Daily LInks
1. Japan’s fashion industry gets a green makeover: A study by the Environment Ministry showed that only 4 percent of shoppers actively buy sustainable fashion. Another 51 percent “have interest” in sustainability issues but this does not translate into action, while 41 percent said they do not care. – Read More on Straits Times
2. India’s Future Retail asks court to declare arbitration with Amazon illegal: The long-running dispute is being heard by a Singapore arbitration panel, but both sides have been fighting parallel cases in Indian courts to enforce or overrule certain decisions taken by the arbitrator. – Read More on Reuters
3. Nordstrom to Sell Second-Hand Apparel: The six-month pilot will operate somewhat differently from how other retailers procure and resell merchandise, as Nordstom plans to source clothing from its own inventory. The items in question have been returned, cleaned and in some cases repaired. – Read More on PYMNTS
4. China to tighten copyright protection in livestreaming, e-commerce platforms by 2025: Copyright protection will be strengthened and improved in new industries and new areas, according to the 14th Five-Year Plan for Copyright Work issued by the National Copyright Administration. – Read More on Reuters
5. Industry-Wide Efforts Will be Needed to Build on Sustainability Progress: Retailers are backing recycled materials to help cut emissions and minimize waste, positioning them as a more responsible alternative than producing new products, positively impacting the value chain and creating an attractive point of sale for consumers wanting to shop more sustainably.” – Read More on Retail TouchPoints
1. Sustainable Business Went Mainstream in 2021: Virtually all of the world’s largest companies now issue a sustainability report and set goals; more than 2,000 companies have set a science-based carbon target; and about one-third of Europe’s largest public companies have pledged to reach net zero by 2050. – Read More on HBR
2. Should Retailers Split E-Commerce from Stores? A High-Level Debate: Mr. Metrick said that since the split he has upgraded Saks’s website, improving its searchability. Boxes shipped from Saks.com now arrive in fancier packaging with self-adhesive return labels. The number of available styles on Saks’s website has increased by 40% and the number of brands by 20%. – Read More on the WSJ
3. What Will Travel Retail Look Like in 2022? According to a Goldman Sachs report, the prospects for the global travel retail industry are bright, as they expect to see a massive jump from today’s $89 billion to $149 billion by 2025. And Chinese consumer spending is an integral part of this growth, with their spending expected to increase from 48 to 56% by 2025. – Read More on Jing
4. RETRO READ: How a Decline in Chinese Tourists Around the World Has Hit the Luxury Sector. Around the world, people buy and display luxury goods – from fancy cars to expensive watches and handbags – as status symbols. This is especially the case for the post-90s Chinese woman who seeks to distinguish herself from others in various ways. – Read More on TFL
5. Middle Eastern designers are claiming their own space in fashion: “Middle Eastern shoppers want to be diverse without compromising on quality. By purchasing local and regional designs they can achieve that.” – Read More on CNN
6. Three Trends to Watch for After a Year of Retail Innovation: Consumers are watching retailers’ moves and have great interest in what the companies they buy from are doing to make the world around them a better place. Nike recently announced plans to design and sell products tied to consumers’ values on topics such as diversity and inclusion, underrepresented athletes and more. – Read More on PYMNTS
1. The Three Pillars of Retail’s 2021 Digital Transformation: Digital upgrades can be seen in the way some retailers are leveraging tech to ensure consumers can easily order out-of-stock items, as a proactive way of not losing out on a sale. – Read More on PYMNTS
2. Tiffany’s New French Owner Brings a Makeover—and a Culture Clash: Bridging the cultural divide is not the only challenge facing Tiffany’s new owner. The other is strategic. LVMH is trying to reboot what it sees as a sleepy brand that hasn’t kept pace with Cartier, Chopard and other luxury jewelers. – Read More on the WSJ
3. European Luxury Goods Stocks Were Back in Fashion in 2021: Top- and bottom-line recoveries in 2021 saw earnings rebound strongly, helping European consumer discretionary stocks rise 31.4% from December 2020 through Dec. 7, outperforming the broader S&P Europe 350 index, which climbed 16.3%, according to independent research firm CFRA. – Read More on Barron’s
4. Buy now, pay later is a huge hit with shoppers. Just how dangerous is it? The industry is booming, with touts popping up on shopping sites across the internet. Sweden’s Klarna doubled its US customer base to 20 million between June 2020 and August this year and UK user numbers have swelled 36% since October 2020. It now has more than 90 million active users across 20 countries. – Read More on CNN
5. How the Fashion Industry Can Help Reverse Our Water Crisis: Fashion houses and textile producers are now reckoning with the environmental impact of their industries. No formal regulations exist, which means the industry has to take its own initiative to develop new approaches and innovations in water conservation. – Read More on the Daily Beast
1. How Shopify Outfoxed Amazon to Become the Everywhere Store: Shopify has sold software that allows about 2 million merchants worldwide to run websites—free from the complicated embrace of Shopify’s chief rival, Amazon. For $30 to $2,000 a month, Shopify offers sellers more than a dozen services to run an online store, from the actual e-commerce website to inventory management to payment processing. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. U.S. holiday retail sales rise 8.5% as online shopping booms: U.S. ecommerce sales jumped 11% in this year’s holiday shopping season, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse report, yet again underscoring the COVID-19 pandemic’s role in transforming customers’ shopping habits. – Read More on Reuters
3. Purple Dot, a waitlist and pre-order platform for the fashion industry, raises $4M: UK startup Purple Dot has an ecommerce ‘waitlist and pre-order’ platform, allowing fashion brands to only produce the exact volume of goods ordered, thereby cutting down waste. – Read More on TechCrunch
4. Young women are leading the charge against fast fashion: According to a survey of 2,094 adults, commissioned by the University of Hull, more than half of young people aged between 18 and 24 (58%) want to “turn their backs on fast fashion” and change their shopping habits. – Read More on Yahoo
5. Iconic retail group Selfridges is sold for more than $5bn: The billionaire dynasty behind Selfridges & Co. has sold the British department store operator to a Thai-Austrian joint venture for about 4 billion pounds (£5.4 million) in one of the biggest U.K. retail deals in years. – Read More on AlJazeera
1. How China’s ‘common prosperity’ goal, cancel culture and continuing Covid-19 travel curbs will affect luxury brands: Luxury brands need to look to China even more for inspiration and innovation. Why? Because luxury globally will be shaped by Chinese consumers. China will be the number one market for luxury in 2025. – Read More on SCMP
2. The revival of retail deals: 2021’s global retail M&A volume reached $227 billion as of Dec. 16, a year-over-year increase of 59%. That nearly keeps up with the broader increase of about 64% across all industries. – Read More on Axios
3. Your Ugly Christmas Sweater Is Branding’s Latest Weapon: The inexorable rise of “ugly” festive merch rests on the jesting irony of high-low self-deprecation: being cool enough to pull off the patently lame. But it’s getting harder to tell who, exactly, is the butt of the joke when every brand aspires to be fashion-forward for 15 minutes. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. Digital spin-offs are suddenly in fashion as ailing dept stores seek easy fixes: Nordstrom’s reported foray into this value-finding patch is still unconfirmed by the company, the Seattle-based luxury retailer has attained the services of Alix Partners to study the feasibility — and financial rewards — of possibly spinning-off its Nordstrom Rack unit into a completely new company. – Read More on PYMNTs
5. Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs approved to buy fashion line out of bankruptcy: Combs’ company SLC Fashion LLC made the highest bid for the brand at an auction on Monday, bumping its final offer to $7.55 million from its initial $3.3 million bid. Four other bids were submitted prior to the auction. – Read More on Reuters
1. Chanel is Aiming for Hermes Status with Handbag Price Hikes: Luxury-sector executives and analysts say the magnitude of the increases signals an aggressive corporate strategy: asserting control over one of the brand’s most popular products while taking aim at higher-end rivals. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. RETRO READ: Chanel is Raising Prices, Reportedly Putting a Quota System in Place for Some of its Bags. Not the only brand placing limitations on the sale of certain products, Chanel joins the likes of Hermès, which has notoriously limited the quantities that consumers can purchase of certain “quota” bags, namely, Birkin and Kelly bags, to two bags per a calendar year in furtherance of a “very limited distribution strategy.” – Read More on TFL
3. Shopify: The Future of Retail. “In this increasingly complex, competitive, and crowded e-commerce landscape, we believe a differentiating factor lies in merchant’s ability to deliver immersive shopping experience to consumers across multi-channels.” – Read More on Seeking Alpha
4. Department stores becoming more lucrative as pandemic drags on: Local department stores are seeing growing sales as the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic prompts customers to purchase luxury goods sold in physical stores, rather than online, as a form of stress relief. To entice customers to visit regularly, department stores have begun putting on art exhibitions and employing other marketing strategies. – Read More on Korea Times
5. China shines regulatory spotlight on livestream retail boom: China’s internet watchdog drafted rules for the first time last year – being implemented on trial this year – to regulate the country’s livestreaming marketing industry requiring internet platforms to better monitor their content and ordering live-streamers to register with their real names. – Read More on Reuters
1. Pinterest Fires Back at Influencer Claiming She Helped Create the Site: Pinterest Inc. says a digital marketing strategist who claims she helped conceive the social media platform waited too long to accuse its founders in a lawsuit of reneging on a promise to compensate her. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Auction sales hit record $15 billion as young, wealthy collectors enter the market: The Big Three auction houses hit a record $15 billion in sales this year, as a surge in global wealth and a wave of young, first-time collectors drove sales of everything from Basquiats to Birkin bags. – Read More on CNBC
3. A year later, consumers are much more comfortable with living active lives. What’s in store for 2022? Much of consumers’ pent-up retail demand has been met, and spending is shifting back toward essentials such as groceries, as well as other segments like travel, whose resurgence took longer than retail’s. – Read More on Morning Consult
4. Nordstrom Considers Spinning off Rack into New Business: Experts have speculated that Nordstrom might complete a merger or acquisition after the Nordstrom family suspended a deal to buy the company in 2017. – Read More on PYMNTS
5. Nike beats revenue estimates on North America demand: Nike Inc beat quarterly revenue and profit estimates on Monday, lifted by strong demand for its sports shoes and apparel in North America, and said it was more confident of easing supply chain issues in its next fiscal year. – Read More on Reuters
1. Malls turn to luxury retailers: If your mall has survived the pandemic, it may look a little bit different than it did in 2019. Think more Burberry and Cartier stores, and fewer JCPenney storefronts. – Read More on MarketPlace
2. Mixed signals as Target, Walmart and other retailers brace for last-minute holiday rush: More shoppers are having trouble finding items, the survey found. 44% of respondents said they were unable to make a holiday purchase due to out of stocks, a month-over-month jump of 7%. – Read More on CNBC
3. Alibaba pledges overseas e-commerce focus as its China growth slows: Earlier this month, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd restructured its e-commerce business into separate China and international divisions, with the latter to be led by Jiang Fan, head of Alibaba’s flagship Taobao and Tmall marketplaces. – Read More on Reuters
4. RELATED READ: What Does the $2.8 Billion Alibaba Anti-Competition Penalty Mean for China’s Marketplace Model? The dominant player in China’s domestic online retail platform service market, with more than 725 million active customers and revenues of nearly $72 billion for the 2020 fiscal year, Alibaba Group has become the new poster child of a larger crackdown on anti-competition. – Read More on TFL
5. The False Allure of Managed Trade: Cotton clothing was far from the only industry the U.S. tried to manage in order to compete with Japanese imports. Japanese cars—smaller, cheaper and more fuel-efficient than their U.S. counterparts—threatened to dominate the American market in the 1970s. – Read More on the WSJ
6. Paris judge approves 10 million euro settlement with LVMH in spy case: LVMH will pay 10 million euros ($11.3 million) to settle claims that it hired France’s former domestic intelligence chief to spy on private citizens, in particular on a filmmaker who made a widely popular documentary targeting the group’s CEO. – Read More on France24
7. Five Direct to Consumer e-Commerce Trends for 2022: To compete with online DTC brands, some larger retailers will choose to emulate them. With less foot traffic in physical stores, many retailers will follow DTC brands’ lead and approach tech-savvy consumers online. – Read More on Forbes
1. Why Luxury Brands Will Keep Their Pandemic Playbooks: The industry is noticing “the strength of luxury in the United States, where a few years ago people were only pointing at China and Asia as the growth trajectory,” John Idol, CEO of Versace parent Capri Holdings Ltd., said recently. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. US e-commerce sales set to maintain pandemic-fueled heights into 2022: U.S. e-commerce sales are on track to exceed $1 trillion for the first time next year, as sales growth plateaus but total purchases remain far above pre-pandemic levels. – Read More on S&P Global
3. Target CEO addresses omicron, wages and shopper habits: “I expect stores will continue to be really important going forward [even if] Americans have learned how to use their smartphones and tablets to shop online. And I think we’re seeing all cohorts embracing both shopping in-store and using our same day services.” – Read More on the AP
4. China’s buy now pay later market is growing — but challenges remain, experts say: A few factors are fueling the “perfect storm” for the growing trend, according to Tuli. They include unprecedented low interest rates, the rise of online payment through “super apps” like Alipay and WeChat and extremely well-funded fintech start-ups eager to acquire new customers. – Read More on CNBC
5. Workers go hungry as Indian suppliers to top UK brands refuse to pay minimum wage: More than 400,000 garment workers in Karnataka have not been paid the state’s legal minimum wage since April 2020, according to an international labor rights organization that monitors working conditions in factories. – Read More on the Guardian
1. What will we wear in the metaverse? “There are more and more ‘second worlds’ where you can express yourself (but) there is probably an underestimation of the value being attached to individuals who want to express themselves in a virtual world with a virtual product, through a virtual persona,” per Gucci’s chief marketing officer Robert Triefus. – Read More on CNN
2. Retail Sales Weren’t as Bad as They Looked: Excluding gas and motor vehicles, the sectors that saw the most growth in November compared with the same month last year were food services, clothing, and sporting goods, hobbies, and books. – Read More on Barron’s
3. Sotheby’s Sells $7.3 Billion in Art, Fueled by Moneyed Millennials: The house said it sold nearly $100 million in NFTs, or nonfungible tokens on the blockchain often attached to images that exist only online. Sotheby’s sold the source code for the World Wide Web as an NFT for $5.4 million. – Read More on the WSJ
4. How Shein beat Amazon at its own game – and reinvented fast fashion: “Amazon wet the palate for online shopping, taught[Americans] how to shop online, and created the habit. Shein realized that and decided to optimize it.” – Read More on Rest of World
5. D2C Brands Buy Local, Build Local to Ease Supply Chain Woes: “We only really go abroad when we need a specific set of materials or capabilities that we can’t get in the U.S. We’re closer to our manufacturers, and that means we’ve been able to withstand some of the transportation uncertainties and cost increases involved with ocean freight.” – Read More on PYMNTS