Daily LInks
1. Metaverse Mania Cools for Many, but Not for Marketers: Many marketers build their metaverse campaigns largely to raise awareness or improve consumer perceptions of their brands. Few, if any, currently make a profit from the sale of virtual goods, and they will find greater short-term value in using such campaigns to collect data on consumers. – Read More on the WSJ
2. Generative AI Has an Intellectual Property Problem: To protect themselves from these risks, companies that use generative AI need to ensure that they are in compliance with the law and take steps to mitigate potential risks, such as ensuring they use training data free from unlicensed content and developing ways to show provenance of generated content. – Read More on HBR
3. While no one would mistake “Harry Potter by Balenciaga” for real footage—except, perhaps, as a real fashion-advertising campaign—another A.I.-generated image – one of the Pope in a puffer – recently made news headlines because so many thought it was real. – Read More on the New Yorker
4. Gucci Is Now at a Critical Juncture. Here’s What Luxury Brands Can Learn: While previous generations of luxury clients were easier to convince, Gen Zers are the toughest target group to reach. They trust people more than brands, and whey are very cognizant of their own personal values. – Read More on Jing
Indigenous groups in NZ, US fear colonization as AI learns their languages: “If Indigenous peoples don’t have sovereignty of their own data, they will simply be re-colonized in this information society.” – Read More on Reuters
5. TikTok Ban Threat Scares Off US Merchants: U.S. merchants are both more interested in expanding their brick-and-mortar operations and concerned that the government could ban TikTok, and with it, the platform’s burgeoning TikTok Shop feature. – Read More on PYMNTS
6. Little activity for big globally announced M&A deals in Q1 2023: The first quarter finished with three pending globally announced M&A deals, each with a value of at least $10 billion, after two such transactions were announced in March. – Read More on S&P Global
1. Wanted: people who can learn to make €22,000 handbags. After years of rapid growth, driven by voracious demand from Chinese consumers, Europe’s luxury industry is facing acute hiring pressures for roles spanning everything from manufacturing to retail and management. – Read More on the FT
2. Hermes Boosts Kelly Bag Output With New Normandy Facility: Hermes inaugurated a leather-goods manufacturing facility in Normandy as the luxury brand seeks to meet rising demand for Kelly and Constance handbags. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. Model accuses former Harvey Weinstein associate of rape in lawsuit: A former model has filed a lawsuit claiming a one-time executive at movie studio Miramax raped her after luring her to a hotel with the promise of a meeting with the company’s then-Chief Executive Harvey Weinstein. – Read More on Reuters
4. Luxury Goods Account for 20% of Items Sold in 2022 by Crypto-Enabled Merchants: According to data compiled by BitPay, almost 20% of items purchased last year with crypto were luxury goods. This includes gold, jewelry, watches, exotic cars, boats, real estate, yachts, and handbags. – Read More on CryptoPotato
5. Uniqlo’s Parent Company Bets Big on Tiny RFID Chips: Newer and cheaper RFID chips, reader hardware, and software are enabling retailers to implement the tech at lower cost and with more precision. The cost of RFID tags has fallen from as high as 60 cents a tag a few decades ago to about 4 cents a tag. – Read More on the WSJ
6. Chipotle and Sweetgreen’s short-lived beef over a chicken burrito bowl gets resolved: The salad chain has decided to rename its new chipotle chicken menu item, following its fellow fast casual restaurant’s legal challenge over the previously named “Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl.” – Read More on NPR
1. At €200 Billion, Hermes Surfs Luxury Boom to Surpass Novartis: Hermes soared past €200 billion ($218 billion) in market value for the first time ever this week. The stock has been rallying along with other luxury shares this year, as investors see the sector as capable of withstanding an economic downturn. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Brand Watch: EU misses mark with ‘disappointing’ anti-greenwash proposal. “Claims need to demonstrate whether it is accurate for the whole product or only for parts of it. So no claiming “carbon neutral” if just the packaging is, but what’s inside is not. Life cycle data will be key.” – Read More on Reuters
3. OpenAI threatened with landmark defamation lawsuit over ChatGPT false claims: Australian regional mayor, Brian Hood, sent a letter on March 21 to OpenAI announcing his plan to sue the company for ChatGPT’s alleged role in spreading false claims that he had gone to prison for bribery. – Read More on ArsTecnica
4. How Rebag turned luxury bags into assets: Owning its inventory also means that Rebag has access to a lot of detailed information about luxury handbags. As a result, it has more detailed information about the supply and demand on the market than other players. – Read More on Fast Co.
5. Crypto-related US trademark filings nosedive in 2023: Crypto-related trademark applications in the US in the first quarter of 2023 amounted to 559, which is a 66.1% decrease from 1,649 recorded in the first quarter of 2022. – Read More on FinBold
6. Building a Great Customer Experience in the Metaverse: The metaverse can help put consumers in the driver’s seat in at least three major ways: 1) by creating new ways to discover and explore products; 2) by helping to fuse physical and virtual product experiences in more meaningful ways; and 3) by reestablishing connections between people and brands through AI bots. – Read More on HBR
1. Crypto Bros Ditched NFTs Along With Rolexes: For sellers of creations by Balenciaga and Basquiat, Chinese shoppers unleashing another wave of revenge spending can’t come too soon. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Metaverse Fashion Week had big brands but few people: Decentraland’s Metaverse Fashion Week featured virtual clothes and exhibits from some major names in fashion, but it was lonely, difficult to navigate, and pretty boring. – Read More on the Verge
3. What to Expect at the First AI Fashion Week: The first AI Fashion Week (20-21 April), held at Soho’s Spring Studios, is showcasing collections from emerging AI designers. – Read More on Vogue
4. Inflation Is Helping Drive a Boom in Secondhand Shopping: A growing number of people are buying used clothing, shoes and accessories, propelling the secondhand industry to $177 billion in global sales last year, according to a new report from online thrift marketplace ThredUp Inc. That marks a 28% increase over 2021. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. What Erin and Sara Foster’s VC Arm Means for Startups: Celebrity venture companies are the new norm. From SKKY Partners, co-founded by Kim Kardashian, to Marcy Venture Partners, co-founded by Jay-Z, celebrities are moving past endorsements and licensing deals and looking to get a bigger piece of the pie. – Read More on PYMNTS
6. March US corporate bankruptcy filings push Q1 total to highest since 2010: S&P Global Market Intelligence recorded 71 corporate bankruptcy petitions in March, the fourth straight month of increases and the highest monthly total since July 2020. The recent filings brought the year-to-date total to 183 as of March 31. – Read More on S&P Global
1. Yeezy Was Never Going to Save Gap. What Can? The iconic retailer has runway to tap into the nostalgia for Y2K brands and ape the revival of peers such as Levi’s and Abercrombie & Fitch. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Copyright lawsuits pose a serious threat to generative AI: “I’m more unsettled than I’ve ever been about whether training is fair use in cases where AIs are producing outputs that could compete with the input they were trained on,” says Cornell legal scholar James Grimmelmann. – Read More on Understanding AI
3. ‘Greenwashing’ Targeted in Latest European Regulatory Push: European officials rolled out proposals aimed at forcing companies to back up environmental and sustainability claims they make over consumer products with scientific evidence. – Read More on the WSJ
4. Apple Music trademark application blocked by U.S. appeals court: The Federal Circuit rejected Apple’s argument that it had priority over trumpeter Charlie Bertini’s “Apple Jazz” trademark rights based on its ownership of an earlier trademark from the Beatles’ music. – Read More on Reuters
5. Paying for Verified Blue Checkmarks Could Hurt Brands and Retailers: The saturation of blue checkmarks may lead to doubts about authenticity, potentially resulting in decreased consumer trust and spending. – Read More on PYMNTS
6. Unphased by the Resumption of Outbound Travel, Hermès & LV Boost China Expansion Plans: 70% of China’s luxury transactions are assisted by a salesperson, and 40% of Chinese luxury consumers contact sales assistants at the luxury stores where they shop at least once a week. – Read More on Jing
1. Swiss watchmakers counting the clock until Chinese tourists return: Nearly three-quarters of their spending was done abroad, representing a windfall for Europe’s luxury boutiques. However, Chinese luxury consumers have become more accustomed to buying domestically during the pandemic. – Read More on Yahoo
2. Getting a Clearer View of Your Company’s Carbon Footprint: E-liability accounting is a new technique that will help customers factor in a product’s environmental footprint into their purchasing decisions and will help create a competition dynamic that leads to reduced carbon outputs. – Read More on HBR
3. Paparazzi Photos Were the Scourge of Celebrities. Now, It’s AI: Images are often posted on social media with little to no context and may be taken at face value. As AI image generation improves, the usual telltale signs of fake images, such as hands with too many fingers or odd-looking eyeballs, will start to disappear. – Read More on the WSJ
4. Resale Is Having Its Moment, but Will Rent the Runway? During a recent investor presentation, Rent the Runway expressed its belief that it has only begun to tap into the market potential, as 56% of women surveyed stated their intention to subscribe to fashion services within the next 5 years. – Read More on PYMNTS
5. Luxury Watchmakers Woo Generation Z With Snapchat & Bitcoin: Companies flagship watches “resonate particularly well” with a generation quick to post pictures of their purchases on Instagram. They want “instantly recognizable products,” especially for watches given that they “rely much less on logos and monograms” than their fashion counterparts. – Read More on Barron’s
6. Revlon cleared to exit bankruptcy with $2.7B debt reduction deal: U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones in Manhattan, who has been overseeing the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, said Revlon had reached “a hard-fought multi-faceted settlement” that resolves a “series of enterprise-threatening” risks to the business, including “debilitating” litigation among its lenders. – Read More on Reuters
1. Nike faces shareholder proposal on human rights: In a shareholder proposal released Thursday, London-based Tulipshare requested a report from Nike on whether its policies effectively address its stated equity goals and human rights commitments. – Read More on Reuters
2. Is vegan fashion a greenwashing con? Vegan fashion has finally made it big thanks to a new generation intent on purging meat from their diets and their wardrobes, but look behind the curtain and it becomes clear that innovation sometimes causes more problems than it solves. – Read More on the Telrgraph
3. Nordstrom, Dillard’s Garment Suppliers in Violation of Wage Laws in California: A new US Labor Dept. investigation of more than 50 garment-sewing contractors and manufacturers found labor violations in 80% of the cases. Half the time, workers were paid off the books, with records either deliberately forged or not provided. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. China’s Reopening Means More Spending on Luxury: Luxury spending is set to return to pre-pandemic times — when Chinese consumers contributed to 60 percent of total industry growth from 2000 until 2019, according to Morgan Stanley. – Read More on Jing
5. Dupe, Private Label, Call It What You Want, Consumers Want More: With inflation still impacting consumer wallets, many are looking to dupes to save money. This trend is particularly evident in the beauty and fashion industries. – Read More on PYMNTS
6. RELATED READ: Searches for “Replicas” May Be Down, but Fashion and Luxury Brands Are Still Being Targeted. Searches for “dupes” have been on the rise in recent years as a result of the fact that younger users on TikTok, as well as other social media platforms, have adopted the term to refer to products, such as copycat luxury and fashion goods. – Read More on TFL
1. H&M Says Tech Investments Helped Sales Climb 12%: “Thanks to our investments in areas such as tech, AI and the supply chain, we have improved precision and faster response times — giving our customers access to an even wider and more relevant assortment that is adjusted to regions, stores and online.” – Read More on PYMNTS
2. Product Branding Takes a Deadpan Turn, Starring “The.” Articles are powerful tools, and different ones accomplish different things. “The” provides specificity and authority, so much that The Ohio State University fought to trademark the three-letter word last year—and prevailed. – Read More on the WSJ
3. RETRO READ: The Ohio State, Marc Jacobs, and the Quest to Register “THE” as a Trademark. The trademark registration for Ohio State follows from an array of rounds before the USPTO, which argued that the mark was “merely a decorative or ornamental feature of [the] clothing” it was used on. – Read More on TFL
4. Luxury Boom Makes Richemont, Burberry Key European M&A Targets: British raincoat-maker Burberry Group Plc and German fashion brand Hugo Boss AG are among the luxury-goods firms being marked out as potential M&A targets this year in Europe. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. If TikTok does get banned, where will advertisers go? “TikTok’s not the only social media with a questionable track record on data protection, Google and Facebook have taken reputational hits and fines for just that.” – Read More on the Drum
1. Some California ‘sweatshop’ garment workers paid as little as $1.58 an hour, says report: From July 31, 2021, to June 30, 2022, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division conducted 50 investigations of randomly selected garment contractors in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties to estimate the prevalence of violations within the industry. – Read More on EBT
2. Arrivederci, Gucci. The luxury logo boom is over. As the economy shifts and there’s a greater focus on sustainability, the era of the logo is coming to an end, replaced by more subtle, minimalist designs. – Read More on Fast Co. (And yes, we have seen this before, as we asked back in 2017: How Do You Sell Luxury in a Recession? You Ditch the Logos.)
3. The Metaverse Is Quickly Turning into the Meh-taverse: Walt Disney Co. has shut down the division that was developing its metaverse strategies. Microsoft Corp. recently shut down a social virtual-reality platform it acquired in 2017. And Mark Zuckerberg is focused more on AI. – Read More on the WSJ
4. How machine learning can create a more relevant, profitable e-commerce experience: By rethinking the customer journey and delivering relevant experiences tailored to each customer, e-commerce brands can create new profit streams that improve their bottom line w/o hurting their core business. – Read More on AdAge
5. The Deepfake Revolution May Bring a Media Revival: What’s notable about the leak is Prigozhin’s defense: He claims the conversation, or at least parts of it, was generated using artificial intelligence — and today, it’s impossible to prove otherwise. – Read More on Bloomberg
6. RETRO READ: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Deepfakes? Kardashian and art-centric examples of deepfakes are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg, as is the likelihood that copyright infringement and even potentially right of publicity causes of action will prove effective. – Read More on TFL
1. ‘Dressing digitally’ pins hope on blockchain to clean up fashion’s carbon footprint: Web3 innovations can cut waste from overproduction by using blockchain solutions to streamline workflows and allowing customers the ability to try on clothing in virtual environments before committing to making a purchase. – Read More on Yahoo
2. Luxury Brands Take eBay Style Pricing Model for Test Drive: Luxury brands typically employ three strategies to maintain their brand image: price discipline, volume restraint, and exponential price-quality trade-off. Price discipline involves convincing consumers that luxury goods are valuable, but not necessarily expensive. – Read More on PYMNTS
3. RETRO READ: High Prices, Stalwart Storytelling, Relative Covetability: What is it that Defines Modern Luxury? With a definition of “luxury” that is being ever-diversified and is possibly more fluid – and less defined by traditional metrics – than ever before, analysts and industry insiders have taken to questioning what – exactly – luxury in the modern market really entails. – Read More on TFL
4. How “Blurred Lines” has reshaped pop music: A decade on, the controversial song still influences how artists approach explicit content and musical copyright. – Read More on the Economist
5. Apparel Retailers Turn to Chips to Track Merchandise in Stores: Apparel sellers American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret, and Nordstrom are among merchants expanding their use of a new generation of RFID chips to close an information gap in supply chains. – Read More in the WSJ
6. Alphabet seeks dismissal of US antitrust lawsuit over Google’s online ads: The government, which filed the ad tech lawsuit in January along with eight states, had argued that Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite. Google has denied any wrongdoing. – Read More on Reuters