Daily LInks
1. Companies Used to Announce Products. Now They ‘Drop’ Them: A reason drops are spreading beyond fashion is that all industries now face similar supply chain bottlenecks, and drops can be a way to manage, or even make a virtue of such challenges. – Read More on the WSJ
2. The death of brick-and-mortar is “extraordinarily exaggerated.” More than 4,000 stores have opened in the U.S. this year, more than twice as many than those that have closed, according to Coresight Research data, building on last year’s trend. – Read More on Yahoo
3. Curbside pickup is here to stay, and retailers are going all in: “As in-store shopping meaningfully returns, retailers now have to start comparing the cost of curbside fulfillment using additional labor to in-store purchases,” with moves to add fees for curbside pickup being touted “as a way to [incentivize] consumers fully back into stores.” – Read More on Washington Post
4. Williams-Sonoma will soon launch a collaboration with Roblox, says the home retailer’s CEO: “West Elm is going to be the first home furnishings retailer to provide digital furniture and be a partner with Roblox.” – Read More on CNBC
5. Europe’s High Street Retailers Feel Loss of Chinese Luxury Shoppers: Chinese shoppers purchased most of their luxury goods abroad to reap the authenticity factor, shop tax-free using European rebates, and save on the overall base price. These reasons helped make Chinese tourists the highest per-capita luxury spenders among all travelers. – Read More on PYMNTS
1. Private label ousting big brands as cost of living crisis grows: Private label sales have been on the rise for years, but a global cost of living crisis driven by soaring energy prices appears to be turbo-charging the trend. – Read More on Reuters
2. Retail is back: Empty space now below pre-Covid levels. While consumer spending influences whether companies fill retail spaces, other factors are at play. Retail bankruptcies are at their lowest level in seven years. And inflation could be prompting Americans to spend money before prices go up. – Read More on TRD
3. The Role of Localization in the Fashion Industry: Globalization, fast fashion, and heightened accessibility have given global consumers the freedom to shop outside of their local box. But now, retailers need to ensure they can take on the challenge of making their products locally appealing. – Read More on My Total Retail
4. RELATED READ: From Localization to Evolving Brand Narratives: 5 Fundamental Shifts that Are Underway in the Luxury Sector. Luxury brands are placing greater reliance on local and in-house manufacturing and resources, reducing their reliance on foreign production and reimagining their business models to cater to a new world. – Read More on TFL
5. California retail workers vote for union at second REI store: Employees at an REI store in Berkeley, California, on Thursday voted to form a union, the outdoor equipment and apparel retailer’s second location to do so in a time when more service workers have been choosing to organize. – Read More on Reuters
1. Victoria’s Secret is latest retailer to cut its 2022 outlook: Victoria’s Secret VSCO said its profits amounted to $70 million in the quarter, compared with $151 million in the second quarter of 2021. – Read More on MarketWatch
2. Three things Gap needs to fix to turn its struggling business around: Prove out the Yeezy bet. More than two years later, it’s unclear just how much the Yeezy gear will move the needle for Gap, if at all. – Read More on CNBC
3. Florida adopts anti-ESG rule for state’s $186B pension plan: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration on Aug. 23 approved a resolution barring the state’s $186 billion pension fund from considering environmental, social or governance factors when making investment decisions. – Read More on S&P Global
4. Can e-commerce help customs agencies fix old problems? Conservative estimates project that the market for cross-border e-commerce will grow from $300 billion in 2020 to $1 trillion by 2030. In a bolder scenario, the overall market could total $2 trillion by the end of this decade. – Read More on McKinsey
5. Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh: “I’d love to work with Dior. [Also,] we worked with Tremaine Emory, who had a brand called Denim Tears. He’s now the lead designer at Supreme, and I’m hoping that we will be able to continue to partner with him, even though Supreme is owned by one of our competitors.” – Read More on the WSJ
1. Gen Z consumers are feeling the pinch. For luxury brands, that’s a big problem: Gen Z were meant to make up a fifth of all luxury spending by 2025, but inflation and unemployment are hitting the discretionary incomes of young consumers. – Read More on SCMP
2. China’s $89 billion e-commerce giant JD.com posts slowest quarterly growth on record: Revenue rose 5.4% in the April to June quarter, marking the Chinese e-commerce giant’s slowest year-on-year growth on record. – Read More on CNBC
3. Physical Retail’s Sales Surge Above 2019 Levels Nothing to Cheer About: Even before the pandemic, “the traditional physical store model, which is how most everyone today defines physical retail and measures its sales, pretty much is — and has been for the last several years — on life support.” – Read More on PYMNTS
4. Lamborghini has already sold all its cars until 2024: Italian sports car maker Lamborghini has already pre-sold the entire production run to early 2024, its boss told AFP on Tuesday, the latest demonstration that luxury goods are seemingly unaffected by global economic uncertainty. – Read More on AFP
5. Macy’s CEO Says Belt-Tightening Isn’t Hitting Luxury, Work Wear: Consumers are still turning to Macy’s Inc. for work wear and luxury goods even as inflation puts pressure on household budgets, CEO Jeff Gennette said. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. China’s Pinduoduo to Enter US Market in First International Step: The Shanghai-based company is looking for new growth avenues at a time when its domestic economy is sputtering, and will follow in the footsteps of successful international ventures like Shein and AliExpress. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. E-Commerce revenue to shrink for the first time ever: Supply chain issues is the largest single weakening factor, with inflation also playing a significant part in the downwards revision. The widely expected global recession and subsequent increases in unemployment leave the e-commerce sector significant hurdles to overcome. – Read More on WeForum
3. TikTok turns Costco into a fashion magnet: “I think a lot of people are just really interested in the affordability, the convenience and then kind of taking part of this hype, which is kind of a very interesting phenomenon for Costco.” – Read More on Retail Wire
4. TikTok finds e-commerce success in Southeast Asia as political scrutiny and workplace woes weigh in the West: The SE Asia market has become a key focus as TikTok faces renewed scrutiny of its data privacy policies and as it struggles with retail programs in major Western economies. – Read More on SCMP
5. H&M Aims to Reduce Emissions and Grow Sales—All at Once: Since 2013, it has been collecting customers’ used garments in stores for resale or recycling, but executives say they can’t determine what percentage of those goods has been turned into new clothing. – Read More on the WSJ
1. Gulf e-commerce company Noon to buy fashion venture Namshi: Dubai’s Emaar Properties said it is selling fashion e-commerce venture Namshi to Noon, an e-commerce company backed by Dubai billionaire Mohamed Alabbar and Saudi Arabian sovereign fund the Public Investment Fund. – Read More on Reuters
2. Retailers Stumble Adjusting to More Selective Shoppers: Stores are responding by pushing more discounts and highlighting private-label brand to shoppers, and, in some cases, canceling billions of dollars’ worth of orders with vendors. – Read More on the New York Times
3. How e-commerce brands can outlast this market downturn: The DTC playbook was written during a period when customer acquisition was relatively cheap – but that customers left brands with an unsustainable over-reliance on growth. – Read More on TechCrunch
4. Metaverse jobs are disappearing as hiring slows at Google, Facebook: While full-time metaverse jobs have become more scarce, the number of freelance gigs for related services has risen, a study found. – Read More on SCMP
5. Gen Z poses a problem for the luxury industry: Execs are troubled by a hit to young Chinese shoppers, not only because mainland China has been a major driver of the industry’s growth in recent years, but also because high end consumers in the world’s second-largest economy are a decade younger than the global average of 38. – Read More on Reuters
1. Why anti-fashion Converse are the fastest-selling sneakers in the world: Fast forward 19 years from when Converse was acquired by Nike, and they’ve ballooned to $1.9 billion, achieved by regularly refreshing its offer with myriad new colorways, collaborations and design tweaks. – Read More on the Telegraph
2. Gen Z poses a problem for the luxury industry: “This might be the first time that a lot of young adults (in China) are facing (such an) economic impact, so it will be a testing ground on how these consumers are going to spend on luxury items going forward.” – Read More on Reuters
3. Retail therapy: Shoppers pamper themselves with clothes, luxury goods in nation’s malls. “After prolonged lockdowns in our two largest states of NSW and Victoria in the first half of 2022, the retail sector has enjoyed a sustained rebound in retail sales and importantly, retailer confidence.” – Read More on SMH
4. US Retail Feels Inventory Pain as Spending Shifts: Earnings from US retailers, together with fresh figures on port volumes and retail sales, are showing the effects of red-hot inflation on both consumer spending and the logistics networks that are trying to match frayed supply chains with shifting demand. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. Tapestry, Estee Lauder feel earnings pinch from China lockdowns: Estee, which makes MAC lipstick and La Mer skincare products, gets over a third of its revenue from China, while Coach handbag maker Tapestry generates about 20% of its sales from the region. – Read More on Reuters
1. Online fashion retailer Boohoo acquires 7.1% of Revolution Beauty: Boohoo already sells Revolution Beauty products through several of the group’s direct-to-consumer brand websites and its online digital department store, Debenhams. – Read More on Reuters
2. U.S. Retail Spending Held Steady in July: Shoppers have maintained spending despite the highest annual U.S. inflation in four decades, though they are getting less for their money because of higher prices. The retail sales figures aren’t adjusted for inflation. – Read More on the WSJ
3. Why are rich Chinese consumers selling their Rolexes? It seems even the wealthy are exercising caution, cutting back on their discretionary spending and selling their Rolex watches and Hermès bags to raise cash. Whether a smart and strategic move or panic selling based on fear of the unknown, the outcome is the same. – Read More on SCMP
4. Luxury Brands Discover Blockchain: What it allows the brands to do is to engage market direct sales, along with second market trading using an existing infrastructure – Ethereum blockchain along with the associated marketplaces like OpenSea, Coinbase NFT, and others such as LooksRare. – Read More on Forbes
5. U.S. business inventories increase solidly in June: Inventories are a key component of gross domestic product. June’s increase was in line with economists’ expectations. – Read More on Reuters
1. H&M Returns to Alibaba’s E-Commerce Platform After 16-Month Absence: In March last year, H&M was wiped off the country’s leading e-commerce, ride-hailing, daily-deals and map applications and sites as the Xinjiang decision sparked a backlash among consumers. – Read More on MarketWatch
2. Watches of Switzerland more cautious after strong first quarter: The Rolex retailer, which has long waiting lists for timepieces in short supply, confirmed it expects revenue in a range between 1.45 billion pounds ($1.8 billion) and 1.50 billion for its financial year through April 2023. – Read More on Reuters
3. A relaunched biofuel startup has invented a way to recycle polyester-cotton blends into new threads: It’s become cheaper to recycle and reuse polyester and cotton. But textiles made by combining the two materials—poly-cotton blends—continue to vex the process. – Read More on Fortune
4. RELATED READ: Fashion’s Buzzy Tech Initiatives, Alone, Won’t Solve its Sustainability Issues. Beyond the relatively small impact of companies’ sustainability initiatives compared to the might of the marketing that surrounds them, a more fundamental issue exists. – Read More on TFL
5. Consumers angered by luxury fashion platforms’ return policies: According to the Korea Consumer Agency, 655 complaints were reported about luxury fashion firms last year, up 101.5 percent year-on-year. In 2019, 171 cases were reported, followed by 352 cases in 2020. – Read More on Korea Times
6. We’re Erasing a Big Chunk of the Retail Shock From the Spring: This past spring was when the market really first started to worry about inventories piling up at US retailers, with ports and trucks and warehouses all getting distended on unwanted goods. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. It’s Time For Fashion to Talk More About Regenerative Agriculture: “Transparency for the apparel industry is hard because a lot of information can be proprietary. Some companies are really trying, putting up their factory list [where they produce their garments]. That also means their competitors know where to make the really good stuff.” – Read More on Modern Farmer
2. Digging Deep into E-Commerce with Pinterest: Pinterest plans to dig even deeper into the space with new product rollouts and tools to better identify trends and ads to monetize idea pins. – Read More on AdWeek
3. Clothing subscriptions like Stitch Fix were once hot – but now might be the victims of “box fatigue.” Stitch Fix’s struggles to turn a profit during the Covid-19 pandemic underscore how difficult it can be to run a subscription-based business, especially when consumers’ tastes are a moving target. – Read More on CNBC
4. Amazon treads carefully with M&A strategy amid growth, regulatory pressures: “They’re able to do acquisitions in areas where they can claim small market share,” said Loup Ventures managing partner Gene Munster. – Read More on S&P Global
5. For a Luxury Fashion Bargain, Buy Secondhand With RealReal: Since its IPO in 2019, The RealReal’s stock is down around 90%. The business is expensive to run and has never made a profit. – Read More on the WSJ