Daily LInks
1. How China’s ‘common prosperity’ goal, cancel culture and continuing Covid-19 travel curbs will affect luxury brands: Luxury brands need to look to China even more for inspiration and innovation. Why? Because luxury globally will be shaped by Chinese consumers. China will be the number one market for luxury in 2025. – Read More on SCMP
2. The revival of retail deals: 2021’s global retail M&A volume reached $227 billion as of Dec. 16, a year-over-year increase of 59%. That nearly keeps up with the broader increase of about 64% across all industries. – Read More on Axios
3. Your Ugly Christmas Sweater Is Branding’s Latest Weapon: The inexorable rise of “ugly” festive merch rests on the jesting irony of high-low self-deprecation: being cool enough to pull off the patently lame. But it’s getting harder to tell who, exactly, is the butt of the joke when every brand aspires to be fashion-forward for 15 minutes. – Read More on Bloomberg
4. Digital spin-offs are suddenly in fashion as ailing dept stores seek easy fixes: Nordstrom’s reported foray into this value-finding patch is still unconfirmed by the company, the Seattle-based luxury retailer has attained the services of Alix Partners to study the feasibility — and financial rewards — of possibly spinning-off its Nordstrom Rack unit into a completely new company. – Read More on PYMNTs
5. Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs approved to buy fashion line out of bankruptcy: Combs’ company SLC Fashion LLC made the highest bid for the brand at an auction on Monday, bumping its final offer to $7.55 million from its initial $3.3 million bid. Four other bids were submitted prior to the auction. – Read More on Reuters