BDO’s monthly high street tracker is always an interesting read for anyone watching UK retail but this month it’s even more interesting because it’s bleak – very bleak. In a country with a strong economy, BDO has recorded yet another year-on-year drop in sales and is talking about a “financial winter” for stores.
Lacoste, then Hermès and now… Uniqlo. Maybe a few years ago that wouldn’t have been a great career path but Uniqlo has much-deserved ambitions to become the global number one and Christophe Lemaire is one of the best of a clutch designers who really know how to combine fashion with the ultra casual and commercial.
The Marc Jacobs resort/pre-summer collection hit town yesterday and was certainly an interesting one. While there was an element of the unappealing in there, it was also stuffed full of ultra-commercial pieces that should spark a few trends.
Amazon is gong to spend even more money on growing its business in India, the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos has announced. That’s no surprise given that India is its fastest growth market.
Online sales growth used to be huge with 20% or 30%-plus figures appearing regularly. But while it’s understandably slowed down as the sector has got bigger, that doesn’t stop some pretty spectacular headlines still appearing. And this one really made me sit up: Surveyed shoppers made 51% of their purchases on the web.
There was one particularly interesting bit about New Look’s results announcement yesterday (ok two, given that it’s expanding even further with menswear-only stores and had some stuff to say about Brexit). The thing that really made me sit up was what it said about global trends and social media.
Will Primark succeed in the US long-term? And what effect will that success have on the wider US fashion retail sector? Those are two questions that spring to mind having seen a report from MarketWatch (based on a Morgan Stanley pricing survey) that says US clothing retailer prices are more than triple Primark’s and the…
It’s so boring when brands send out collections season after season that are so darned perfect you just want to scoop everything up and take it home. But that’s what Gucci has done since early last year when Alessandro Michele stepped into the spotlight and became a fashion star. We critics like something to criticise but…
Internet shopping may be the future but it comes loaded with problems. There’s the issue of costs to retailers, which are high – especially if customers return too many goods. And that happens a lot with a recent BBC report highlighting that we’re all serial returners, especially when it comes to womenswear. There’s the issue…
Apple Pay is struggling to gain traction outside of the US market, according to research specialist Timetric. The service launched in the US 18 months ago and has proved relatively strong there with most of its total usage of $10.9bn last year coming from Apple’s domestic market.
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