. The German sportswear giant reported on Thursday that the first release of more than $1 billion worth of Yeezy-branded shoes generated revenues of around 400 million euros, or around $437 million. – Read More on the WSJ
1. Weak demand leaves U.S. fashion brands cautious on garment orders. American fashion brands say they are less likely to expand garment orders this year due to weak demand and concern over the uncertain economic outlook in the U.S. – Read More on Nikkei
2. Supply Chain Latest: US Clothes Retailers Break With China Amid Worries. A record number of US fashion companies no longer list China as their top supplier, the result of growing diplomatic uncertainty and concerns about forced labor. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. What Qatari royals have to gain from Kering’s Valentino deal. This investment gives Qatar’s royal members a foot in the door to the French luxury fashion giant, as it focuses on a long-term approach amid Gucci’s slowdown and rival LVMH’s post-pandemic boom. – Read More on SCMP
4. One of Gaming’s Biggest YouTubers Wants to Replace Himself With AI. Van Den Bussche’s AI influencer platform comprises two versions of an AI tool. The first is trained on a creator’s likeness – their on-camera performances and what they say in videos – and is used to create new content. – Read More on Wired
5. Instagram is working on labels for AI-generated content. The in-development feature highlights when a piece of content has been “created or edited with AI.” It’s unclear how automated Instagram’s labeling system will be, and to what extent it will rely on users disclosing when AI has been used to create or edit an image. – Read More on the Verge
6. How Companies Can Adapt to More Government Intervention. Prompted by the pandemic, climate change, rising geopolitical tensions and economic concerns, countries and groups of countries are once again using the power they have to intervene in the private sector. – Read More on HBR
1. Luxury Brands Want the Aspirational Shopper, But Not at a Discount. Herzog stressed that LVMH’s global presence and range of brands provide the company with a stronger ability to weather fluctuations in consumer behavior. – Read More on PYMNTS
2. Fast-fashion wars are warmup for Amazon battle. Temu offers everything from home appliances to electronics to toys, making it more of a direct competitor to Amazon. It’s still early days, but the upstart’s cut-throat prices and its parent company’s track record of taking on larger incumbents make it a force to be reckoned with. Its current skirmish with Shein may be just a start. – Read More on Reuters
3. Chatbots sometimes make things up. Is AI’s hallucination problem fixable? Described as hallucination, confabulation or just plain making things up, it’s now a problem for every business, organization and high school student trying to get a generative AI system to compose documents and get work done. – Read More on the AP
4. Fast Fashion Aims to Mend Its Image With Repairs. While some high-end brands have long offered to fix pricier products, the large-scale rollout of repair services is a new venture for mainstream fashion retailers whose clothes are typically much cheaper. The trend could also threaten to cannibalize sales of new products. – Read More on the WSJ
5. Can Fashion Break Free From Its Addiction to Plastic? Currently the industry is transitioning from virgin polyester to recycled polyester, in a bid to reduce its environmental impact and prevent waste. – Read More on Vogue
6. Luxury Jewelry, Handbags, Watches & More Worth almost $800K Intercepted at Chicago’s International Mail Facility. The box contained counterfeit jewelry, handbags, watches, caps, and socks displaying the logos of Tiffany and Co., Rolex, Yves St. Laurent, Hermes, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Versace, and Dior. – Read More on CBP
1. Bed Bath & Beyond investor Ryan Cohen must face emoji-inspired shareholder suit. In posts and tweets responding to Cohen’s Twitter post, many investors said they interpreted Cohen’s smiley moon emoji as a signal that he still believed Bed Bath & Beyond shares were headed to the moon. – Read More on Reuters
2. AI’s Growing Legal Troubles. Tools like ChatGPT don’t host things, they create things. They’re publishers. So, no Section 230-like protections exist for them. – Read More on the WSJ
3. Walmart Debuts ‘Sequel’ to Refurbished Merchandise Program. “Keeping products in circulation for as long as possible is more sustainable, in line with our efforts to enable a more circular economy in collaboration with customers, suppliers and sellers.” – Read More on PYMNTS
4. Adidas to release second batch of Yeezy sneakers after breakup with Ye. Adidas declined to give details on numbers of shoes that would be released for sale and how much of the proceeds would be donated. Asked if Ye would receive royalties from the sales, the company would only say that “we will honor our contractual obligations and enforce our rights but will not share any more details.” – Read More on the AP
5. China’s cutthroat e-commerce tactic goes global as Shein-Temu war escalates. China has proposed an anti-monopoly law to rein in the power of its consumer internet giants. The question is whether China will take action on the ongoing battle between Shein and Temu, neither of which sells products directly in China. – Read More on TechCrunch
6. Twitter Threatens to Sue Hate Speech Researchers as It Unbans Kanye West. Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wrote that the Center for Countering Digital Hate “made a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.” – Read More on Gizmodo
1. Outcry Against AI Companies Grows Over Who Controls Internet’s Content. The companies generally say their data use without compensation is permitted, but they have left the door open to discussing the issue with content creators. – Read More on the WSJ
2. Luxury sector slows after ‘bonkers’ post-pandemic spending spree. Spending on boats, aircraft, jewelry and other discretionary goods have softened, retrenching to pre-pandemic levels. – Read More on the FT
3. Twitter’s turn to X marks the spot for EU trademark trouble. If Musk files for EU trademarks on the social media’s new name, “he could come up against loads of different entities that have loads of different X marks.” – Read More on Politico
4. Wanted: Turnaround Artist to Revive Tired Clothing Brand. Apparel Experience Optional. Struggling fashion and apparel retailers like Gap are turning to outsiders with strong track records reviving once-flailing brands in order to end their own slumps. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. Meet China’s hottest AI app: a portrait generator charging US$1.40 for a digital avatar. The mini-programs are the first popular consumer AI products to emerge from China since the advent of ChatGPT. – Read More on SCMP
6. China-Founded Rivals Shein and Temu Ramp Up War for American Shoppers. Both Shein and Temu have sought to distance themselves from China amid rising geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing, with some U.S. lawmakers pushing for a blanket ban on Chinese apps. – Read More on the WSJ
1. Shein says it was profitable in the first half of the year as U.S. IPO rumors swirl. “We recorded the highest H1 net profit in the company’s history, compared to a near break-even during the same period in 2022,” Tang wrote in the letter. “In particular, our continued momentum in the U.S. reinforces our leading position in the market.” – Read More on CNBC
2. What are global companies saying about China’s economy? LVMH logged a strong rebound in China during the second quarter, while EssilorLuxottica continued to benefit from a recovery in China in Q2. – Read More on Reuters
3. How the U.S. could squander its global AI lead. While America raced ahead in generative AI chatbots, Baidu’s Ernie bot and Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen only became available to mainland China users in recent weeks — partly because Beijing requires AI providers to submit their algorithms for government vetting. – Read More on Axios
4. The tricky truth about how generative AI uses your data. “Up until this point, tech companies have not done what they’re doing now with generative AI, which is to take everyone’s information and feed it into a product.” – Read More on Vox
5. RELATED READ: Google Sued for “Stealing” Vast Amounts of Consumer Data for AI Products. Google and its owner Alphabet are being sued over their alleged practice of “stealing” web-scraped data and “vast troves of private user data from [its] own products” in order to build commercial AI products. – Read More on TFL
6. What Happened to Victoria’s Secret? Victoria’s Secret is rebooting its fashion show after a four-year hiatus. The feature-film version of the show, launching this fall, takes on the role of rebranding the company after years of struggles. – See More on Bloomberg
1. GitHub and others call for more open-source support in EU AI law. In a paper sent to EU policymakers, a group of companies, including GitHub, Creative Commons, and others, are encouraging more support for the open-source development of different AI models as they consider finalizing the AI Act. – Read More on the Verge
2. Louis Vuitton Is Working Harder for Shoppers’ Cash. The company’s marketing bill ballooned 24% compared with last year. The cost of generating enough desire to shift €42.2B of fancy watches, handbags and champagne in the first half of 2023 was a cool €5.08B. – Read More on the WSJ
3. Tracker hidden in a skirt uncovers what can happen to our recycled clothes. Donated in November and December, the items were driven to Warwickshire, then to Southampton. They sailed separately to the United Arab Emirates, followed by Senegal, before being taken by road to Mali, in west Africa, where two thirds of the population live in poverty. – Read More on the Times
4. Gap taps top Mattel executive to be its new CEO. During his tenure with Mattel, Dickson is credited with reviving the Barbie franchise and growing the toymaker’s other top brands, including Hot Wheels and Fisher-Price, according to Mattel. – Read More on CNBC
5. Chinese fast-fashion giants make gains in US. With affordable prices, free shipping, regular discounts and flexible return and refund policies, Temu, a subsidiary of Pinduoduo Holdings, which launched in the US last year, and Shein, in 2017, are attracting a growing user base. – Read More on China Daily
6. Global breakdown: How luxury retailers’ sales stack up. Burberry Group, Hermes and Kering said they saw a spike in overall revenue during their first fiscal quarters. McKinsey expects luxury sales to “outperform” the rest of the industry in 2023 and rise 5% to 10% over the course of the year. – Read More on Modern Retail
1. Adidas Hasn’t Found a Yeezy Way Out of Its $1.3 Billion Hole. Adidas AG has begun to clear the old Yeezys from the back of its closet. The process has gone better than expected, but this doesn’t change the fact that the sportswear maker still faces a future without its former star collaborator. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Americans Are Buying Less Bling. “We are experiencing drops with entry-price products, with online sales, with second-tier cities, which is a clear sign that the aspirational customer is not shopping as much as they used to.” – Read More on the WSJ
3. It’s high time for more AI transparency. The most powerful models out there, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, are tightly guarded by their creators. Developers and researchers pay to get limited access to such models through a website and don’t know the details of their inner workings. – Read More on MIT Tech Review
4. The Generative AI Battle Has a Fundamental Flaw. Copyright law is ill equipped to tackle the full scope of artists’ anxieties, whether these be long-standing worries over employment and compensation in a world upended by the internet, or new concerns about privacy and personal—and uncopyrightable—characteristics. – Read More on the Wire
5. Research: How to Effectively Market Green Products. Effective sustainability messages prioritize the personal and community benefits, while technical or scientific claims are less compelling unless tied to consumer benefits. – Read More on HBR
6. Apple faces $1 billion UK lawsuit by app developers over App Store fees. “Apple’s charges to app developers are excessive and only possible due to its monopoly on the distribution of apps onto iPhones and iPads.” – Read More on CNN
1. How Digital Twins are Transforming the Fashion Design Process. Some prominent fashion brands have started utilizing digital twin technology in different ways. Adidas, for example, creates virtual replicas of its footwear and apparel to simulate how they will perform under different conditions and environments. – Read More on Medium
2. Why we speak Starbucks. Branding experts say it is also an ingenious way of forging customer loyalty. Companies that persuade people to use their own terminology create “a sense of belonging and enhanced loyalty to the brand.” – Read More on the Economist
3. China’s live-streaming e-commerce market faces major disruption as AI-powered virtual hosts lower cost of campaigns, work round the clock. New generative AI-powered virtual hosts could disrupt the jobs of more than 400,000 human live-streamers across platforms such as Alibaba Group Holding’s Taobao Live, Tencent Holdings’ WeChat, ByteDance-owned Douyin and Kuaishou Technology. – Read More on SCMP
4. AI hype is ‘driven by marketing’ right now, says former FDIC chief innovation officer. “So much has been announced, there are so many glittering logos and great press releases, arguments on social media, things like that — but we haven’t actually seen a lot of work being done.” – Read More on Yahoo
5. How Do the White House’s A.I. Commitments Stack Up? “I’d love to see the A.I. industry agree on a standard battery of safety tests, such as the “autonomous replication” tests that the Alignment Research Center conducts on prereleased models by OpenAI and Anthropic. I’d also like to see the federal government fund these kinds of tests, which can be expensive and require engineers with significant technical expertise.” – Read More on the New York Times
6. LVMH strikes Paris Olympic Games sponsorship deal. The group will also sponsor athletes, including French swimmer Leon Marchand, and its beauty retailer Sephora will sponsor the Olympic torch relay, LVMH said. The French delegation will be dressed by one of LVMH’s “maisons.” – Read More on Reuters
1. In U.S., Regulating A.I. Is in Its “Early Days.” While there has been a flurry of activity by the White House and lawmakers over artificial intelligence, rules for the technology remain distant, lawmakers and experts said. – Read More on the New York Times
2. RELATED READ: A growing number of new AI-focused bills coming from lawmakers at the federal level are worth keeping an eye on. – Read More on TFL
3. He’s tried to ‘liberate’ colors for years. His latest: the “Barbiest pink.” The paint, dubbed “Pinkie,” is the latest salvo in Semple’s years-long campaign to “liberate” colors from legal restrictions. Semple argues that companies should not be able to limit the use of colors associated with their brands. – Read More on the Washington Post
4. Shein Spends $600,000 on US Lobbying as it Faces Washington Scrutiny. Fast-fashion giant Shein spent $600,000 on US lobbying efforts in the second quarter as it continues to face questions from lawmakers about forced labor and its opaque supply chain. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. Global retailers cash in on Barbie movie craze. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen this many brand partnerships coming out of one film,” said Jo Ashdown, managing partner at Mando-Connect. The craze stretches beyond retailers with Hyatt Hotels and Hilton offering Barbie-themed hotel suites in cities including Bogota, Colombia and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. – Read More on Reuters
6. AI investment is booming. How much is hype? The investment into Mistral AI is just one of many this year by venture capitalists jostling for a seat aboard the AI rocketship. In the first six months of 2023, they plowed $15.2 billion into generative AI companies globally, according to Pitchbook data. – Read More on CNN
7. Richemont Confirms China’s Diminishing Role in Luxury Retail. The industry had relied on a revival in China to offset the sluggishness in the U.S. market. However, this lifeline is no longer sustainable, as sales in the sector continue to weaken, presenting challenges for industry participants. – Read More on PYMNTS