Open in new window
Get the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion professionals working in retail, updated monthly. Increase your market awareness and follow market leaders to gain an edge in job interviews, promotion discussions and perform better in the workplace.
BoF Careers distills business intelligence from a wide range of content, including editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events, delivering role-tailored key takeaways and learnings alongside a selection of the most compelling live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.
Explore global retail job listings on BoF Careers today, including Sales Consultant at Paul Smith in London, Store Manager at Acne Studios in Paris, Retail Sales Manager at MyGemma in New York and Inventory Manager at Alexander McQueen in Singapore.
Important articles and need-to-know insights for today’s retail professionals:
1. The store defines a new era of multi-brand retail
Inside Jamestown, Hudson, New York. (Jamestown)
Over the past year, several major luxury e-commerce sites have changed owners or shut down. But their struggles have created an opportunity for a wave of new retailers looking to build a healthier, more sustainable luxury retail model. “There’s now space for great curation, great customer service, interesting activations, playfulness, humor, thinking outside the box and that intimacy that’s so hard to create,” said Julie Gilhart, a business consultant and former longtime fashion director at Barneys.
This new landscape includes surviving establishments such as The Webster, Dover Street Market, Kiruna Zabet and Elise Walker, and is joined by newcomers such as ESSX and Café Forgot in New York, Sportivo in Madrid, LN-CC in London, The Broken Arm in Paris and ENG in Shanghai. [A popular approach is to] Convince hyper-digital consumers to browse IRL by offering an in-store experience they can’t get on Instagram, TikTok or Ssense, which means taking a risk on emerging, if not unknown, fashion brands and catering to local tastes.
2. Will Gap’s turnaround finally pay off?
Gap and Dôen’s recent collaboration. (Dan Martensen/Gap Inc.)
Under CEO Richard Dickson, a former Mattel executive who was named chief executive about a year ago, the Gap brand’s visual identity has been gradually refreshed. The product assortment has been scaled back to emphasize core styles. A redesigned website has created a cleaner e-commerce experience. And most importantly, products are presented to shoppers both online and in stores with a better mix of trend and convenience. Dickson credits that last point to Zac Posen, who became Gap Inc.’s creative director in February.
Customers are starting to notice: In the quarter ended May 4, all four of the company’s brands, including Banana Republic, Athleta and Old Navy, posted their first sales increases in years. Meanwhile, Gap Inc.’s shares have more than doubled since Dixon became president in July 2023. A series of fashion-forward collaborations and capsule collections, including a partnership with California brand Doon in May, has thrust the company into the cultural spotlight recently. “It’s clear they’re not trying to be everyone anymore,” said retail consultant Gabriella Santaniello. “They’re comfortable.”
3. Why retailers must help rebuild society
Futurist Doug Stevens argues that we are moving into a new era in which big retailers, from Amazon to Walmart, will gain competitive advantage by providing value to society, rather than extracting more value from it. (Getty)
Retail no longer has a credible, bipartisan, democratic institution that works for the public good. It no longer has a fair capitalist system that improves the prospects of the average consumer. It no longer has strong, widespread domestic investment and job creation, and it no longer has a steady flow of talented, educated workers into our industry. Retail has become a job for people who are just passing through or have nowhere else to go.
But the era of corporations selfishly extracting value from social systems is over, not because of a new corporate consciousness, but because these systems had nothing to offer. We bankrupted them. As a result, we have moved into a new era in which competitive advantage is gained through value contribution, not further value extraction. An era marked by a historic rethinking, the seeds of which we are only now beginning to see take shape.
4. With new owners, Von Dutch plans a comeback
Von Dutch has a new owner. (Von Dutch)
New owner White Space hopes to translate Von Dutch’s recent surge in online relevance into sustainable sales, and WSG Brands’ priorities are expanding in the U.S. (currently 90% of sales are international), revitalizing marketing with new collaborations and global campaigns centered around its American heritage, and building relationships with the right partners.
“[The brand has] “Brands are made up of a lot of different components: cultural relevance, global brand recognition and licensing potential,” says Mark Benitez, chief operating officer at WSG Brands. “When you combine those with the Y2K brand movement and what it means to younger generations, it all clicked.” But these efforts haven’t helped brands like Ed Hardy and Juicy Couture regain their former relevance. Licensing comes with challenges: while it can be profitable, it forces owners to give up some control over the brand’s look, production, quality and distribution.
5. Editorial | Leave the cheap stuff for Temu. Amazon should sell luxury goods.
Milan, Italy, August 10, 2017: Amazon’s website home page. It’s unlikely that Amazon will outperform LVMH, but given the recent turmoil in the online luxury fashion industry, it may be possible that it could make inroads with other luxury brands. (Shutterstock)
Over the past two weeks, Amazon has been trying to branch out into both luxury and bargain sales. There’s only one smart play: Amazon has a better shot at competing with Tiffany than Tem. Amazon is helping Saks Fifth Avenue owner Hudson’s Bay Co. facilitate a deal to buy rival Neiman Marcus Group Inc. for $2.65 billion. The tech giant will take a minority stake in the new company, Saks Global, to enter the luxury sector. The move comes just days after it was revealed that Amazon plans to take on PDD Holdings Ltd.’s Tem and Chinese fast-fashion rival SheIn Group Ltd. with new stores selling ultra-low-cost goods.
Neither market will be easy to conquer, but even a giant like Amazon would have a hard time winning at Temu and Shein’s niche, risking to devalue Amazon’s core proposition: convenience in the process. And while it’s unlikely Amazon can surpass LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, which owns Tiffany & Co. and Dior, it might make inroads with other luxury brands given the recent turmoil in online luxury fashion.
6. Fashion’s bet on travel retail pays off
Japan is this year’s big winner from the post-pandemic tourism boom, thanks in part to a weak yen. (Richard A. Brooks)
The post-pandemic travel boom shows no signs of slowing. While fashion and beauty retailers are largely benefiting from the surge in tourists, the rapid and seemingly permanent shift in how and where travelers spend their money has left some brands perplexed. Western tourists are spending more on experiences, while Chinese tourists are more likely to shop at home than while traveling abroad, and their preference for Asian destinations over post-lockdown Europe has continued this summer.
Duty-free giants like LVMH and Estée Lauder have struggled to keep up with changing travel spending patterns. It’s much easier for fashion and beauty brands, who don’t have the massive infrastructure to cater to Chinese tourists circa 2019, to grab holiday shoppers’ wallet strings. Flashy resort pop-ups are always popular; a branch of MyTheresa x Flamingo Estate in the Hamptons lets tourists buy beauty products and jewelry and test drive electric Porsches. Others are opening duty-free stores in airports popular for long-haul transfers.
7. France steps up anti-counterfeit measures ahead of the Olympics
Police confiscated 63,000 items of clothing, shoes and leather goods, including fake Louis Vuitton and Nike products. (Shutterstock)
Police swarmed the tourist-filled Saint-Ouen flea market, near the Stade de France where athletes will compete at this summer’s Paris Olympics, before dawn on April 3 and closed 11 stores selling fake bags and shoes. They confiscated 63,000 items of clothing, shoes and leather goods, including fake Louis Vuitton and Nike products, and dumped them immediately into a trash compactor. Ten people were arrested. Michel Laveau, head of police security for the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb, said the operation was part of a pre-Olympic crackdown on counterfeit goods.
Fake fashion is big business: The European Union Intellectual Property Office estimates that fake designer clothing alone cost French companies an average of 1.7 billion euros ($1.83 billion) in lost sales per year between 2018 and 2021. But police crackdowns on street vendors in Seine-Saint-Denis, where one in three people live in poverty, according to French national statistics, have been criticized for further hardship for people who are already in financially precarious situations.
8. Why Revolve is buying Parisian couture house Alexandre Vauthier
Revolve buys Alexandre Vauthier out of bankruptcy. (Getty Images)
Alexandre Vauthier has found a buyer: US online retailer Revolve, which also runs luxury site FWRD, is acquiring the French haute couture house in a bid to save it from bankruptcy. In an exclusive interview with BoF earlier this month, the two companies said the deal will allow the brand to retain its 29 employees and return to the Paris couture calendar. Revolve and Paris-based Vauthier might seem like odd bedfellows, as most of the online retailer’s 22 in-house brands (which account for 20% of sales) are more affordable ventures.
Some of these are created in partnership with tastemakers and influencers like Aimee Song, who play a key role in driving traffic to the platform. For Revolve, adding top designer concepts to its lineup marks “the next step in building the brand,” said CEO Michael Mente. The brand is in the midst of a marketing transformation as it slowly begins to pull away from its familiar influencer-centric approach. “Influencer marketing is just one arrow in our quiver. … In a scary economy for emerging brands, we want to actively seek out talented people who need our support.”
Open in new window
Source link
