Daily LInks
1. China’s luxury market is bouncing back. The projected 4-6% growth is higher than what forecasters are predicting for the U.S. and Europe, with most Chinese luxury spending taking place domestically as travel outside China remains more difficult than it was pre-pandemic. – Read More on Semafor
2. On the flipside … Luxury’s Rebound Is Proving Elusive as China Gloom Adds to Warnings. Luxury stock investors are bracing for more bad news after the likes of Burberry Group and Hugo Boss fell short of already reined-in expectations and economic data from China dents the chances of a near-term rebound. – Read More on Yahoo
3. Fashion Giant Faces New IPO Hitch: China’s Cybersecurity Police. China’s powerful internet regulator is conducting a cybersecurity review of Shein’s data handling and sharing practices as the fast-fashion company seeks Beijing’s blessing for its planned initial public offering. – Read More on the WSJ
4. Gucci is cheap and eggs are pricey in Russia’s surreal economy. Just before Christmas, a sales assistant was proudly showing customers the newest handbags from Gucci, Chanel and Louis Vuitton. They were bought in Europe and carried back to Russia in the luggage of a “personal shopper.” – Read More on the Economist
5. RETRO READ: Russia May Look to the Grey Market as Supply Runs Low Amid Sanctions, Boycotts. Companies’ trademark rights and their ability to control the distribution of their coveted offerings could be threatened in the midst of the escalating sanctions being levied upon Russia and boycotts from brands that have shuttered operations. – Read More on TFL
6. Gildan Activewear says former CEO failed to disclose ties with a shareholder. Canadian apparel maker Gildan Activewear on Tuesday alleged that its former chief Glenn Chamandy failed to disclose certain fund investments and had an undisclosed relationship with a shareholder. – Read More on Reuters
1. Renting Clothes Was Supposed to Be the Future of Fashion. Then Shoppers Got Bored. StitchFix and Rent the Runway are struggling to convince Americans to make monthly payments of roughly $90 to $240 for rented clothes, with many of their consumers also complaining about a lack of diversity in styles and sizes, and availability of outfits. – Read More on the WSJ
2. Rolex’s modest price hikes indicative of luxury sector moderation – analyst. Morgan Stanley suggested that Rolex’s decision to moderate price increases reflects a cautious approach, possibly aimed at sustaining market share gains without alienating customers sensitive to price fluctuations. – Read More on Proactive Investor
3. The RealReal Joins EON to Boost Luxury Resale Transparency. According to the release, owners of luxury fashion from EON’s partners can scan an item to access its history, including its provenance and past sales, and then get the option to consign with The RealReal. – Read More on PYMNTS
4. How companies are responding to attacks on ships in the Red Sea. India and Pakistan, for instance, are part of a big region for apparel manufacturing, but a source close to Target said the effect has been “minor” overall. – Read More on Reuters
5. Struggling Fashion House Trussardi Nears Brand, Assets Sale. After an extended marketing process that saw little demand, the brand, together with some of the group’s branches, is set to be sold to Miroglio Group. – Read More on Bloomberg
6. Inside Gucci’s Quest for Older, Richer Customers. Gucci is similarly striving to make itself a little less available, reducing its overall product range by 20% in recent months and cutting its distribution network. – Read More on the WSJ
1. Five Takeaways From the New EU Circular Fashion Strategy. The 2022 EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles is part of a larger effort from the 27-nation bloc to establish a circular economy within all industries, reach climate neutrality by 2050. – Read More on Earth.org
2. Is A.I. the Death of I.P.? Fair-use litigation can make your head spin, not just because the claims of infringement often seem far-fetched—where is the damage to the rights holder, exactly?—but because the outcomes are unpredictable. And unpredictability is bad for business. – Read More on the New Yorker
3. Luxury Hand-Me-Downs Are Now Worth Billions of Dollars. Shoppers have splashed out $1.3 trillion on new luxury handbags, clothes, watches and jewels over the past four years alone. At least some of that stuff will find its way onto secondhand websites. – Read more on the WSJ
4. Burberry’s weakness could entice luxury shopper. Shares in Burberry are down 45% from a year ago as CEO Jonathan Akeroyd struggles to turn the £4.5B brand around quickly in a tough luxury market. Its depressed valuation is getting close to the level that may attract a potential suitor. – Read More on Reuters
5. It’s Time for the Government to Regulate AI. Here’s How. Lawmakers have a range of tools at their disposal. We have spent two decades learning the hard way what happens when tech companies have unchecked, unregulated power to swallow up markets and eliminate competition. – Read More on Politico
1. Chanel Changes the Guard Amid Weaker Luxury Demand. The company’s former Japanese head has joined the US and UK bosses in departing Chanel Ltd. — known for its No. 5 perfume, tweed jackets and mini-skirts — two years into Leena Nair’s reign as chief executive officer. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. LVMH is fed up with fake goods being sold on TikTok—so it is in talks to join forces with the video platform to stop it. The goal of working with LVMH would be to create an “elevated shopping experience,” Toto Haba, a senior executive at LVMH-owned Benefit Cosmetics, which has a presence on TikTok Shop, said. – Read More on Fortune
3. Studios’ Now-or-Never Choice: Sue AI Companies or Score a Major IP Deal. As AI generators like Midjourney are increasingly able to replicate movies frame by frame, it won’t be long until they can re-create the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ with an alternate finale. Will Hollywood just let that happen? – Read More on THR
4. AI Has a Trust Problem. Can Blockchain Help? Business uses of blockchain, like supply-chain tracking, have floundered. But some say the technology could find relevance as a tool to vet AI algorithms. – Read More on WSJ
5. Companies Should Avoid ESG/Sustainability Reports Until SEC Rule Release. With the global rise of greenwashing penalties and civil litigation, companies need to question if sustainability reports, and the broader environmental, social, and governance reports are currently worth the legal risk. – Read More on Forbes
6. Fashion retailer Boohoo put ‘Made in UK’ label on clothes made in Asia. A Panorama investigation found the company removed the original labels on T-shirts and hoodies at the retailer’s controversial factory at Thurmaston Lane in Leicester between January and October last year. – Read More on the Independent
1. This AI Deal Will Let Actors License Digital Voice Replicas. “This partnership will allow voice actors to safely explore new opportunities for their digital voice replicas while establishing protections around consent, contracts and compensation.” It also includes stated conditions for safe storage of such digital assets. – Read More on CNET
2. Fast fashion is only going to get faster in 2024. When Shein and Temu are not at each other’s throats, scrapping for access to suppliers and market share, they are accelerating the fashion cycle to unimaginable speeds. – Read More on Quartz
3. RELATED READ: Temu Says Shein is Engaging in “Mafia-Style” Scheme in New Lawsuit. In response to the competitive threat posed by Temu, “Shein created and implemented a scheme to interfere with Temu’s U.S. growth,” Temu’s corporate entity WhaleCo Inc. asserts. – Read More on TFL
4. Companies are getting it from all sides on ESG. They’re either “going too far” or “not doing enough.” To mitigate any possible backlash—which tend to be media campaigns, often driven by social media—companies shouldn’t just look forward to their stated goals but also backward at their past statements and actions. – Read More on Fortune
5. Can US independent contractor rule survive legal challenges, Congress? A new Biden administration rule will likely prevent companies in a range of industries from treating some workers as independent contractors, who cost less than employees, and could create new legal headaches for app-based services that rely on gig workers. – Read More on Reuters
6. This Italian Influencer Flew Too Close to the Digital Sun. Ferragni has harvested 30 million followers on Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram and made herself a multimillionaire by entirely eschewing privacy. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. OpenAI claims copyright lawsuit from The New York Times is ‘without merit.” “The New York Times is not telling the full story,” OpenAI said in a blog post about the lawsuit, adding that its “goals are to support a healthy news ecosystem, be a good partner, and create mutually beneficial opportunities.” – Read More on CNN
2. Shein’s revenue is ‘a lot more’ than $30 billion annually, key retail partner says. The CEO of brand management firm Authentic Brands Group said Shein’s annual revenue is “a lot more” than $30 billion annually. – Read More on CNBC
3. Antitrust Enforcers Differ on When ESG Collaboration Is Collusion. Agreements between industry competitors and sharing competitively sensitive information in the name of promoting an environmental, social, and governance initiative are likely to draw concern from antitrust agencies. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. RELATED READ: Can ESG Collaboration and Competition Co-Exist in Fashion (and Beyond)? “As companies’ ESG efforts have begun to have more market impact, and especially as firms collaborate to implement ESG principles, antitrust/competition authorities are asking whether ESG efforts could violate the antitrust laws.” – Read More on TFL
5. The Latest Dirty Word in Corporate America: ESG. Many leaders are more closely examining disclosures, wanting to avoid regulatory scrutiny or political criticism. Saying as little as possible is recommended. – Read More on the WSJ
6. Google faces $1.67B damages demand at AI-related patent trial. Google went before a federal jury in Boston to argue against a computer scientist’s claims that it should pay his company $1.67B for infringing patents that allegedly cover the processors used to power artificial intelligence technology in Google products. – Read More on Reuters
1. Judges in England and Wales are given cautious approval to use AI in writing legal opinions. The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary last month said AI could help write opinions but stressed it shouldn’t be used for research or legal analyses because the technology can fabricate information and provide misleading, inaccurate and biased information. – Read More on ABC
2. RELATED READ: Indian Court Says No ChatGPT Use in Louboutin Trademark Lawsuit. Given that the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated data is still in a “grey area,” the court stated that “AI cannot substitute either the human intelligence or the humane element in the adjudicatory process.” – Read More on TFL
3. More People Are Selling Their Old Clothes Online. Governments Want Their Cut. British tax collectors are the latest to seek a share of the boom in secondhand fashion, forcing online marketplaces to hand over more details of customer transactions. – Read More on the WSJ
4. 2023: A Strange, Tumultuous Year in Sustainability. Three themes in sustainability from 2023 that really dwarf other stories: the anti-ESG movement, China’s acceleration of a clean economy, and the rise of reporting regulations. – Read More on HBR
5. From hallucinations to clarity? The potential – and pitfalls – of using AI in ESG reporting. There is no consensus on the metrics that are used to demonstrate progress, nor a standard approach to measurement. Indeed, some frameworks require a quarterly metric, while others require measurement annually. – Read More on Reuters
6. How AI companies are trying to solve the LLM hallucination problem. Vectara has seen a big demand from companies who need help building a chatbot or other question-and-answer style systems, but can’t spend months or millions tweaking its own model. – Read More on Fast Co.
1. What the Supreme Court’s Jack Daniel’s decision could mean for the future of sports merchandising. Vintage Brand appears poised to be the first post-Jack Daniel’s case involving sports merchandise to reach a decision on the merits, providing an occasion to evaluate the future of Jack Daniel’s in this context. – Read More on Reuters
2. Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem. In light of these results, it seems all but certain that Midjourney V6 has been trained on copyrighted materials (whether or not they have been licensed, we do not know) and that their tools could be used to create outputs that infringe. – Read More on IEEE
3. AI Watermarking Won’t Curb Disinformation. Unfortunately, watermarking schemes are unlikely to work. So far most have proven easy to remove, and it’s likely that future schemes will have similar problems. – Read More on EFF
4. What’s next for AI regulation in 2024? What we can expect in the U.S. is an approach that grades types and uses of AI by how much risk they pose—a framework similar to the EU’s AI Act. – Read More on MIT Tech Review
5. RELATED READ: Regulating Artificial Intelligence: A Running Tracker of AI Legislation. Despite such lags in regulation, 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
6. Apple shares slip on report U.S. government preparing antitrust lawsuit. The agency’s lawsuit could target how the Apple Watch works exclusively with the iPhone, as well as the company’s iMessage service, which is also solely available on Apple devices. It could also focus on Apple Pay, the company’s payments system, according to the report. – Read More on CNBC
1. How copyright law could threaten the AI industry in 2024. Judges so far have been skeptical of the plaintiffs’ infringement claims based on the content generated by AI. But courts have not yet addressed the trickier question of whether AI companies are infringing on a massive scale by training their systems with reams of images, writings and other data scraped from the internet. – Read More on Reuters
2. Coupang Will Soon Discover Farfetch’s Luxury Marketplace Is a Loser. Since going public in 2018, Farfetch has proven to be a black hole undone by grand ambitions without the discipline to achieve them, if that is even possible. – Read More on Forbes
3. RELATED READ: From the Future of Fashion to the Brink of Collapse, What Happened to Farfetch? Were it not for the positive effects of the pandemic, Farfetch would likely “have run out of cash and/or otherwise struggled to remain a viable business entity much earlier, in 2019 or 2020.” – Read More on TFL
4. TikTok eyes $17.5 billion shopping business on Amazon’s turf. TikTok’s ambitious target sets up a clash not just with Amazon but also fellow Chinese-owned budget retail outfits Temu and Shein, which have been making big strides among younger American shoppers. – Read More on SCMP
5. Big Fashion Still Hasn’t Figured Out How to Pay a Living Wage. Western fashion companies say they want wages to rise, but can’t wave a wand and make it happen. They generally don’t own the factories where their products are made and don’t determine pay for workers. – Read More on WSJ
6. Healthy spending signals a strong 2024 M&A market. Around two-thirds of dealmakers say that they’re expecting M&A activity to grow beyond what was seen in 2023, according to a KPMG M&A survey. About 7 in 10 say they’re in the process of closing a deal right now. – Read More on Axios
1. Chanel, Hermès, Prada to hike prices in the new year. French high fashion brand Hermès kicked off the new year by raising its prices in Korea, with many other luxury brands expected to follow suit. Hermès upped the prices of some of its shoes on Monday. – Read More on Korea JoongAng
2. ‘Polluter pays’ doctrine will take on new meaning. Extended producer responsibility is at the center of discussions around a UN treaty to end plastic pollution, to be finalized in 2024. To be effective, this doctrine has to impose sufficiently high financial contributions to deter overproduction. – Read More on Reuters
3. Behind Cheap Stuff From Shein and Temu: A Hard Bargain With Suppliers. Some suppliers said they were grappling with razor-thin profit margins and intense pressure to cut prices. – Read More on the WSJ
4. Amazon crackdown on sellers spawns new legal industry. Merchants who have been suspended from selling goods on Amazon’s marketplace are turning to a cottage industry of lawyers to regain access to their accounts. – Read More on the FT
5. A New Kind of AI Copy Can Fully Replicate Famous People. The Law Is Powerless. New AI-generated digital replicas of real experts expose an unnerving policy gray zone. Washington wants to fix it, but it’s not clear how. – Read More on Politico
6. After a slowdown, luxury brands are changing course. Some experts predict that luxury will slow down while fast fashion continues to rise, especially as companies like Shein increasingly attract young shoppers ahead of its reported IPO. Now, brands will need to readjust their strategies to reflect the current economic realities. – Read More on Modern Retail