We provide monthly updates of the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion e-commerce and technology professionals, empowering you to gain an edge in job interviews, promotion discussions and perform better in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.
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.
Important articles and must-know insights for today’s e-commerce and technology professionals:
1. Luxury E-commerce: Who is Surviving and Why?
E-commerce businesses face a tough road ahead. (BoF Collage)
Mytheresa is one of the few multi-brand luxury e-commerce retailers, including Moda Operandi and Ssense, that has continued to forge ahead despite the upheaval rocking the industry. […] While online retailers have historically been forced to compete on price, which has led to a vicious cycle of discounting, Ssense, Mytheresa and Moda Operandi have prioritized curation and a focus on specific customers to differentiate their offerings: Gen-Z for Ssense, high-spending customers for Mytheresa and fashion show fans for Moda Operandi.
Moda Operandi’s virtual trunk shows, which offered pre-orders for Xemena Kamali’s debut Chloe collection, for example, are drawing shoppers similar to the site’s founder, New York-based socialite Lauren Santo Domingo. […] Miteresa has launched a series of exclusive capsule collections tailored to the lifestyles of its wealthy clientele – past partners include Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana and Brunello Cucinelli – while ESSENS sees itself as a home for emerging designers.
Related jobs:
E-Commerce Executive, De Mellier — London, UK
Junior Digital Merchandising Analyst, Ermenegildo Zegna — Milan, Italy
E-Commerce Manager, Hugo Boss — Melbourne, Australia
2. Why the fashion curation problem is so hard to solve
Lyst is one company that is trying to curate the products shoppers see on its app and website to suit their individual tastes. (Lyst)
Understanding what customers want and giving it to them is a simple idea, but difficult to execute. Spotify told The Wall Street Journal that to create recommendations, it looks at which songs users frequently put together in playlists and starts to learn the relationships between songs. It adds metadata like a song’s release date and label, and runs audio analysis to rank characteristics like danceability, sonics, volume, tempo, energy and mode. […]Spotify uses this information to create a multi-dimensional map of all the tracks in your library, with tracks closer together being more relevant and likely to appeal to the same listeners.
This approach isn’t unique to Spotify, but it’s difficult to replicate in the fashion industry. Spotify is successful in part because of its vast music library, with something for everyone. In the fashion industry, the equivalent of music is inventory. But maintaining inventory on that scale is cost-prohibitive, and each product needs to be cataloged with the same level of granularity.
Related jobs:
E-Merchandiser Third Party, Prada Group — Milan, Italy
E-Commerce Operations & Customer Service Specialist, Amiri — Los Angeles, USA
E-commerce Specialist for Moncler (Korea)
3. Farfetch Owner Coupang: Everything You Need to Know
A screenshot of the women’s clothing section of Coupang’s website and Coupang CEO Beom Kim. (Coupang)
Coupang is back in the spotlight. The New York-listed Korean e-commerce company, which acquired Farfetch in January, reported its first-quarter results in May. It was the first time that the financial statements included losses from the embattled London-based luxury marketplace. Coupang’s quarterly revenue rose 23% to $7.1 billion, but net income fell 95% to just $5 million.
[…] After the acquisition, Farfetch founder Jose Neves and eight other executives left, leaving Coupang CEO Beom Kim with the daunting task of getting Farfetch back on track. […] “We are already executing on our plan to self-fund Farfetch,” Kim said in a February conference call with analysts after Coupang’s full-year earnings release, “and we think there are many paths to making this a worthwhile investment for shareholders.”
Related jobs:
Digital Technology Product Management Lead, Gucci, Milan, Italy
E-Commerce Product Manager, Tempe — Alicante, Spain
Senior E-Commerce Merchandising Specialist, On — Shanghai, China
4. Who do international retailers hire to develop the U.S. market?
Primark opened 12 stores in the U.S. last year and plans to expand to 60 by 2026. (Primark/Primark)
Primark is one of several European and Asian retailers making big expansions in the U.S. The Irish retailer opened about 12 stores in the U.S. last year and plans to expand to 60 by 2026. Spain’s Zara and Mango are also expanding, as is Japan’s Uniqlo, which plans to double its North American store count by adding 20 stores this year.
The US is the largest apparel market, and its consumers have proven more resilient than those of other major economies. But breaking through isn’t easy: what works in a retailer’s home country doesn’t necessarily apply to American consumers. For every H&M or Zara that has been successful in the US for decades, there are many more Uniqlos that have gone through multiple trials and errors to build a business here.
Related jobs:
Digital Media Specialist, Ugg — London, UK
Marketplace Catalog Internship, AWWG — Madrid, Spain
E-Commerce Manager, Hugo Boss — Melbourne, Australia
5. Marketing may be the big beneficiary of AI
Google’s AI Overview — Ad-supported. (Google)
As the internet was abuzz last month over glitches in Google’s new AI-generated search results, including a suggestion to add glue to tomato sauce to stop the cheese on pizza from sliding off, the tech giant also revealed some other notable AI news. The company said that AI-generated results will soon include ads. It also announced several other AI features: A new feature in Product Studio that can generate realistic backgrounds for standard product photos now lets brands tweak the results to fit their brand aesthetic by uploading a reference image that represents their style.
Since the capabilities of generative AI garnered widespread attention, Google and a host of other tech companies, from Meta to Salesforce, have raced to incorporate all manner of AI into their products. These capabilities are aimed not just at average internet users, but also at marketers, who are investing in tools that make it easier to create ads that resonate with shoppers.
Tech companies have good reason to appeal to them: Their money fuels much of the industry: In Google’s most recent quarter, about 77% of the company’s revenue came from companies paying to advertise on its sites, including YouTube.
Related jobs:
Integration Manager, Joor — London, UK
Data & Analytics Programme Manager, Primark — Reading, UK
Senior Engineer, Tory Burch — Amsterdam, Netherlands
6. Luxury retailers expect sales to rise in London and Milan due to fewer shoppers from the Paris Olympics
Berluti’s parent company, LVMH, is increasingly focusing on profiting from partnerships with top sports teams, competitions and athletes ahead of next year’s Olympics. (Shutterstock)
Luxury retailers in other European cities are competing this summer for wealthy tourists hoping to avoid Paris’ crowds and road closures during the Olympics. “Paris will probably be slow,” Cartier Chief Executive Cyril Vigneron said Friday, adding that cities like London, Milan and Barcelona are likely to see increases in foot traffic during the Olympics.
Van Cleef & Arpels CEO Nicolas Boss said the Summer Olympics, which run from July 26 to Aug. 11, “is not the right time to host such an important luxury jewellery festival in Paris.” “However, our stores will remain open and we wholeheartedly welcome sports enthusiasts to visit,” he added. […] A report commissioned by Paris 2024 last week pointed to the possibility of a “crowding out” effect, where tourists who had planned to come to Paris go elsewhere, but said it was difficult to measure or predict.
Related jobs:
Digital Learning & Retail Excellence Specialist, Maison Margiela (Paris, France)
Tiffany Digital IT Product Director (New York, USA)
CRM Manager, Kate Spade — Tokyo, Japan
7. After China, Zara will expand its live shopping experiment to Europe and the US.
Douyin is said to be censoring Cantonese content. (Shutterstock)
Zara plans to expand its live shopping broadcasts to the UK, Europe and the US this year, testing a format that is already hugely popular in China but less familiar to Western shoppers. […] The five-hour-long weekly live shopping show in China, which airs on TikTok’s Chinese sister site Douyin, has helped boost Zara’s sales since its launch in November, according to retail analytics firm EDITED.
“We would like to introduce this to Western countries where livestreaming is not as prevalent, but we think it’s an evolution from an entertainment perspective so we might as well give it a go,” a Zara spokesperson said of the initiative, which is expected to launch between August and October.
Related jobs:
Junior IT Product Developer, Alexander McQueen — London, UK
Customer Engagement Systems & IT Engineer, Tapestry — Tokyo, Japan
Senior Mobile App Developer, Ralph Lauren — Bangalore, India
8. Why Prestige Beauty Can’t Ignore Amazon
Kiehl’s, a L’Oreal subsidiary, announced its debut on the platform through Amazon Premium Beauty. (Kiehl’s)
In May, L’Oreal-owned Kiehl’s announced its debut on the platform through Amazon Premium Beauty, joining other portfolio brands already selling on the e-commerce giant, including Lancôme, It Cosmetics and Youth to the People. […] The move makes sense given L’Oréal’s dominance on Amazon: In its February earnings call, the company cited Amazon’s contribution to sales growth in its Luxe division in the U.S. Kiehl’s is one of 24 L’Oréal Luxe lines.
Amazon is a discovery platform that beauty brands can no longer ignore, especially when they realize how much money they’re losing to unauthorized sellers. Plus, many of the reasons that once shunned Amazon — brand equity dilution, lack of control over who you promote with, exclusivity with other retailers like Sephora — have significantly weakened.
Related jobs:
E-Commerce Content Assistant, Invisible Collection — London, UK
Senior Software Engineer, Burberry — London, UK
Senior Software Developer, Chalhoub Group — Dubai, UAE
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