Daily LInks
1. Apparel’s Next Hot Destination Could Be Target or Walmart: It is possible that full-price apparel consumers are now picking clothes up at mass merchants to consolidate their shopping trips. As long as the pandemic persists, which could be a while, consumers will continue to prefer retail locations that sell necessities over those that sell only discretionary items. – Read More on the WSJ
2. RELATED READ: The Evolution of Walmart & its Quest to Become an E-commerce (and Fashion) Destination. Amazon is chipping away at Walmart’s market share by offering up the every-day household products – and groceries – that are precisely what have helped turn Walmart into the market’s biggest behemoth. To better compete, Walmart has been been focusing on e-commerce and … fashion. – Read More on TFL
3. “What is the ecological role of fashion?” Fashion’s next generation goes green: Under pressure from increasingly environmentally-aware shoppers, brands from luxury fashion houses to high street names also are taking steps to reduce waste. – Read More on Reuters
4. A Proposal For The Fashion Industry: Could Demand Side Innovation Save Us? Brands need to dive deeper into understanding their core customer and psychologies to develop specific products in order to stay profitable and protected in their market space. With fewer options that customers don’t actually want overwhelming them, they will be willing to pay a bit more for the item that meets their needs accurately and in a way that’s just good enough: quality over quantity at its finest. – Read More on Forbes
5. With resale, Ikea is trying to find new ways to acquire customers: Ikea’s efforts to build out a resale business – the company will also be opening a secondhand shop in Sweden next year – coincide with its efforts to find new customer acquisition channels. – Read More on Modern Retail
1. Madison Avenue’s Prime Retail Properties Sell for Decade-Low Price: Tenants started pushing back in recent years. Shoppers who initially frowned upon buying luxury products online started flocking to e-commerce for luxury clothes and products at better prices. The exorbitant rents in Manhattan and other global capitals became harder to justify. – Read More on the WSJ
2. RELATED READ: Suffering from COVID-19 Setbacks, Valentino Wants Out of its Fifth Avenue Lease, According to New Lawsuit. The complaint points to a provision in the parties lease that mandates that it use the retail space in a manner that is “consistent with the luxury, prestigious, high-quality reputation of the immediate Fifth Avenue neighborhood.” This has been made impossible as a result of COVID, according to the fashion brand, which says that it has been unable “to offer in-boutique retail sales, or associated services such as fittings.” – Read More on TFL
3. Why aren’t brands for women run by them? “Investors are going to demand it. Boards are going to demand it. I think I see it as inevitable,” Bluemercury CEO and co-founder Beck said of women taking over leadership in the beauty space in an interview earlier this year. “The feminization of leadership at companies will come. It will come in beauty companies before other industries.” – Read More on Retail Dive
4. Retail’s tick-box approach to supply chains is untenable: For Duncan Jepson, managing director of Liberty Shared, an NGO focused on anti-people trafficking, the key is to stop companies thinking of these issues as a matter of ethics. “Labor abuse in supply chains should be to manufacturing what money laundering is to banking, i.e., a largely criminal matter caused by weak management, governance and internal controls.” – Read More on the FT
5. Major Fashion and Apparel Brands’ Efforts to Police Their Supply Chains Are Not Working: That is due, in part, to the fact that good data on the workings of multi-national brands’ supply chains is difficult to come by. This means that brands cannot see the results of the many corporate social responsibility programs intended to track and improve working conditions in their suppliers’ factories. – Read More on TFL
6. How a $16 hat made Carhartt a billion-dollar brand: Carhartt has been the unofficial uniform of America’s blue-collar workforce since it was founded in 1889. But Carhartt isn’t just some legacy brand. Once the hip-hop community adopted the workwear style in the 1990′s, Carhartt became a pop-culture icon. – See More on CNBC
1. From Taylor Swift to Joe Biden, the power of fan merchandise shows no sign of ebbing: Fan merchandise, once the purview of post-concert stalls selling shirts and posters, now touches every industry – from high fashion to politics. “Music and entertainment franchises are the obvious core backdrop, but there is more interest in political or activist merch now as well, and that political [aspect] is more cross-territory and -age-demographic than we have seen before, which is interesting.” – Read More on SCMP
2. CEOs Increasingly See Sustainability as Path to Profitability: Still, there appears a gap between talk and action when it comes to hiring CEOs and executives based on their sustainability experience. “Businesses are doing a great job embedding talk of sustainability into descriptions about their company, but are falling short in driving decisions about which leaders to hire based on it.” – Read More on the WSJ
3. As retailers focus on diversity, executive representation is stagnant: Since 2010, the percent of executives of color in retail has hardly changed. In 2018, 86 percent of all retail executives and senior-level officials and managers were white. Women, too, remain underrepresented in executive ranks – with retail having 29% women in upper ranks. – Read More on Retail Dive
4. RETRO READ: Has Fashion Given Business Women a Fighting Chance? In the 250-billion-euro space, 85% of personal luxury goods consumers are women, according to a 2015 Bain report. These figures are wildly disproportionate to the statistics that detail the supply side of the equation, where the industry’s most highly-ranking positions are by and large dominated by men. – Read More on TFL
5. Most U.S. Shoppers Say They Won’t Set Foot in a Mall This Year: Just 45% of U.S. consumers plan to go to a shopping mall this season, down from 64% who visited last November and December. The forecast is a fresh blow to American malls already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, which has upended the economy, shifted spending habits and made people wary of crowded places. – Read More on Bloomberg
Yet … Two Retail Giants Are Busy Buying Distressed Mall Brands Out of Bankruptcy.
6. Chinese shoppers spend big during the Golden Week holidays — a sign consumption is on the mend: China’s Ministry of Commerce said average daily sales for retail and food and beverages was 4.9% higher this year than during last year’s Golden Week holidays, for total sales of 1.6 trillion yuan from Oct. 1 to 8. – Read More on CNBC
1. Levi’s Stitches Up Its Secondhand Market: Trove LLC CEO Andy Ruben used to run e-commerce at Walmart; now, he helps brands like Eileen Fisher and REI buy back their products and sell them again. He buys his kids worn gear from Patagonia – another client – sells it when they outgrow it and spends the proceeds on other new, used garments. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. How luxury goods retailing is faring in Covid world: While overall sales in the retail sector are picking up, one category is feeling the pinch of the Covid-19 pandemic much harder. Marketview data shows sales in the luxury retailing segment of the market were down 41.1 percent in the five months from April to August. Spending in the category has halved from $48.7 million for that period in 2019 to $28.7 million in 2020. – Read More on NZ Herald
3. The path forward for the US retail industry: “The beneficiaries of this shift include big brands, which are seeing 50 percent growth during the crisis,” and private labels. “Some 80 percent of consumers who started buying private-label products during the pandemic indicate that they intend to continue doing so even after the COVID-19 crisis subsides.” – Read More on McKinsey
4. An Innovative Way to Prevent Adversarial Supplier Relationships: Formal relational contracts are designed to keep the parties’ expectations continuously aligned. This kind of agreement is a legally enforceable written contract that puts the parties’ relationship above the specific points of the deal. The parties embrace the fact that all contracts are incomplete and can never cover all the contingencies that may occur. This time it is a pandemic. Next time it will be something else. – Read More on HBR
5. Can Amazon upend the luxury sector? Luxury brands tend to prefer the concession model because it offers more control, less discounting, and ability to move inventory. But their ideal model is to sell directly on their own-branded websites where they do not have to give away any commission and do not dilute their brand equity, industry executives said. – Read More on the FT
6. For Brands, Getting Out the Vote Can Also Mean Getting Into Consumers’ Good Graces: “The more companies there are that are doing this, the safer it gets for all of them. I think we’re definitely over the threshold broadly where it’s sensible to think that there’s very little risk in this. The bandwagon is rolling.” – Read More on Morning Consult
7. RELATED READ: How Amazon Turned its Long-Rumored Luxury Venture Into a Reality. Maybe even more important than its pattern of filing lawsuits and introducing new anti-counterfeiting initiatives in order to send a clear message to consumers and potential brand partners about its stance on enforcement, Amazon appears to have critically ceded a fair share of control to its brand partners when it comes to how the “Luxury Stores” will work. – Read More on TFL
1. Stella McCartney launches A-Z sustainability manifesto: “I barely even know what the word sustainable means anymore,” with confusion and greenwashing rife in the industry. – Read More on the Guardian
2. RETRO READ: The Problem with “Sustainability”? It Doesn’t Really Mean Anything . Put simply, “sustainability,” along with other terms – such as “green,” “eco-friendly,” “ethical,” “responsibly-made,” and in many cases, even “upcycled” – lack concrete, uniform definitions with foundations in law that brands and consumers can observe. – Read More on TFL
3. Travis Scott Has Become Corporate America’s Go-To Pitchman: The rapper has partnered with an unusually diverse array of brands to churn out everything from food to apparel to toys and more. His team views the deals as a way to stay active between album cycles. But each needs to deliver creative flair so that he doesn’t become over-saturated with licenses or known for boring partnerships. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. World’s garment workers face ruin as fashion brands refuse to pay $16 billion: Powerful U.S. and European fashion companies have refused to pay overseas suppliers for more than $16bn of goods since the outbreak of Covid-19, which exposes the huge power imbalance at the heart of the fashion industry, which demands that suppliers often bear all the upfront production costs while buyers pay nothing until weeks or months after factories ship the goods. – Read More on the Guardian
5. Cleaning up fast fashion starts in the classroom: “Designers determine the life cycle of a garment, and they can see what the life of a garment will be at the end of its design and after the consumer is done with it.” Training students to design a garment so it can be easily recycled or upcycled helps ensure that tomorrow’s apparel companies are contributing to a circular economy. – Read More on Corporate Knights
6. Legal experts say modest antitrust reforms likely after House report on tech: While a highly anticipated U.S. House antitrust report called for a range of antitrust reforms, including structural separations of major U.S. tech firms, experts expect only modest refinements to current antitrust regulation from the report rather than comprehensive change. – Read More on S&P Global
7. Will This Bubble Go K-Pop? The IPO of Big Hit Entertainment, the music label that represents boy band BTS, was oversubscribed by about 600 times. Shares will start trading next week. K-Pop is a huge phenomenon (in fashion, included) and many fans of the band, who call themselves ARMY, put up money for sentimental rather than financial reasons. – Read More on WSJ
1. Uniqlo Takes On H&M and Zara With Focus on Asian Stores: Uniqlo’s lineup is heavy on comfortable clothes for lounging around the house, compared with the more fashion-forward offerings of Zara and H&M. CEO Tadashi Yanai said Uniqlo’s functional take on apparel was far more advanced than those stores’, and he characterized his rivals as focused on copying hot trends. – Read More on the WSJ
2. How AR is Redefining Retail in the Pandemic: Augmented Reality (AR) applications have been on the rise with virtual “try-before-you-buy” experiences ranging from previewing furniture and products in your home with everyday brands like IKEA and Home Depot, to virtually trying on luxury fashion such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci. Once a nice-to-have feature, AR has quickly become an essential technology for retailers. – Read More on HBR
3. House of Representatives report accuses Amazon of abusing market power: A new 450-page report on tech companies from the House of Representatives’ subcommittee on antitrust accuses Amazon of wielding monopoly power in online retail to the detriment of third-party sellers that use its site as well as competitors and other stakeholders. – Read More on Retail Dive
4. RETRO READ: Jeff Bezos “Can’t Guarantee” that Amazon’s Policy Against Using Seller Data to Boost its Private Labels Has Not Been Violated. This is part of the equation that legal minds have pointed to in recent years in regards to potential claims of antitrust involving Amazon, particularly as the giant has continued to build troves of data on third-party products and sales, which it can use to “hone its own competitive pricing strategy, gain information about consumers to make its own marketing more effective, and give its own goods an advantage,” as the Journal put it. – Read More on TFL
5. Why the far right Proud Boys co-opted these polo shirts: it will be hard for Fred Perry to pursue legal action. If members of the Proud Boys are legally buying shirts with the brand’s trademark, there’s nothing they can do about it. “A brand owner can’t sell a shirt, generate revenue, then sue legitimate consumers of their product for trademark infringement.” – Read More on Fast Co.
6. With shoppable Instagram Reels, live selling may get a new life: Despite years of failed attempts, live video shopping may finally become bigger in the U.S. The concept, while niche stateside, has long been popular among Chinese influencers, or key opinion leaders (KOLs); the country’s shopping livestreams helped generate $63 billion in 2019 alone. – Read More on Modern Retail
7. RELATED 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 are actively revamping the way that consumers shop. – Read More on TFL
1. How Coronavirus Changed the Retail Landscape: The sudden shift in consumer habits changed the profit picture for retailers in the S&P 500. eBay had the biggest increase in its profit margin in the second quarter compared with the same period last year, according to an analysis of FactSet data. Other winners were automotive and discount chains, which managed to boost profitability despite the higher costs of operating in a pandemic. – Read More on the WSJ
2. The Truth About HENRY: The values and aesthetic codes of HENRY (i.e., “High Earner, Not Rich Yet” individuals) are simply bourgeois mass consumerism repackaged for a smaller addressable audience. HENRY myopia ignores a wide swath of consumers with disproportionate spending power, while neglecting the values and aspirations of the consumers most likely to drive disproportionate spending power in the future. – Read More on Just Throwing it Out There
3. India to extend surcharge on taxes on luxury items, tobacco: The surcharge on luxury goods, which varies from 12% to 200%, is part of the national goods and services tax (GST) introduced in 2017, and was due to expire in 2022. – Read More on Reuters
4. Elsewhere in luxury … Mercedes-Benz to Slash Costs 20% in Next Five Years: Mercedes will move its vehicles upmarket in an attempt to boost profit amid weak demand and rising investments in electric vehicles. The automaker stopped selling sedans in the U.S. to focus more on sport-utility vehicles, which are more profitable and make up a larger share of new-car sales in Europe and the U.S., and says it will continue to “move capital to luxury and high-end products.” At least some luxury brands in the fashion space are likely to follow suit, as we previously noted here. – Read More on the WSJ
5. USPTO releases report on artificial intelligence and intellectual property policy: Across all IP topics, a majority of public commenters expressed a general sense that the existing U.S. intellectual property laws are calibrated correctly to address the evolution of AI. However, commenters appear split as to whether any new classes of IP rights would be beneficial to ensure a more robust IP system. – Read More on the USPTO
6. RETRO READ: AI Programs Are Creating Fashion Designs and Raising Questions About Who (or What) is an Inventor. “The USPTO has not made any determination concerning who or what actually created the invention claimed in the application.” It merely held that it an inventor must be a “natural person” – whether that be a scientist like Thaler or a real-live fashion designer. – Read More on TFL
1. Why is LVMH trying to get out of its Tiffany deal? A possibility is that chairman Bernard Arnault is interested in pursuing alternative opportunities. One recurring scenario is that LVMH could look to make a bid for Cartier-owner Richemont, which would be a much bigger acquisition than Tiffany, giving Arnault an even more dominant position in luxury. Annual sales of the combined group would be four times that of nearest rival, Gucci-owner Kering. – Read More on Bloomberg
2. US bankruptcies surpass 500 mark as coronavirus takes toll: A total of 509 companies have gone bankrupt this year as of Oct. 4, exceeding the number of filings during any comparable period since 2010. – Read More on S&P Global
3. J. Crew’s parent company faces uncertainty post-bankruptcy: The fragility in the apparel market and uncertainty from the ongoing pandemic will make it difficult for the company, which emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 10, to make great strides in any turnaround. – Read More on Retail Dive
4. ESG Investing Looks Like Just Another Stock Bubble: “Do-the-right-thing” investments have been outperforming, but that has been driven by liquidity and flows rather than an effective strategy. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. Fashion’s great inventory pullback: As brands embark on a market season unlike any we’ve seen before, many are showing abbreviated versions of their typical collections to retailers that are overwhelmingly risk-averse and low on cash. “It’s kind of like what we saw after 2008. At first, there is this pullback and it’s a bit overly conservative and they’re buying just the bestsellers.” – Read More on Vogue Business
6. RELATED READ: From Hermès and Chanel to Louis Vuitton and Gucci, What Will Fashion’s Impending Shift Actually Look Like?In the first scenario, brands are likely to move more upmarket and eschew the usual barrage of trend-specific creations on a seasonal basis in favor of fewer – and almost certainly more expensive – offerings. It is relatively easy to envision brands like Chanel and Hermès cutting back on the dozens of garments and accessories they offer up each season in favor of even higher-end offerings. – Read More on TFL
1. Christian Dior chairman and CEO Pietro Beccari: Online sales have accelerated due to COVID and there is a new normal, but brick-and-mortar stores will definitely play a major role in luxury the future. For luxury brands like Dior, online sales will not surpass 20, 25 percent even in 5 or 6 years. – See More on Bloomberg
2. Private Equity Firms Bet on Booming Demand for Online Shopping: Private equity firms are betting that the rise in online shopping is here to stay, with some of the world’s biggest investment funds eyeing deals for everything from warehouses to delivery companies. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. How Matthew M. Williams Is Refreshing Givenchy: Streetwear will continue to dominate fashion, he adds. “The ‘casualization movement’ is here to stay and will keep on pollinating the world of luxury in its ivory tower.” – Read More on the WSJ
4. A New Look For The Fashion Industry? There’s more to diversifying fashion than the runway. “Who gets into who’s an atelier, who’s in charge of the design aesthetic, who’s in charge of the creative inspiration, who’s in charge of the money and the financing, who sits on the boards of directors, who’s writing the stories, who’s taking the photographs, who’s making the decisions about who goes on the cover of a magazine.” – Read More on NPR
5. How Many Lives Can a Fashion Brand Have? “Sonia Rykiel is a brand with a strong heritage, but a difficult one to bring back to center stage,” said Luca Solca, a luxury analyst at Bernstein. “It is possible that you hit great ideas and that you manage to get back to notoriety and desirability — but doing that in an industry dominated by mega-brands with way more resources for marketing and communication is very difficult.” – Read More on the New York Times
6. RELATED READ: What Are You Buying When You Acquire a Bankrupt Fashion Brand? for the average fashion-focused consumer, Sonia Rykiel’s backstory and its goodwill is hardly as readily-recognizable and not nearly as striking as that of more storied or more relevant names in the crowded fashion industry, whether that be established luxury brands or buzzy streetwear and direct-to-consumer startups. And as a handful of recent examples of revamp attempts reveal, bringing a brand back from the dead is no easy feat. – Read More on TFL
7. Crocs share price soars on Justin Bieber’s Instagram post that suggests a collaboration with shoe brand: Bieber’s Instagram post of a pair of Crocs in a swimming pool, and a hint he will have a collaboration with the brand, drew a million likes within a few hours Crocs shares rose 13 per cent in value within hours, the largest increase in the past 13 years. – Read More on SCMP
1. Boohoo’s 45 percent rise in sales shows that scandal won’t stop fast fashion shoppers: More than £1 billion was wiped off of the fast fashion group Boohoo’s share value back in July, after allegations emerged that it had connections with ‘sweatshop’ factories in Leicester. Almost overnight it plummeted, from a June valuation of £5.2 billion, which was more than rivals Marks & Spencer and ASOS combined. – Read More on the Telegraph
2. H&M to close hundreds of stores as online shift accelerates: H&M has been shutting more stores and opening fewer over the past couple of years as it adapts to the online shift that is driving more competition. The retailer said earlier this year its net number of stores would decline already in 2020. – Read More on CNBC
3. Digital fashion is no more appealing than digital life: This year, the moaners have been silenced – the pandemic cancelled what is already being described as the “traditional” fashion show. It has now become impossible to contemplate spending 20 minutes assessing fancy clothes while sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of fellow fashion victims (a breed prone to aerosol-generating activities such as gushing greetings, although at least they tend to kiss the air, rather than one another). – Read More on the Economist
4. It’s Not Marketing. These Products Are Truly Limited Editions: Companies often use the illusion of scarcity to make products appear more exclusive than they are. Scarcity marketing is more common in the luxury sector than anywhere else. Scoring a hard-to-find sneaker is more than a purchase—it’s an ego-boosting success. “You’re not only showing the rest of the world how special you are, you’re showing yourself that, too.” – Read More on Bloomberg
5. Coco Chanel Was A Nazi. What does that mean for fashion today? Chanel is not just a historical person, it’s also a very successful and powerful brand that exists today. Much of the storytelling around Chanel’s life has come from, or been influenced by, the brand that bears her name. – Read More on Forbes
6. RETRO READ: Chanel and the Controversial Entrepreneur Who Started it All. The full extent of Coco’s Nazi ties may not be inherently common knowledge, at least in part because Ms. Chanel never publicly commented on or explained her wartime activities, refusing to answer questions on the subject. Unwanted attention was further suppressed after the conclusion of WWII when the Wertheimers opted out of taking legal action in order to oust her from the brand, as an ugly legal battle would undoubtedly tarnish the brand’s already delicate image. – Read More on TFL
7. Can Black Lives Matter Finally Fix the Fashion Industry? “You have to flip the mirror on your own organization, especially before you make any sort of statement. What have you done internally as a company to make it right? It shouldn’t be that the one person of color in your organization is in the Diversity and Inclusion role.” – Read More on Cosmo