Daily LInks
1. How Footwear Startup Allbirds Is Decarbonizing Fashion: “Purpose native means that we’re liberated to not have legacy baggage and we can just unlock great performance for customers without making any trade-offs. In fact, we make better products as a result of it.” – Read More on HBR
2. Chinese fashion retailer SHEIN revives plan for New York listing in 2022: The IPO if finalized, would be the first major equity deal by a Chinese company in the United States since regulators in the world’s second-largest economy stepped in to tighten oversight of such listings in July. – Read More on Reuters
3. A more than $761 billion dilemma: Retailers’ returns jump as online sales grow. Unwanted purchases come back to retailers’ stores and warehouses and become a headache for companies that must decide whether they can resell those items, get them written off by the manufacturer or if they must take the loss. – Read More on CNBC
4. Oscar de la Renta Adds Vintage Items to Resale Offerings: “We think about resale as a way for us to acquire new customers and most importantly retain existing customers,” CEO Alex Bolen said. The company sees resale “as a fundamental change in luxury fashion going from a consumable or disposable to an asset.” – Read More on PYMNTS
5. Yeti’s Billion-Dollar Strategy: No Celebrities, No Pandering: The brand, which in addition to its coveted coolers and cups sells duffel bags, chairs and apparel, surpassed $1 billion in net sales in 2020 and is on track to grow approximately 28% for 2021. – Read More on the WSJ
1. China’s consumers spent $73.6 billion on luxury goods at home last year, up 36% from 2020: Mainland China’s share of the global luxury market rose in 2021 as consumers spent more at home, keeping the country on track to become the world’s largest luxury goods market by 2025, according to consultancy Bain & Company. – Read More on CNBC
2. Luxury goods group Kering to sell watches division: The transaction fits the company’s strategy of prioritizing labels “with the potential to become sizable assets within the group”, Kering said in a statement on Monday. – Read More on Reuters
3. Louis Vuitton sees big interest on Kuaishou as fashion show live-stream outperforms Douyin, Weibo and Tencent Video: “[The live stream] was more about creating marketing buzz. Compared to consumers in first-tier cities, those from third- or fourth-tier cities lack the channels to buy and understand luxury goods.” – Read More on SCMP
4. Why are Activists Suddenly Swarming Kohl’s and Other Retailers Now? The pursuit of higher valuations by untethering the faster-growing digital assets from the core department stores, was also deployed this past year at rivals including Saks and Macy’s, with the latter expressing its preference for omnichannel togetherness and the former moving ahead with plans for a peaceful separation. – Read More on PYMNTS
5. Solving the paradox of growth and profitability in e-commerce: Skyrocketing online sales have been accompanied by costs that have risen just as fast. Fulfillment costs, for example, can account for 12 to 20 percent of e-commerce revenues, squeezing margins and making profitability a mirage. – Read More on McKinsey
1. Amazon is opening a real-world clothing store with high-tech fitting rooms: The first Amazon Style store, located in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, California, will open its doors later this year, and will feature women’s and men’s apparel, shoes, and accessories from a mix of well-known and emerging brands, with prices catering to a wide range of shoppers. – Read More on CNBC
2. Retail bankruptcies are on the decline: Retail bankruptcies plummeted by more than half in 2021, matching the lowest level notched over the past decade, potentially signaling an end to the pandemic-prompted retail apocalypse. – Read More on Axios
3. RELATED READ: A Running List of Fashion & Retail Bankruptcies. In light of an array of retail bankruptcy filings that began to unfold over the course of the year in 2016, TFL has been charting retail and fashion industry-specific bankruptcies. – Read More on TFL
4. Macron touts French fashion industry as economic motor ahead of election: “Today, when I look at figures from 2021, it (fashion) is the leading export sector of our country,” Macron told an audience of apprentices gathered at a new Chanel-sponsored site that brings luxury craft houses together. – Read More on Reuters
5. Rent the Runway Works to Swap Red for Black: RTR is tracking its garments, from brands such as Ralph Lauren, Nanushka, Jason Wu, and Lululemon, by way of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags sewn into 1.5 million items, and scanners that register when garments leave or enter the company’s warehouses. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. Cartier’s Dazzling Festive Season Bodes Well for Luxury Stocks: Richemont, the Swiss luxury goods company that owns Cartier and Piaget, said Wednesday that group sales for the three months through December increased almost a third compared with the same quarter of 2020. – Read More on WSJ
2. How COVID-19 and free shipping made overbuying the new norm: Even before the holidays, consumers were sending back e-commerce purchases two to three times as often as in-person purchases, industry data shows. That’s partly because online purchases are more likely to not fit or otherwise satisfy shoppers. – Read More on Dallas News
3. How Luxury Brands Are Making Money in the Metaverse: Among other things, most luxury brands have decades of archival designs that they can convert into virtual assets, providing a new revenue stream with minimal investment. – Read More on Forbes
4. What’s the ‘next normal’ for retail? CEOs chime in: Health, inflation, and supply chain issues will continue to be top of mind for retailers and shoppers over the coming months. Merchants need to ensure their workplace is safe for employees and shoppers and that they’re offering multiple fulfillment options, such as curbside pickup and click and collect. – Read More on eMarketer
5. China’s 150 million online shoppers, overseas suppliers fear coronavirus mail contamination threat: Fear and confusion is spreading among Chinese consumers and overseas suppliers that China’s restrictions on international mail aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus will have a prolonged negative impact on the once-booming overseas online shopping business. – Read More on SCMP
1. Prada points to pent-up luxury demand with 2021 sales surge: Prada said on Tuesday that group sales last year rose 41% at constant exchange rates to 3.364 billion euros ($3.83 billion), 8% above 2019 levels. – Read More on Reuters
2. What Inflation Is Doing to Luxury Buyers in China, the US & the EU: Thanks to inflation, luxury goods will become even more expensive as raw material prices climb. To be sure, this situation will put luxury brands in a tricky situation as it will force them to pass on price hikes on consumers. – Read More on Jing
3. Designing Your Company’s Sustainability Report: When measuring and communicating corporate sustainability performance through sustainability reports or ratings, executives face a rapidly evolving and complex set of choices. As a result, companies are at risk of falling behind or choosing inappropriate reports and ratings that don’t drive sustainability performance and open the door to accusations of greenwashing. – Read More on HBR
4. Walmart U.S. President and CEO John Furner on the ‘next normal’ for the retail industry: Consumers love ecommerce in all its various forms, but they also love going to the store. In fact, Walmart has reported increased store traffic in recent quarters. – Read More on NRF
5. Venture capitalists invested more money than ever into start-ups last year: Venture capitalists pumped $328.8 billion into U.S. start-ups and $61.8 billion into Chinese start-ups in 2021, while they only invested $39.8 billion in U.K. start-ups. But VC investment in the U.K. and Europe is growing faster than it is in the U.S. and China. – Read More on CNBC
6. Can this online sneaker store from Hong Kong compete with StockX and Goat? Hong Kong-based shoe retailer Sneaker Surge has had an interesting few years that stretch back to 2019 and the citywide anti-government protests that made it difficult to stock local shops. – Read More on SCMP
1. Consumers Still Have ‘Appetite to Spend’ as Omicron Dip Seen as Temporary: “There’s an appetite to spend. There’s still a lot of money that people have, and personal balance sheets are still pretty strong.” – Read More on PYMNTS
2. Hermes Shares Fall Out of Favor: As the most highly rated major luxury stock, trading at 59 times estimated earnings, Hermes has fallen more steeply than lower-rated peers. Its 15% drop in 2022 compares with declines of 6.3% for LVMH and 5.1% for Kering, both of which trade on multiples about half that of their smaller peer. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. Ralph Lauren CEO says metaverse is way to tap into younger generation of shoppers: “One of our strategies is to win over a new generation and the new generation is there. So, we have to be there.” – Read More on CNBC
4. Fashion industry looks to online metaverse as test lab for developing new products, blurring the line between virtual and real: “In the end, it’s about desirability,” said Berg. “If it is desirable in that (virtual) space, why wouldn’t it be desirable in another space?” – Read More on SCMP
5. Rolls-Royce, Bentley, BMW Sales Surge as Cheaper Brands Lag Behind: Rolls-Royce will remain a small, intimate luxury brand focused on creating experiences for its customers. To appeal to younger customers, it is connecting owners through an app called Whispers, which you can only access if you actually own a Rolls-Royce. – Read More on the WSJ
1. Lacoste Snaps Back at M&S in Lawsuit Over Crocodile Trademark Spat: Lacoste is suing M&S for trademark infringement, accusing the retailer of infringing seven of its trademarks by way of goods ranging from bedding to bucket hats. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Inside the metaverse economy, jobs and infrastructure projects are becoming real: The focus for brands at this point isn’t to win but simply to get involved. So far, brand engagement with blockchain projects has been about building community and staying relevant. The Nike and Adidas NFT drops, for example, generated more buzz than cash, but they lent legitimacy to a still-nascent space. – Read More on CNBC
3. ‘Made in China, sold on Amazon’ community grew in 2021 despite crackdown on fake reviews, US e-commerce giant says: The number of new Chinese sellers added to the Amazon platform recorded double-digit growth last year, Cindy Tai, Amazon.com’s vice-president for Asia Global Selling, said in a video for the company’s seller conference. – Read More on SCMP
4. RETRO READ: In an Already-Crowded Trademark Landscape, Amazon Sellers Are Changing Game. A growing number of Chinese sellers on Amazon are actively “challenging what it means to be a brand,” as the branding of “commodity goods, or types of products where shoppers don’t have much brand loyalty in the first place” is not necessarily important, certainly not in the way a cult skincare brand’s name is or the way a goodwill-soaked luxury logo is. – Read More on TFL
5. Gen Z investors shift focus from ‘meme-stocks’ to the metaverse, report shows: “There’s a lot more interest in metaverse,” Apex Chief Executive Officer Bill Capuzzi said in an interview. “As more NFT companies become public, we’ll probably see them move in to the top 100.” – Read More on Reuters
1. Fashion is about to get more expensive – but by just how much? Clothing costs are set to rise by 10 percent this year as a result of higher cotton and shipping costs coupled with inflation, and brands are worried that these inevitable price increases will make their regular customers pause before making impulse purchases. – Read More on the Telegraph
2. The Myth of Sustainable Fashion: Despite high-profile attempts at innovation, fashion has failed to reduce its planetary impact in the past 25 years. Most items are still produced using non-biodegradable petroleum-based synthetics and end up in a landfill. – Read More on HBR
3. How Afterpay Transformed the Fashion Industry: Though the installment payment model is not an entirely new concept, its resurgence has not come without criticism, with some users reporting overdraft fees and late charges. “It sounds too good to be true, and it is, in many ways, because there are perils for people who use it.” – Read More on Elle
4. Gap taps NFT craze by taking classic hoodies digital: Gap Inc on Thursday launched NFTs of its iconic hoodies, sending the apparel maker’s shares about 5% higher as it became the latest major retailer to dive into the world of speculative crypto assets. – Read More on Reuters
5. Brand Mashups in Fashion: Benefits in Consumer Engagement, Access to New Markets and More. In 2021, we saw a strong recovery in consumer demand worldwide—especially in the apparel and footwear category. In this context, we continue to see companies turn to brand mashups, whereby two brands collaborate with each other to launch new projects and products. – Read More on Coresight Research
1. China tech crackdown: E-commerce and online advertising to contend with weak spending in 2022, UBS analyst says. Regulatory pressure and weak economic growth is expected to continue to create uncertainty for internet businesses for another year. – Read More on SCMP
2. Four Elements of a Successful Brand Refresh: To successfully reinvent your brand, you must rethink your approach to product, story, culture, and customer. Brand rebounds often seem simple, logical, and inevitable, but few revival attempts are successful, and in the uncommon event that they do succeed, they usually take years or decades to yield significant results. – Read More on HBR
3. Covid E-Commerce Boom Sees U.S. Retailers Hunt for Warehouses: E-commerce sales surged to a record 15.7% of total U.S. retail receipts in mid-2020, and while they’ve come slightly off that peak as shoppers return to brick-and-mortar stores, they remain elevated, Commerce Department data shows. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. RETRO READ: What Does an In-Store Sale Really Entail in an Omnichannel Retail World? “The push to include online sales in lease agreements has loomed for some time,” but it is “swiftly accelerating” now as brands are being forced to embrace an omnichannel retail model – and fast – in order to stay afloat. – Read More on TFL
5. Global digital sales topped $1 trillion during 2021 holidays: Luxury handbags, home furniture, fastest growing categories online, highest year-over-year growth in handbags, specifically 45% online sales increased there. Home furniture and general footwear, that’s what trailed closely behind. – Read More on Yahoo Finance
6. Alibaba’s Tsai-Backed Africa E-Commerce Firm Gets Funds to Grow: An Africa-focused e-commerce platform backed by Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. co-founder Joe Tsai, has raised $6.2 million to expand into more markets and products. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. The Resale Market Boom—What Sellers and Brands Need to Know: The luxury market—historically a re-commerce hold-out—has even embraced the resale boom. For example, Kering, acquired a 5% stake in French resale platform Vestiaire Collective in early 2021. Meanwhile, sites like The RealReal helped to elevate public perception of resale. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Retailers Face Taxing Start to the Year: Tax-refund season typically gives retailers a separate uplift because consumers tend to spend the windfall on big-ticket items. This year, that isn’t a sure thing. – Read More on the WSJ
3. How Apple gets to $4 trillion; how Microsoft gets to $3 trillion: “Apple’s ecosystem is a key asset that keeps users locked in as they accumulate content including pictures, videos, movies and other content. It will continue to leverage its massive user base to cross-sell other products and services to diversify revenues away from just the iPhone franchise.” – Read More on S&P Global
4. RETRO READ: Is Apple a Luxury Brand? Well, That Depends on Your Definition of Luxury. “If change is happening at Apple, it seems like it’s moving from high-end electronics company to something more like a luxury fashion brand, moving away from focusing on user experience and magnificent industrial engineering as driving forces, and moving toward a company that offers trendiness, status, and individuality first, then nailing down the mechanics of the things.” – Read More on TFL
5. How Amazon’s battle with Reliance for India retail supremacy became a legal jungle: In 2019, Amazon and Future, number two player in India behind market leader Reliance, became business partners. That deal, Amazon argues, came with certain non-compete clauses that prohibited Future from selling retail assets to certain rivals. – Read More on Reuters