Daily LInks
1. Pandemic inspires hot new fashion trend: “Made in America.” Retailers are discovering the downside of “fast fashion” and cheap overseas workrooms and factories as scarce containers, clogged ports, and even a dearth of domestic truck drivers threaten to undo what economists say ought to be a banner holiday season. – Read More on Forbes
2. Does Your Brand Speak ‘Brandsperanto’? From Nike and Apple to Target and MasterCard, today’s wordless silhouette brands are tapping into a wider trend of universal symbolic communication. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. Asia reopening boosts travel, fashion brands; pandemic winners take backseat. European fashion houses like LVMH and Kering have signaled ongoing strong demand in China as appetite for luxury items remains largely undimmed, despite power shortages and a property sector crisis hurting the economy. – Read More on Reuters
4. President Xi Jinping’s pledge to redistribute wealth brings back bad memories for luxury brands in China: There have been signs of apprehension within the luxury world. Recently, the sector has lost favor with some investors, which “suggests that short-term China-related uncertainty has been priced in,” UBS analysts wrote in a September report. – Read More on CNN
5. Patagonia Is Boycotting Facebook, Urges Other Companies to Do the Same: Patagonia is doubling down on its decision to stop all paid advertising on Facebook Inc. FB 2.10% platforms, urging other companies to join the sportswear company in its boycott of the social-networking company as it faces widespread scrutiny following the release of internal documents. – Read More on the WSJ
6. Ikea replaces Topshop as furnishings become high street fashion: The market for furnishings and home accessories has boomed as people have worked from home during the pandemic, and there is every sign that sofas and throw cushions could soon be filling the empty floorspace left by the retreat of physical fashion retailers. – Read More on the Guardian
1. Second to none: fashion resalers bulk up to capitalize on booming sales. Second-hand clothing firms are fighting to snap up smaller rivals and lock in investment as demand for thriftwear booms on the back of supply chain snarl-ups for traditional retailers ahead of the peak holiday shopping period. – Read More on Reuters
2. eBay Downplays Continued Decline of Active Buyers: Marketplace platform eBay is continuing to shed active buyers and report lower sales volumes as consumers increasingly return to in-person shopping, though the company says losing some customers was always an inevitable part of the company’s long-term plan. – Read More on PYMNTS
3. The rapid growth of retail subscription services could be coming to an end: Finding customers is pricey and keeping them has proved hard, given high cancellation rates among those who find themselves tossing away unused products at the end of the month. – Read More on the Economist
4. Why the department store e-commerce spin-off strategy may not be grounded in reality: Investors are citing the growth of e-commerce during the pandemic and the potential for a more focused investment strategy as a basis for large valuations, but others worry that the spin-off model underplays the importance of brick-and-mortar and doesn’t align with consumer shopping behavior. – Read More on Modern Retail
5. RETRO READ: What is Behind Hudson’s Bay Co.’s Plan to Split Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks.com? With brick-and-mortar actively driving down the value of many of the biggest names in the retail space, Hudson’s Bay is looking to boost the overall value of the group in one way that makes sense right now: taking Saks’ privately-held digital assets – the ones responsible for approximately $1 billion in annual revenue – and floating them on the public market. – Read More on TFL
6. China sees sharp slowdown in online commerce growth in coming years, as market matures and focus shifts to rural economy: The slowdown in China’s e-commerce growth rate was partly expected, as deceleration has already started. Meanwhile, China’s consumer spending has been relatively weak amid a broad economic slowdown. – Read More on SCMP
1. How Supply Chain Troubles Snagged the Fashion Industry: Even Nike cannot keep up with demand. The company anticipates several virus-related closures in Vietnam, home to 50% of the firm’s iconic footwear production under normal circumstances. – Read More on Morning Star
2. Neiman Marcus CEO says a more normal social and travel calendar will help the luxury retailer: Men’s apparel, women’s shoes, handbags and jewelry have been the top-selling categories that drove a 6% sales increase in its fiscal fourth quarter that ended on July 30 compared with the same quarter in 2019. – Read More on Dallas News
3. How Designer Kim Jones Takes Fashion Beyond an Exclusive Club: Pietro Beccari, CEO of Christian Dior Couture, says Jones has excellent commercial instincts, with a knack for creating products that generate firestorms of coverage, from that Vuitton x Supreme collab to 2019’s Air Diors and the saddlebags that are tailored to the particular story of each season. – Read More on the WSJ
4. Rent the Runway Rises and Then Falls 9.1% in Trading Debut: RTR rose as much as 18% in its trading debut before sinking below the price in its upsized initial public offering, which still gave its valuation a boost from the depths of the coronavirus pandemic. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. Buy early for Christmas, Puma tells shoppers: The company expects that Vietnam factory closures, compounded by shipping constraints, will hit its product supplies, even as the group increased its 2021 sales outlook. – Read More on Reuters
1. Luxury brands look to ride the storm of China’s policy shifts: Two schools of thought have emerged. One suspects that China’s “common prosperity” push is an effort to address important social and economic concerns, another says that it is about rolling back market-based reform. – Read More on the FT
2. Walmart is Gaining on Amazon in E-Commerce: Amazon’s e-commerce revenues are much greater than Walmart’s but the latter is growing much faster online than Amazon in e-commerce, more than five times faster. – Read More on Forbes
3. RELATED READ: The Evolution of Walmart & its Quest to Become an E-Commerce (and Fashion) Destination. In addition to trying to keep up with Amazon on the digital front, Walmart is seemingly trying to make a name of its own in the online retail space, where new generations of consumers are already accustomed to looking for everything from food to footwear. – Read More on TFL
4. Amazon Pushing More Aggressively to Develop Omnichannel Capabilities: As Amazon approaches the day it overtakes Walmart as the top retailer in the U.S. — which will likely come within the next year — the company has been bolstering its omnichannel capabilities to expand its reach. – Read More on PYMNTS
5. China targets online retail sales of $2.66 trillion by 2025: China’s commerce ministry said on Tuesday that it aims to see online retail sales in the country rise to 17 trillion yuan ($2.66 trillion) by 2025, from 11.8 trillion yuan in 2020, in a statement outlining its 14th five-year plan for the e-commerce industry. – Read More on Reuters
6. U.S. Retail Lobby Sends S.O.S. to Congress on Supply-Chain Chaos: The U.S.’s biggest retail lobby asked Congress to pass a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package as well as update shipping and trucking laws to ease a supply-chain crisis that’s raising prices and causing shortages. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. Allbirds targets a more than $2 billion valuation in upcoming IPO: Allbirds also divulged Monday that its losses mounted in the latest quarter due to higher expenses. It said it expects to book a net loss of between $15 million and $18 million for the three-month period ended Sept. 30, compared with a loss of $7 million a year earlier. – Read More on CNBC
2. How digitization can make the fashion industry more sustainable: Digitization removes opacity and middlemen, improves speed, and lowers inventory days. This frees up margins and makes favorable changes to the bottom line. It also comes with other significant benefits like transparency, predictability, accountability, and traceability. – Read More on WE Forum
3. The future of retail? Buying from anywhere. Retailers need to be flexible to build loyalty with customers across a variety of sales channels, from in-person shopping to online ordering. – Read More on Fast Co.
4. RELATED 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. Newly public A.K.A. Brands acquires men’s streetwear brand Mnml: A.K.A. Brands Holding Corp. has announced another addition to its clothing-brand portfolio, Mnml, a men’s streetwear label acquired for $48.6 million in combined cash and equity. – Read More on MarketWatch
6. Pandemic-fueled trends promise sustainable growth for online luxury fashion retailers: In Nov. 2019 some 11% of luxury handbags were marked down, with the share of markdowns increasing dramatically to nearly 20% by April 2020. But then it reversed. By August 2020, only 7% of luxury handbags were discounted and 10% showed a markup in price. – Read More on Forbes
1. Digitizing the Fashion Industry: Innovations are helping to push the fashion industry into a greener future as well, from “swap don’t shop” and shared-closet platforms that aim to reduce the problems inherent with fast-fashion and over-consumption, to carbon tracking tools that give insight into the impact of supply chains, and new methods of sustainable manufacturing. – Read More on PSFK
2. Fast fashion must be shelved within a decade, says Zalando CEO: The Germany-based group wants to push the fashion industry towards more durable products that consumers can repair, reuse and resell. “As a platform, we are more capable of shaping [the industry] than a single brand.” – Read More on the FT
3. You thought the pandemic killed fast fashion? Not even close: Over the past decade, H&M and Zara have tried to appear more eco-friendly by releasing reports about how they’re using more sustainable fabrics and manufacturing processes. Some experts believe that these brands are responding to growing consumer awareness. – Read More on Fast Co.
4. Parallel luxury imports are big online as buyers seek bargains: Luxury brands have their own online websites, but an increasing number of customers are choosing to shop at retailers that carry a variety of brands on one website for the sake of convenience and cost, with most of the items sold by these companies are brought into Korea by parallel importing. – Read More on Korea Joongang Daily
5. RELATED READ: Fendi Case Provides Insight into the Challenging Fight Against Parallel Importers in China. The massive demand for lower cost parallel imports in China is fed by the massive overseas “daigou” system, which literally means “surrogate shopping.” Through daigou networks, overseas purchasers scour foreign markets for cheaper or otherwise hard-to-get genuine goods for shipment back to China. – Read More on TFL
1. New Research Directly Links Western Fashion Brands to Deforestation: The key issue is the environmental destruction hidden in hard-to-trace overseas supply chains, and that although Western nations strictly regulate domestically, overseas it’s like “the wild west.” – Read More on Vice
2. Even Hermès Shoppers Can’t Escape the Supply-Chain Crunch: Hermès likely produced fewer Kelly and Birkin bags in 2020 because its French factories had to shut down for weeks during lockdowns. The company will sell around 100,000 of these two bag models in 2021. – Read More on the WSJ
3. With the Return of the ‘90s, Burberry Tries to Be Cool Again: Burberry Group Plc has found its check mate. The British luxury brand has named Jonathan Akeroyd, currently the head of Capri Holdings Ltd’s Versace, as its new chief executive officer. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. Wall Street analysts expect strong earnings from Europe: Leading investment banks have selected a slew of stocks ahead of third-quarter earnings in Europe, with Morgan Stanley analysts revealing their “high conviction” picks, including Hugo Boss. – Read More on CNBC
5. Chinese hunger for luxury fuels L’Oreal sales growth: Though mainland China continued to post double-digit growth during the quarter, helped by strong demand for hair and skincare products, growth was tempered by a resurgence of some regional coronavirus curbs. – Read More on Reuters
1. What matters to fashion shoppers across the globe? Discounts were the top driver for both British (23%) and Italian (33%) online shoppers. online reviews are particularly important in the US (the biggest motivator for 13% of respondents), while in Germany, 29% of respondents said that being able to browse a variety of products was their top motivator. – Read More on the Drum
2. China Should Brace for Higher Luxury Goods Taxes, CICC Says: China’s plan to reform its consumption tax system will likely entail a hike in rates on luxury goods and products that use high energy or generate significant pollution, according to analysts at China International Capital Corp. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. Household Brands Count the Rising Cost of Trains, Planes and Automobiles: Demand for consumer products has been unusually strong since countries began to reopen their economies. This has put pressure on global transport routes and increased the cost of logistics. – Read More on the WSJ
4. It’s not Kanye, it’s Ye, after judge approves name change: West has used Ye as his Twitter handle for years and had petitioned a court to make it his full name with no middle name or last name. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michelle Williams Court approved his request on Monday. – Read More on Reuters
5. A fashion turnaround and a logo no-go: hits and misses of rebranding. Facebook is planning to rebrand with a new corporate name to reflect its shift to building the metaverse, it has been reported. The announcement could be made during Facebook’s Connect conference this month. – Read More on the Guardian
6. RETRO READ: As Brands Continue to Tweak Their Logos, the Gap’s Failed Rebrand is an Important Lesson. Although rebranding can provide a boost to a company’s image as a whole, particularly as it evolves in its tangible offerings and/or its larger mission or position in the market, such an exercise is not without potential risks – both in terms of legal rights/protections at play but also in terms of consumer reception. – Read More on TFL
1. The E-commerce shopping spree: Saks, which was taken private early last year, split off its e-commerce division in March. The value of Saks.com was $2 billion. An IPO could value the standalone e-commerce company at $6 billion. – Read More on Axios
2. RELATED READ: What is Behind Hudson’s Bay Co.’s Plan to Split Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks.com? Should Hudson’s Bay let go of a minority stake of Saks.com, “The market might take a view on a digital asset like a Saks.com and say, ‘Hey, that is really valuable,’ and price the stock accordingly,” he says. “Then that stock price is essentially absorbed by Hudson’s Bay” by way of the Saks.com stock that it is still holding. – Read More on TFL
3. Pandemic Has Stoked Appetite for French Luxury, Survey Finds: “People were traveling less, and local spending became predominant. Purchasing luxury products is reassuring; the Americans in particularly are very sensitive to revenge buying.” – Read More on Yahoo
4. The adapting landscape of luxury retail: “One of the key objectives in luxury when you’re at a store is actually to make you forget about price. The world’s also looking for wonderment, and that’s a key opportunity for luxury, too.” – Read More on NRF
5. A used Hermès handbag under the tree? Why shopping resale might offer a way around holiday supply chain woes: A report compiled by retail analytics firm GlobalData and online market research company Zogby Analytics for marketplace Mercari, projected that Americans will spend $69 billion on previously owned items from October through December 2021, up 24% from last year. – Read More on Biz Journals
1. Fashion firm Rent the Runway aims for nearly $1.3 bln valuation in U.S. IPO: The company plans to sell 15 million shares priced between $18.00 and $21.00 apiece in its IPO, raising $315 million, as the fashion rental company looks to cash in on the rising interest in pre-owned clothing. – Read More on Reuters
2. Three ways social innovators are driving systemic change, from creating sustainable fashion to supporting refugees: The world’s fashion brands face a daunting challenge. In order to mitigate the harm caused to the environment by today’s throwaway culture of cheap clothing, they need to build a sustainable future based on sharply reduced volumes. – Read More in World Economic Forum
3. Rolex Daytonas have outperformed the stock market over the past year as collectors pile in to the $20 billion secondary market for luxury watches: The average price of a Rolex Daytona has increased 34% over the past year to reach nearly $48,000, as limited new supply is pushing the secondary market for luxury watches to new heights. – Read More on Yahoo
4. French luxury goods groups’ shares hit by weak Chinese data: Shares in French luxury goods companies LVMH and Kering fell on Monday after weak economic numbers from China, a leading market for many of the world’s top fashion companies. – Read More on Reuters
5. RELATED READ: Will China’s Sputtering GDP Crush Luxury Brand Hopes? China’s GDP slowed to 4.9 percent in the July-September quarter compared to a year earlier, falling below expectations and showed a strong deceleration from the first quarter when China expanded at a record pace of 18.3 percent. – Read More on Jing Daily