Daily LInks
1. Coronavirus Changed Everything. Except T.J. Maxx: T he discount chain isn’t looking to quickly ramp up e-commerce beyond its minuscule level or add new features allowing American customers to buy products online and pick them up in stores. It stopped taking online orders during the lockdowns and even now is limiting the number of items for sale on its website. – Read More on WSJ
2. Top Brands Responded on Instagram to George Floyd’s Killing: The variety of responses suggests that, as yet, there is no common Instagram playbook among top brands, whose strategies have ranged from statements of support and declarations of principle to curious adaptations of established branding and, in some cases, absolute silence. – Read More on Bloomberg
3. Brandless Is Back With a New Goal: Become, and Stay, Profitable. Brandless officially relaunches today after a joint acquisition by Utah PE firm Clarke Capital Partners and digital marketing agency Ikonifi. The relaunch comes with value bundles of minimalist beauty, CPG, and home goods products. – Read More on Morning Brew
4. RETRO READ: Brandless is Not Really Doing Away with Branding, According to Trademark Filing. Brandless made a name for itself by bucking the ostentatious logo trend, shunning branding in its quest for a widespread selection of a logo-free products. But just how logo-less is Brandless’ existence? Well, not entirely. Minimalist-inspired branding is still branding, after all. – Read More on TFL
5. Meet the 24-year-old designer who made $1 million selling used clothes: The pandemic has been a boon to the online fashion resale market: Depop has seen a 300 percent increase in items sold between January and April compared to the same period last year. And that’s just the beginning. – Read More on Fast Co.
6. Kylie, Kendall, and Cardi B’s Unpaid Bills Have Left Garment Makers Starving: Kylie and Kendall Jenner’s line, Kendall + Kylie, is owned by Global Brands Group, who refused to pay its garment suppliers for orders produced in February and March following a drop in sales caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “Given the unpredictability of the situation, our retail partners have cancelled orders, and existing inventory and product in production may have no sell-through. Consequently, we have no choice but to make the difficult decision to cancel all S/S 2020 orders from all suppliers (without liability),” wrote Rick Darling, CEO of Global Brands Group in a letter dated March 21. – Read More on Remake
1. How private equity is gutting retail: In the bankruptcies of J. Crew, Neiman Marcus, and many others, it wasn’t just bad business practices and the rise of e-commerce that did them in, it was a direct result of the perils of leveraged buyouts – the acquisition of a company using a significant amount of borrowed money. – See More on CNN
2. Online fashion stocks in vogue as coronavirus speeds ecommerce: “The sudden closure of all apparel retail stores across all major global markets has shaken up the channel mix in an unprecedented way this year,” said Bernstein’s Aneesha Sherman. “It’s five years’ worth of growth achieved in about six months.” – Read More on Reuters
3. In the Fashion Industry, Black Activists Push For Deeper Change: The industry has long capitalized on black culture. Fashion magazines now frequently put black stars on their covers while brands call on them to boost their cool factor. Yet there are still few black professionals in top industry roles. – Read More on WSJ
4. Fashion Redesigned Itself in Lockdown: Fashion executives have spent the lockdown figuring out how to sell their products online. Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman’s parent company Tapestry canceled $500 million of orders for handbags, jackets and dresses, saving cash to weather both the shutdown and what’s likely to be a slow recovery, while Farfetch has seen sales skyrocket — by 90% last quarter. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. RETRO READ: From Hermès and Chanel to Louis Vuitton and Gucci, What Will Fashion’s Impending Shift Actually Look Like? it is unclear what the tangible outcomes will be. Nonetheless, two potential outcomes within the luxury and high fashion space seem likely: one will see brands contract, to some extent, in terms of the breadth of their offerings, while moving further upscale in order to maintain their positions as luxury brands and simplifying their business model in order to meet heightened consumer demands for a more sustainable future. The other will see brands embrace a more modern notion of contemporary luxury by going increasingly more digital. – Read More on TFL
1. What it’s really like to be black in the fashion industry: “I was considered inexperienced.” “Being stereotyped is something I have experienced in my career.” “I had experienced situations in which I had been overlooked for permanent positions.” “Being constantly asked about ‘diversity’ makes me feel like I’m always being typecast.” – Read More on the Guardian
2. How slow times in the luxury world will separate the bling from the chaff: The world of personal luxury goods—from handbags and haute couture to diamond rings and pricey Swiss watches—has been in hibernation. Now, posh purveyors are having to rethink their business model in a hurry. – Read More on the Economist
3. The Rich Have Stopped Spending and That Has Tanked The Economy: “For higher-income individuals, that spending is still way far off from where it was prior to COVID and it has not recovered as much.” They have a lot of discretionary income and before the pandemic were spending a significant chunk of that going to nice restaurants, the theater, or traveling and staying in nice hotels. Those are precisely the things that have been off-limits since the coronavirus hit. – Read More on NPR
4. Creative directors in luxury fashion have a five-year expiration date: “Five years seems the ‘expiry date’ of successful creative directors,” Bernstein found when looking at the past performance of big luxury companies under more than a dozen different creative directors, the individuals who are responsible for defining the public image of a brand, from overseeing design of the products it sells through guiding the look and feel of its marketing and stores. – Read More on Qz
5. The e-commerce boost is about more than Amazon: The pandemic has acted as an accelerant for e-commerce, and the convenience has staying power even as people emerge from sheltering in place. Morgan Stanley revised its forecast for online sales growth this year to 25%, nearly doubling its previous estimate. That’s an additional $71 billion directed at electronic purchases. – Read More on Reuters
1. What Will the Retail Experience of the Future Look Like? Fewer in-person touches means digital artifacts need to embody brands in deeper, more memorable ways. Brands have an opportunity to embrace media that can communicate the experience of using their products. New capabilities in motion design allow us to capture sensory details and generate new realities. – Read More on HBR
2. Sales Are Going Out of Style at These Retailers: A number of clothing retailers – from Gap to Calvin Klein’s parent company PVH Corp. – have said they would pack away a substantial share of inventory for later seasons—or even next year—instead of subjecting their items to what they think will be a cutthroat season of post-pandemic markdowns. – Read More on WSJ
3. Leather, silk, wool, felt – which fabrics fight the spread of viruses and bacteria? Fashion industry looks for answers: “Each fabric performs differently and there hasn’t been extensive work done on the current strain of coronavirus and its relationship to soft surfaces such as textiles. What we do know is that there are certain textiles that are naturally antibacterial, such as wool, cashmere and silk.” – Read More on SCMP
4. Boohoo is the perfect embodiment of our fast fashion hypocrisy: The fast fashion group has hit a market cap of nearly £5 billion by brilliantly tapping into the zeitgeist of modern day 16 to 30 year-olds, and employing a nimble model – in which it leverages its flexible supply chain, and rapidly evolves both marketing content and product ranges to drive superior growth. – Read More on Forbes
5. Neiman Marcus Obtains Access to $250M with DIP Financing: Neiman Marcus Group has obtained U.S. court approval to get debtor-in-possession financing. The retailer said $250 million is available now and a further $150 million will be available as needed after Sept. 4. The purpose of this court action is to provide financing so that Neiman Marcus can open its stores again after the temporary, pandemic-related closings. – Read More on PYMNTS
1. How Adidas Became the Shoe Industry’s Unwitting Racial Equality Case Study: “First, we need to give credit where it’s long overdue: The success of adidas would be nothing without Black athletes, Black artists, Black employees, and Black consumers. Period.” – Read More on Yahoo
2. What will the luxury market in APAC look like after coronavirus? “Luxury brands that have not invested into consistent brand building, to create meaningful differentiation and desirability, will have to work extra hard to win over consumers that have spent the last few months living in lockdown.” – Read More on the Drum
3. Boats, Pools and Home Furnishings: How the Lockdown Transformed Our Spending Habits: “People have a lot of purchasing power now. They’ve been at home and can’t spend for two months. No restaurants, no bars. People who go to sporting events can’t do that. They were forced to save.” – Read More on WSJ
4. Retail is on the rebound, but smaller businesses are still at risk, National Retail Federation CEO says: Retail sales are picking up again, but … “The big question will be what happens to those small, independent, those midsized companies. Can we get the rest of the economy moving quickly enough that we can bring the small businesses along?” – Read More on CNBC
5. About a third of consumers are shopping at pre-COVID-19 levels. They’re just doing it online. A Mastercard SpendingPulse report found that e-commerce sales increased by 92.7 percent in May, and research by Adobe found a surge in buy online, pickup in-store transactions in April. – Read More on Retail Dive
6. How Kohl’s is surviving retail disruption: Department stores were struggling even before the coronavirus pandemic forced many to close their doors for weeks. But Kohl’s is faring better than many rivals. Perhaps most closely watched is its program that allows Amazon customers to return items to Kohl’s stores for fast and convenient refunds. – Read More on CNBC
1. California is Examining Amazon’s Business Practices: In the midst of an ongoing European Union investigation, California’s review focuses at least in part on how Amazon treats sellers in its online marketplace, these people said. That includes Amazon’s practices for selling its own products in competition with third-party sellers, one of the people said. – Read More on WSJ
2. Forced labor: clothing brands have the chance to press China amid post-virus slowdown, rights advocate says. Hundreds of global companies buy cotton and make goods in Xinjiang, China, where over 1 million Uygurs are estimated to be detained, some doing forced labor. – Read More on SCMP
3. RELATED READ: U.S. Lawmakers Introduce New Bill to Cut Down on Imports of Products Made in Chinese Detention Camps. If enacted, the bill will alter existing law in that it will impose a “‘rebuttable presumption’ that assumes that all goods manufactured in Xinjiang are made with forced labor and therefore, banned under the 1930 Tariff Act” – meaning that they will be barred from importation into the U.S. – “unless the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection certifies otherwise.” – Read More on TFL
4. The Future of Retail, Post-Coronavirus: The coronavirus maelstrom could lead to record permanent closures of bricks-and-mortar stores in the U.S. this year, with the possibility of more shutdowns coming as retailers reopen their stores and map out their post-Covid-19 future, experts say. – Read More on WSJ Pro
5. Fashion was broken even before the pandemic: It’s hard to recall a time since the gluttonous 1980s when fashion wasn’t wobbly. But most agree that after the 2008 recession, the industry was never the same. When the economy tanked, Saks Fifth Avenue took the lead in frantically discounting merchandise, and other stores followed. Sales were already nearly incessant in some parts of the business but the recession sparked drastic markdowns of high-end goods. – Read More on the Washington Post
1. For Businesses to Rebuild, the Important Must Be the Urgent: In April, with much of the U.S. on lockdown, Fila sold more than $1 million through Fila.com for the first time. This rapid acceleration in online sales came as other initiatives went on hold, including advertising and event sponsorship. – Read More on WSJ
2. Racism is at the heart of fast fashion – it’s time for change: The fashion industry makes huge profits from the exploitation of women of color. Millions of black and brown people making our clothes in factories thousands of miles away bear the heaviest burden. For there to be meaningful change, brands need to pay garment workers living wages. – Read More on the Guardian
3. Amazon, pushing fashion: “The first two weeks we were seeing multiple sales a day,” said Jonathan Cohen, one of the designers in the Amazon’s Common Threads store. While sales have slowed, “it’s been helpful,” he said. “We were left with so much inventory from COVID, and in general from stores that were not paying from before.” – Read More on Chicago Tribune
4. RELATED READ: Amazon Has Been Trying (and Failing) to Infiltrate the Fashion Space for Years. It Just Got a Big Break. The Common Threads program now means that Amazon has a stable of designers offering up their wares on its site. – Read More on TFL
5. Matthew Williams is Givenchy’s New Designer: The American designer behind the 1017 Alyx 9SM label and a key ringleader of the luxury streetwear scene, Williams becomes the French house’s seventh couturier, succeeding Clare Waight Keller. His challenge will be to quickly galvanize the house around yet another new esthetic – and fast. Tenures at heritage brands have been getting shorter, and the current environment seems to favor luxury’s giant players including Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior and Gucci, whose scale affords multiple advantages. – Read More on WWD
6. ‘Woke’ fashion brands face backlash for not practicing what they preach: “Changing before talking about your changes will be vital,” says RJ d’Hond from data consulting company Kantar, “and only if it is a full company intent, not a marketing or communication department idea.” – Read More on the Guardian
1. The company that saved Barneys, Forever 21 while in bankruptcy says, “Apparel will be back. People are not necessarily buying less apparel, they are buying different apparel. My guess is Lululemon sales are through the roof right now.” – Read More on CNBC
2. Lululemon Posts Sharp Drop in Sales: Lululemon’s sales fell sharply in the last quarter. The company’s online business surged by 70 percent in the period, accounting for 54 percent of overall sales compared with 27 percent in the year-ago quarter, but with U.S. and European stores were closed amid the coronavirus pandemic, its surging online sales weren’t enough to offset the decline. – Read More on WSJ
3. LVMH-owned Sephora Signs ‘15 Percent Pledge’ to Carry More Black-Owned Brands: A movement spearheaded by a black creative director named Aurora James is urging major retailers to commit to devoting a set amount of their shelf space to black-owned businesses. “It starts with a long-term plan diversifying our supply chain and building a system that creates a better platform for Black-owned brands to grow, while ensuring Black voices help shape our industry. We recognize we can do better.” – Read More on the New York Times
4. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Faces Off Against a Fearsome Adversary: The EU’s antitrust regulator plans to file a formal complaint against Amazon over the way it treats third-party seller data. The problem is that running the marketplace means Amazon can learn which products are popular and where, even when these aren’t goods that it’s supplying directly. – Read More on Bloomberg
5. RETRO READ: Is Amazon an Antitrust Lawsuit Waiting to Happen? “Amazon’s use of its Amazon Marketplace platform to gather analytics on its Marketplace partners, then to enter their markets while using its data advantage and crushing terms to overtake the space.” – Read More on TFL
6. The fashion industry is notoriously racist. Here’s how to make it more inclusive: Reese believes that the direct-to-consumer movement can help level the playing field for black designers. “There’s so much more opportunity if you don’t have to get past the traditional gatekeepers of the fashion industry.” – Read More on Fast Co.
1. Shoppers Surprise Retailers by Returning to Stores: Shoppers are returning to reopened stores faster than expected, according to retail executives. Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette says the pandemic won’t permanently change shopping habits among American women. “The lure of having appropriate fashion from our customer all the way from mass or off-price to luxury is still incredibly potent, and while it looks in certain categories grim right now, I don’t think that’s forever.” – Read More on WSJ
2. The pandemic is tightening fashion conglomerates’ grip on the industry: “Luxury conglomerates benefit from economies of scale, centralization of capabilities, access to capital as well as access to an exclusive network of suppliers. As countries around the world recover from Covid-19 at varying speeds, the access to different markets around the globe will further benefit large conglomerates.” – Read More on Glossy
3. RETRO READ: “Brands Can Do Better With a Conglomerate” Behind Them … A Look at the Consolidation of the Luxury Industry. Such large-scale banding together “fortifies” big brands (even if the potential cost savings to be garnered from luxury mergers are not necessarily as sizable as those that abound in more down-market industries), particularly in light of investor fears of a looming global recession. – Read More on TFL
4. Solidarity Is in Style—but Is Fashion Media Really Ready to Reckon With Its Race Problem? For those of us who’ve long felt the fashion industry needs more black friends than the celebs on its pages, it has been further proof of how blind its media outlets remain to their own race problem—and how ill-prepared they were to confront it in a moment that demanded discussion. – Read More on The Root
5. World’s largest fashion group, Inditex, reports first loss despite jump in online sales: Sales fell to 3.3 billion euros from nearly 6 billion euros in the first quarter of last year. The loss came despite a 50% increase in online sales in the first quarter, and a 95% jump in online sales in April. Inditex expects online sales to represent more than 25% of its total sales by 2022. At the end of 2019, online transactions made up 14% of net sales. – Read More on CNBC
6. Can Anna Wintour Survive the Social Justice Movement? A reckoning has come to Bon Appétit and the other magazines of Condé Nast. Can a culture built on elitism and exclusion possibly change? Ms. Wintour clearly believes that she can break from the past and kill off any vestiges of a system steeped in the benighted values for which she has become the corporate avatar. – Read More on the New York Times
7. RETRO READ: Brand Anna. The editor of Vogue has always occupied the most powerful seat in the world of American fashion. But Anna Wintour’s web of influential friends and allies has helped turn her into a global brand that transcends fashion.– Read More on WSJ
1. I studied thousands of logos. Here’s where branding is headed next: We’re also seeing two opposite trends that hearken back to the best of the 1970s. Wordmarks with big fat fonts came out roaring this year (think bell bottoms and afros), perhaps as a counter to the minimalist sans serif aesthetic we’ve gotten used to the last five or six years. At the same time, there are a lot of ultra-minimalist vector images with clean positive/negative fields that may have resulted from a desire to return to clarity and simplicity. – Read More on Logo Lounge (via Fast Co.)
2. “Homogenous,” Instagram Apologies Raise Questions About Modern Brands and their “Mission-Centric” Branding: It is also impossible not to wonder whether these utterly-Instagrammable apologies are merely the latest efforts by brands to not only save face (and save their bottom-lines during an already-difficult time) but to attempt to bolster the “mission”-driven nature of their operations. – Read More on TFL
3. Bankrupt Retailers Stand to Pocket Millions From Unused Gift Cards: About $2 billion to $4 billion, or up to 4%, of gift cards typically go unused every year in the U.S., according to research and advisory services firm Mercator Advisory Group Inc. The coronavirus is complicating matters. Shoppers might opt to stay home rather than go to a store due to worries about contracting a potentially fatal virus. “It could potentially be a windfall for the company that is in bankruptcy.” – Read More on WSJ
4. A perfect storm for fashion marketplaces: “For an off-price business, you need demand. January and February were difficult for us, but now business is doing well: we are getting more and more brands as they have a lot of stock—new customers, new offers. But there is a big question mark on how this will evolve.” – Read More on McKinsey
5. Zara Owner Built a Post-Covid Retailer Before Virus Came Along: The unorthodox blend of local manufacturing, nimble logistics and aggressive embrace of e-commerce has helped Inditex weather the fallout from the global lockdown better than many other retailers. It’s also helped recalibrate operations for a future of shopping where face masks, limited store access and distancing stand to push consumers online in ever greater numbers. – Read More on Bloomberg
6. Selling Luxury Goods Will Change, or Will It? While the Coronavirus may be swinging the consumer preference pendulum towards online shopping right now, it remains to be seen if this is a secular trend across all consumer segments. LVMH’s carefully calibrated expansion strategy very much suggests that each acquired brand will not be micromanaged, actively incurring the risk of alienating design talent and high-end customers. – Read More on Forbes