Daily LInks
1. Why Have Fashion and Beauty Brands Failed to Respond to Anti-Asian Hate? “A lot of the big brands are in a position of power and resources where they could make a difference to help the AAPI community. It’s easy to put out a statement on Instagram saying you stand with the AAPI community, but then not do anything tangible.” – Read More on Daily Beast
2. How luxury luggage brand Globe-Trotter navigated the pandemic: Executive chairman Vicente Castellano, formerly the MD of Hackett London, hatched a plan to enhance Globe-Trotter’s identity as a lifestyle brand with a multi-strand structure, combining its “old-world” glamour with an exciting sense of “newness” that encapsulates the uniting cultural and emotional experience of travel. – Read More on the Week
3. Digitizing Isn’t the Same as Digital Transformation: Covid-19 accelerated the pace of many companies’ digital initiatives — and yet many executives are expressing concern that they’re actually falling behind on making the important choices that lead to differentiation. To win in the post-Covid world, leaders must re-imagine not just how your company works, but also what you do to create value in the digital era. – Read More on HBR
4. What’s next for Bangladesh’s garment industry, after a decade of growth: Pandemic pressure and shifts in global markets have brought stiff challenges to the garment industry in Bangladesh. The sector will need to innovate, upgrade, and diversify, investing in flexibility, sustainability, worker welfare, and infrastructure. – Read More on McKinsey
5. Buy Now, Pay Later Startup Sezzle Becomes Certified B Corp: Sezzle says its mission is to financially empower the next generation, and to go beyond finance by supporting empowerment across many facets of users’ lives, creating a better world for the next generation through ethical initiatives. – Read More on Forbes
6. Nordstrom’s Brush With Junk Proved a Turning Point: As its ratings fell, Nordstrom was forced to pledge inventory as collateral on its credit line and meet strict financial metrics that limited its flexibility. Additional covenants restricted Nordstrom’s options for financing future payments to vendors and precluded share repurchases and dividend payments until the ratings improved. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. The Future of Retail is Already Here: Whether “normalcy” is really on its way back (or will ever return) is still an open question. But even if how we consume has changed forever, we’ll always need more stuff. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Why Retail is at a Crossroads: Despite the fact that most shoppers are still averse to “go shopping,” it is likely they will go out and spend some money. Certainly, the government hopes they will do that in order to jumpstart the economy. Those easy comparisons will be true for the next two quarters. – Read More on Forbes
3. Federal appeals court rules for France in ‘France.com’ trademark dispute: The French government didn’t engage in commercial activity that would negate its sovereign immunity when it won the rights to the domain name in French court from France.com Inc., the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. – Read More on Reuters
4. Where Pent-Up Demand Is Strongest (and Weakest) in a Post-Pandemic Economy: Millennials – and, to some extent, Gen Z adults – will bolster the post-pandemic economy. Millennials are the most eager to return to everyday activities, including going to the movies and sporting events, traveling abroad, going back to the gym and even traveling for work. – Read More on Morning Consult
5. What brands can learn about pricing luxury goods beyond all expectations from Beeple’s $69 million NFT art sale: What luxury brands need to do is estimate the added luxury value their brand delivers. And this value does not depend on the product or the competition, it depends on the perceived value the story creates. – Read More on SCMP
6. What Happens to Luxury if China Stalls? One potential risk at play: A confidence crisis in the Chinese leadership or a new policy like [China’s] anti-corruption policy from 2012 could stem the tide of luxury spending. – Read More on Jing Daily
1. Retailers and Landlords Clash Over What Counts as a Sale: Landlords are increasingly offering deals in which retailers pay a percentage of their monthly sales in rent, rather than a fixed amount. But there is a sticking point. Some landlords want to include a portion of online sales in the new leases, arguing that physical stores play an important role in many of these transactions. – Read More on the WSJ
2. Blockchain’s Promising Future in Battling Counterfeit Luxury Goods: With counterfeits are on the rise, leading luxury retailers are now turning to blockchain technologies in an effort to douse the flames. – Read More on Law.com
3. RELATED READ: NFTs can authenticate ownership of a token itself, as well as the unique history of how such token was developed and linked to a creative work. However, a simple NFT by itself cannot help with matching the creator or owner of an NFT to a real person in the physical world, nor does it validate that the creator of the NFT has the underlying rights to tie that NFT to any specific creative work. – Read More on TFL
4. How the Pandemic has Affected Garment Workers Around the World: “A lot of brands simply don’t consider the people who make their products as their workers. The pandemic has exacerbated a lot of glaring problems that exist in the fashion system—this needs to be a turning point.” – Read More on Vogue
5. Boohoo Cuts U.K. Suppliers as Part of Labor Cleanup Efforts: Boohoo Group Plc, the online fashion retailer, is cutting more than 400 companies from its supplier network following a critical report last year on labor practices at some of those businesses. The action follows the termination of at least 64 factories that couldn’t meet new enhanced labor standards, the consolidation of some suppliers and the elimination of subcontracting. – Read More on Bloomberg
6. Amazon calls on India not to alter e-commerce investment rules: New Delhi has been considering revising e-commerce foreign investment rules for weeks. The last time they were changed, in 2018, it forced Amazon and Flipkart to rework their business structures and soured trade relations between India and the U.S. – Read More on Reuters
1. The Beauty of 78.5 Million Followers: As beauty has become a pop phenomenon, a radical change in the perception of the cosmetics business has also taken place. Applying cosmetics is a worthy lifestyle choice characterized as self-love, self-care and wellness — all positive, healthful qualities, even if you have the sneaking suspicion that “wellness” is mostly a coded word for the pursuit of being skinny and pretty, or tamping down anxiety about not being skinny and pretty. – Read More on the New York Times
2. U.S. Steelmakers, Industry Users Tussle Over Future of Tariffs: A broad group of U.S. business associations, composed of 37 groups ranging from the American Petroleum Institute to the U.S. Fashion Industry Association, asked President Joe Biden on Wednesday to remove the duties that his predecessor justified on national-security grounds “as soon as possible.” – Read More on Bloomberg
3. How fashion e-tailer Revolve became a global force working with influencers like Kendall Jenner, Nicole Richie, and Aimee Song: Nimble, fleet-footed, with a colossal inventory and a reputation as a pioneer in the business of using influencers to showcase and design collections, the eight-year-old Revolve is a global fashion force. – Read More on SCMP
4. Net-zero targets proliferate, but path to decarbonization remains murky: While more than half of the biggest carbon emitters have set net-zero targets, many are still far behind on setting climate-aligned short- and medium-term goals or committing to make the capital expenditures necessary to achieve those targets, a Climate Action report finds. – Read More on S&P Global
5. How Can the Luxury Industry Become More Inclusive? “The industry is exclusive by product, but it should not be exclusive by identity. Where it gets a little gray — and I think the industry is sorting this out — is how do we become inclusive by socioeconomics when, by definition, our price structure is high?” – Read More on Knowledge@Wharton
6. As stores begin to reopen, retail real estate insiders are cautiously optimistic: Right now, there is an opportunity for brands to shift existing locations to better ones as leases expire. For example, some brands may be offered prime spaces they historically wouldn’t have been able to get. – Read More on Modern Retail
1. Private Equity Firm Carlyle Group Set to Acquire Majority Stake in Luxury Fashion Retailer END: Carlyle Group will purchase a stake from the UK online fashion retailer’s founders in a deal that values the luxury retailer at more than $1 billion, marking the latest foray into the luxury goods sector by private equity firms hoping to capitalize on a rebound in luxury goods sales and expanding markets in Asia. – Read More on Forbes
2. Airport Retail Shops Pin Hopes on Bump in Travel: Retailers and restaurants that were financially strong enough to survive the collapse in business see signs of a nascent recovery. Airport passenger volumes recently reached their highest levels in a year, though the number of people passing through U.S. airports is still about half what it was for most days in 2019. – Read More on the WSJ
3. Talk of De-Globalization is Fashionable but Wrong: Reshoring decreases flexibility and innovation while raising costs, according to Cambridge Judge Business School professor Peter Williamson, and in case that is not enough, the glitches in supply chains in 2020 were often local rather than global. – Read more on Bloomberg
4. RELATED READ: Forget Reshoring, if Fashion Wants to Innovate, Companies Should Focus on Omnishoring: The fashion industry is an interesting case as it is labor-intensive – particularly the stitching, which has not yet been automated – and has off-shored substantially to lower costs. Yet it is also an industry in which clusters exist and flourish – Prato in Italy, or the garment centers in London and Paris. – Read More on TFL
5. The Cultural Endurance of the Mighty, Mighty Birkin: The pricey bag has maintained an ineffable hold over an increasingly broad range of consumers who are taken by its timeless and trend-resistant style, elusive reputation, and strong, long-term investment value. – Read More on Harper’s Bazaar
6. RETRO READ: Can the Birkin Bag Survive the Resale Market? There are now more than a million Birkins in the market. It sounds awfully good. But what does it really mean for an accessory whose image and allure is grounded largely in exclusivity and carefully measured supply? – Read More on the New York Times
7. EU court backs Lego in German design rights case: Danish toymaker Lego on Wednesday won the backing of Europe’s second-highest court in its fight to secure design rights for its colorful snap-together plastic building bricks familiar to millions of children worldwide. – Read More on Reuters
1. It’s 2021. Why Is Buying Clothes Online Still So Hard? The surge in online shopping during the pandemic means that retailers now have a lot more data to tailor their offerings and respond to customer preferences. In luxury goods, for example, that means knowing exactly what VIP customers might like and messaging them when their favorite designer has a new collection in. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Why China is leading the global rebound in luxury spending: more e-commerce, and a growing consumer appetite for shopping rather than experiences. “Proactive interaction and engagement with the younger generations continues to play a key role in regaining consumers’ trust and loyalty as we move into a post-Covid-19 world.” – Read More on SCMP
3. NFTs could bridge video games and the fashion industry: The fundamental value NFTs offer to bridge virtual fashion items with video games is the option to secure custody of the item for use in other games or mobile apps. – Read More on TechCrunch
4. Phillip Lim is on a mission to root out hate against Asian Americans: The designer believes that fashion brands can play a powerful role in building movements against racism, and that fashion designers can no longer just speak through their clothes—they must stand for something and have a point of view, otherwise their brands will ring hollow. – Read More on Fast Co.
5. Garment Workers Win $22 Billion in Historic Victory Against Wage Theft: To date, 21 brands monitored by PayUp have committed to paying for cancelled orders in full, unlocking a total of $22 billion for garment workers globally. 18 brands have still refused to pay — and many have deleted #PayUp comments on their social media accounts in an attempt to shut down the conversation. – Read More on TruthOut
1. Hilco to Advise on Sale of Fashion Brand Worn by Meghan Markle: Advisory firm Hilco Streambank LLC will help market the sale of Ralph & Russo Ltd., the British fashion house that was forced into administration by the Covid-19 pandemic. Prospective buyers could include rival fashion houses, sovereign wealth funds, private equity firms and ultra-rich individuals. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Nike shares fall after mixed earnings report, layoffs news: Nike said it was “focused on shifting resources and creating capacity to reinvest in our highest potential growth areas.” “We are building a flatter, nimbler company and more quickly transforming Nike to define the marketplace of the future.” – Read More on CNBC
3. NFTs for fashion are inevitable: Robert Triefus, an executive vice president at Gucci, said it was inevitable that luxury brands would begin to design NFTs. – Read More on Quartz
4. RELATED READ: NFTs … What Are You Buying and What Do You Actually Own? Ownership of an NFT as a unique token – versus ownership of the content that such NFT may be associated with – is a critical distinction. When someone purchases an NFT tied to a piece of content, they have not automatically purchased the underlying intellectual property rights in such piece of content. – Read More on TFL
5. Inside Vogue, where women have the top jobs but men still rule: The pay is notoriously low unless you’re high up (a popular joke played on how much independent wealth was needed to sustain a career at Vogue: one girl says to another, “I’ll have to get a real job, Daddy can’t afford to send me to Vogue any more”). – Read More on the Guardian
6. Americans are starting to buy real clothes again: Retailers say they’ve noticed a growing interest in trendy tops, wide-leg jeans, even resort wear and swimsuits, as Americans prepare to head back to the office, book summer vacations and make other post-pandemic plans. – Read More on Washington Post
1. Wexner Era Ends at L Brands as Les, Abigail Plan Board Exit: Les Wexner is leaving the board of Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands Inc., bringing an end to a long – and recently troubled – relationship with a company he built into a retail empire. Wexner, 83, and his wife, Abigail, won’t stand for re-election at the annual shareholder meeting in May, the company said Thursday. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. Why everyone is confused about what ‘eco-friendly’ actually means: One of the clearest findings from a recent Smart Design survey?Nobody’s clear about anything. There’s widespread confusion about which materials are best for the earth and plenty of common beliefs that are nearly the opposite of reality. – Read More on Fast Co.
3. Shipping Logjams Spread on Crush of Imports: “The surge in e-commerce has significantly increased the volume of incoming cargo,” said Port of Oakland spokesperson Marilyn Sandifur. “We’ve got 20% more vessels coming in over the last month, with six to a dozen vessels in the San Francisco Bay waiting to dock for up to seven days.” – Read More on the WSJ
4. Sweatpants are fashion designers’ worst nightmare. Home working and Zoom socializing proved to be an elastic market: in an otherwise miserable year for the clothes business – face masks apart – sales of jogging trousers in America increased by 17% in 2020, compared with the previous year. – Read More on the Economist
5. U.S. corporate bankruptcy tally grows by 31 in early March: The pace of U.S. corporate bankruptcies quickened in early March from the previous month, even as faster COVID-19 vaccine rollout and government stimulus is brightening the outlook for many industries. From March 1-14, 31 companies entered bankruptcy proceedings, outpacing the 17 filings in the first two weeks of February and nearing the 35 bankruptcies recorded during that entire month. – Read More on S&P Global
1. Amazon employee testifies about ‘grueling’ working conditions amid union battle: Amazon.com Inc. employee Jennifer Bates says that Amazon sent anti-union messages to workers’ phones and had signs posted in bathroom stalls. – Read More on S&P Global
2. Bigger, Wider, Better? Why Giant Jeans Are Making a Comeback: Labels as haughty as Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta are selling gigundo tube-legged jeans for $595 and $980 respectively. This return of looser legs could be read as a long-gestating backlash to skinny jeans which, with hems as narrow as 5 inches, defined the denim market for the past two decades. – Read More on the WSJ
3. Nordstrom debuts platform for shoppable shows as more retailers experiment with livestreaming: Nordstrom unveiled its Livestream Shopping channel Wednesday as part of the company’s broader ambitions to delve into e-commerce livestreaming. Retailers in the U.S. are playing catch-up to a trend that has already been rampant for years in Asia. – Read More on CNBC
4. RETRO READ: From Social Shopping to Entertainment-Centric E-Commerce, What Western Brands Can Learn from China’s Retail Giants. By adding entertainment into the mix of the traditional online buying experience, Chinese e-commerce giants – such as Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, and PinDuoDuo, the country’s second largest e-commerce entity with a valuation of just under $40 billion, which makes it worth more than eBay or Twitter – are actively revamping the way that consumers shop. – Read More on TFL
5. We can’t talk about American fashion without talking about Native American designers: As advocates of the movement for racial equality began learning about the richness of native cultures, they channeled their support through investments in indigenous companies, including indigenous-owned fashion brands. – Read More on InStyle
6. If Your iPhone Charger Blows Up, It May Be a Fake Sold on Instagram: Chinese illicit factories and wholesale vendors are using the Facebook Inc. app to sell fake Apple accessories such as AirPods, lightning cables, iPhone batteries and USB power adapters. The knockoffs, identical except for their quality and security standards, are sold at discounted prices of as much as 10 times. – Read More on Bloomberg
1. Zara Owner’s Lesson for Others Is Keep Supplies Close to Home: While its counterparts saw inventory build up as a result of COVID, Inditex managed to reduce inventory because of a combination of factors, notably a centralized system that makes it easier to track each good from entry into a warehouse to sale. It also managed to deal with a 77% surge in online sales by servicing orders from its stores. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. An analysis of 27,000 Instagram images show that fashion’s BLM reckoning was mostly bluster: Many of the 34 fashion and beauty brands surveyed did increase the diversity of skin tones in their Instagram images, but the increases were often only marginal. – Read More on Quartz
3. Zalando aims for more than 10% of Europe fashion market: German online fashion retailer Zalando said it aimed to capture more than 10% of the 450 billion euro ($537 billion) European fashion market in the longer term after coronavirus lockdowns supercharged its growth in 2020. – Read More on Reuters
4. Will U.S. lawmakers rein in marketplace counterfeits? As retailers like Amazon try to police the sale of knockoffs, several congressional bills – such as the Shop Safe Act of 2020 – aim to regulate online merchants to protect consumers and brands. – Read More on Retail Dive
5. RELATED READ: Thanks to a Newly-Introduced Bill, Online Marketplaces May Be Required to Verify & Disclose Seller Information. The INFORM Consumers Act directs online retail marketplaces that include third-party sellers of consumer products to verify the identity of high-volume third-party sellers on the platform, defining “high-volume third-party sellers” as those who have entered into 200 or more discrete transactions in a 12-month period amounting to an aggregate total of $5,000 or more. – Read More on TFL
6. China, digital and youth boost Burberry, Prada and luxury fashion: Upgrading its full-year profit forecast after a promising rebound in sales since December, Burberry – best known for its iconic trench coat – cited Asian retail sales as a boon to global performance over the past couple of weeks. – Read More on Forbes