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For Macy’s And Penney, It Must Be Reinvention, Not Just Reorganization

Two retailers, each with a bag-full of problems it must sort out…and quickly. Photographer: … [+] Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

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It is probably no coincidence that the nation’s two largest department store chains find themselves in the same place at the same time. Each may have traveled to this point via a different path and each may be in a somewhat different position to deal with its problems but there’s no mistaking the fact that for Macy’s Inc. and JC Penney the retail clock is ticking.

Even though Penney finds itself in bankruptcy court sunk by excessive debt from previous very bad management decisions while Macy’s still has a working financial balance sheet that gives it some economic breathing space, both chains face the same dire situation:,

• Each has too many stores – too many bad stores in bad locations – and each has said it will close about 150 units in what could only amount to the first wave of retrenchment.

• Each relies on a physical store makeup that is heavily dependent on shopping centers, perhaps the most vulnerable real estate in retailing. Many of these malls are in sub-par B, C or even D-rated facilities being drained of life by the closings of other anchors – Sears, Bon Ton nameplates, Lord & Taylor, et al – as well as faltering specialty stores.

• Perhaps most critical, each relies on a merchandising strategy that positions it right smack in the middle of the marketplace, a terrible place to be right now. Being unable to match the value merchants on price or the better retailers on upscale attributes they are in no-man’s land in an increasingly polarized marketplace.

It’s why the answers we’ve seen so far from each retailer have been incredibly disappointing. Closing stores only reduces the number of irrelevant stores without fixing the core problem. Fewer bad locations is not a solution.

Nor is both chain’s returns to their self-destructive promotional bents. As Macy’s has reopened, it is back to running one-day sales as if nothing has happened over the past four months. The tone-deafness of these event is mind boggling. Penney is no better, offering its usual gimmicky cocktail of coupons, sale days and endless percentage points.

With the incredible gains in market share made over the last 120 days by e-commerce, Walmart and Target, dollar stores and warehouse clubs, neither Macy’s nor Penney has an endless open window to right itself and make department stores meaningful again.

The collapse of an entire retail channel is not unprecedented. The five-and-dimes of the Woolworth era are long gone. So too the short-lived catalog showroom era. When the basic business model is no longer relevant you either reformat or perish. It’s why each needs to be looking at a total reinvention rather than just reorganization. And the solution for each is very different.

Macy’s so far has spent most of its recent efforts on everything but its core business. Backstage and Blue Mercury may be worthwhile endeavors but they don’t fix the mothership. Story, particularly with the departure of Rachel Shechtman, has been a failure and one Market by Macy’s test store is insignificant in the bigger picture.

Macy’s needs to take its fundamental strengths and double down. Macys.com has been a godsend for the company during the pandemic and it should be plowing enormous resources into this business. E-commerce has yet to find a leading fashion goods marketplace, the equivalent to Amazon in general merchandise or Wayfair in home. Macys.com could be the one given its enormous head start.

A digital first strategy would turn the stores into adjuncts to the online business, places for order pick-ups, returns, try-on showrooms, alterations and other service functions supporting dot.com…rather than the other way around. It would require far fewer physical locations but that’s where Macy’s is headed anyway so why not get there faster and more strategically – rather than defensively.

Turn those B, C and D locations into Backstages or fulfillment centers or anything else that comes along. A 250-unit Macy’s with 400 Backstage stores and the country’s leading fashion apparel website? Sounds pretty compelling, doesn’t it.

For Penney, the path is somewhat less easier to chart. The retailer opened an excellent test store just outside Dallas last year and it featured many exciting elements. But in the end it was just a very good Penney store and that may not be enough to cut the retail mustard.

Penney has always relied on its private labels to drive much of its business and that is its most obvious vehicle to lead it back to retail relevance. Keep a Levi’s perhaps but build virtually the entire assortment around its very rich stable of house brands in apparel and home. Take what’s working for Zara and Uniqlo and Pottery Barn –and used to work for Gap and Abercrombie – and explode it out to the entire store. It would provide the proprietary merchandise that is a must in this online-price-comparison era and allow the retailer to work off a decent price structure. Be promotional, sure, but not at the expense of margins.

Penney would also need to rebuild its direct-to-consumer business. Ironic because this used to be big part of its success a generation ago. But no matter how bad it has deteriorated it’s still ahead of most other private label apparel players who continue to struggle with e-commerce. Penney’s infrastructure, particularly with a still sizeable physical store distribution and pick-up network would be a significant advantage.

Here’s the thing: maybe not all of these strategies are right and probably not all would work. But each must reinvent, not just reorganize or restructure. Macy’s and Penney simply being better at being Macy’s and Penney is a path to retail extinction.

Nacelle raises $4.8M for its headless e-commerce platform

Suited For Safety: Suitsupply Is Braving New Retail Realities

There is a first time for everything. For the current generation of startup fashion tech retailers, coronavirus has presented a unique set of challenges. How to maintain supply chains during a global shutdown? How to re-open shops in a pandemic proven difficult to track and predict? Despite the broad embrace of e-commerce, the fashion industry has been largely reliant on in-store experiences for customers inspired by social media campaigns or visual merchandising. The first wave of business casualties included American fashion retailers JCPenny, Neiman Marcus, J.Crew as well as Debenhams in the UK and Reitmans in Canada. Coronavirus-related bankruptcy filings are surging worldwide.

With European Union set to re-open its borders on July 1 and USA, Canada and Mexico aiming for July 21 to allow international travel, many brands are hoping to recuperate springtime losses over the summer holidays season. Early signs point towards a healthy possibility of rebound for the sector. Economists are noting the phenomenon of “revenge spending” as consumers seek comfort in familiar and novel shopping options to deal with the pressures of the new normal. Trying on and buying new clothes can be a cathartic experience that fulfills our basic needs and motivates us to pursue greater achievements. Many retailers are proactively looking beyond the mandatory masks, social distancing markers and free hand-sanitizers to ensure their customer safety.

Fokke de Jong, CEO of Suitsupply

Courtesy of Suitsupply

I reached out to Fokke de Jong, CEO and Founder of Suitsupply. With over 140 stores around the world, there is no better case study to see how a multinational company is adapting to new shopping realities. After all, a team responsible for award-winning innovations in marketing and sustainability must have something up its proverbial sleeve.

At the outset of the coronavirus crisis, few could foresee such profound disruption to global commerce and fashion market, in particular. How has Suitsupply weathered the storm?

Our first understanding was that store closures could last a couple of weeks. Then the gravity of the pandemic swelled, leading to extended lockdowns by governments around the world. We design clothing for people who want to look sharp outside of their homes. The impact hurt the business, but in hindsight it was a call for greater creativity that presented opportunities for how we can improve our ecosystem.

Safe shopping at Suitsupply

Courtesy of Suitsupply

Did you note any make-it or break-it characteristics for fashion businesses in this crisis?

Defining business strategies were potentially saving grace for brands. For example, retail location strategy. While most retailers target main streets, Suitsupply believes if you have a strong value proposition, people will find you. Our investment in destination locations came with extra square footage at an advantageous price. That certainly softened the blow when the overhead meter ticked on and revenue was bottoming out. As a vertically integrated company, we weren’t concerned with the impact of department store closures. Sustainability made a practical difference too. We aren’t in the throw-away business. As a slow fashion brand which creates essential products with a long life span, we knew we would be well received by our customer. We never submitted to markdowns that took over the online shopping space. If you have an attainable price strategy that is reliable, you can reject the industry push for heavily promotion-based yo-yoing. The trickle-down effect of responsible, transparent commerce poses great benefits for the brand, the customer and our planet.

Is the switch to e-commerce sustainable for brands with Custom Made services?

The stay-at-home experiment clearly delineated the needs online and offline. We see validation of the idea that consumer behavior will inevitably shift to rely on a company’s digital footprint to the extent it is made convenient. Customers with a purchase history at Suitsupply fared well in a digital-only environment. They were familiar with our fit, fabrics and we were able to apply their alteration history to new purchases. However, most retail brands cannot survive on repeat business alone. New customer acquisition is an essential component of any successful business. Our best asset in that are our teams. The irreplaceable piece of the omnichannel loop in the past months was the social experience of our stores. Our customers are energized by face-to-face interactions. That’s the magic that makes everything come together. We launched our virtual shopping program with urgency to facilitate a real-time, one-on-one store experience in the privacy of a home. It is proving to be an incredible tool, but we do not believe it replaces the benefits of brick and mortar.

Suitsupply’s virtual shopping

Courtesy of Suitsupply

Your brand is known for “radically personal customer experiences.” In your professional opinion, how safe is the future of shopping for clothes?

Beyond basic precautions which are expected to ease away in the long term, analysis reveals that customers are adapting their expectations and behaviors post-pandemic. We introduced Safe Shopping Screens. These are free-standing partitions allowing for safe interaction during pinning sessions. We also implemented virtual experiences that allows you to pre-select items for store visits to reduce browsing time and guest concentration. When you arrive for a fitting session, everything is ready for you to try on with the right color and size options.

So, you see the role of technology in fashion retail as an intermediary tool, not as a solution in and of itself?

Consumers may be comfortable with platforms suggesting lightbulbs based on an algorithm, not so much when they need to pick an outfit for an important dinner Friday night. Anytime you are making a purchasing decision for something as personal as clothing, the best-in-class brands need to combine a streamlined digital offer with an experiential space and knowledgeable in-store teams. We are actually looking at walking back some of the automated experiences to deepen our relationship with customers on a human level to ensure we have an accurate understanding of their needs. The obsession for data cannot overpower the fundamental principles of service. The future of successful retail is defined by how personal your relationship with your customer can be.

Safe retail experience at Suitsupply

Courtesy of Suitsupply

What metrics should brands use to define their re-opening successes?

I believe the best metric right now is the health implications for our employees and customers. For example, we immediately recognized the intimate nature of customization process as our vulnerable area for potential community spread. This presented the most concern beyond any sales reports. A testament to the effectiveness of the protocols and innovations we applied to the in-store shopping experience is the absence of coronavirus infections among our teams and no infections traced to interactions in any of our 144 stores around the world. In 2020, this is the greatest source of pride for any brand. We are committed to keeping this momentum going.

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Nordstrom Inc. navigate through a world challenged by social unrest and COVID-19?” data-reactid=”20″ type=”text”>How will Nordstrom Inc. navigate through a world challenged by social unrest and COVID-19?

Nordstrom, it’s a matter of capitalizing on synergies between Nordstrom’s department stores, off-price, online and service hubs; flexibility; the ability to pivot, and the importance of inclusiveness.” data-reactid=”21″ type=”text”>According to chief executive officer Erik Nordstrom, it’s a matter of capitalizing on synergies between Nordstrom’s department stores, off-price, online and service hubs; flexibility; the ability to pivot, and the importance of inclusiveness.

Natasha Zinko x Duo Ltd Spring 2021

Referencing the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks by police, Nordstrom, speaking during a Evercore conference Tuesday, said, “We’ve always tried to be positioned as a retailer and an employer as an inclusive place. We sell nice things. We certainly want to carry the best fashion the world has to offer. But we sell it in a very inclusive way where it’s not intimidating, where people can be themselves. And that means where employees can be themselves as well. I think part of our reputation that we’re fortunate to have is for having good people, especially in our stores, people who care about their customers.

“[Inclusiveness] is of immense importance to our customers, to our employees,” he said. “And it’s important that we play our part in being part of solutions. It’s a responsibility we take very seriously. We have a good track record, but we also believe we need to do more.”

“We as a company, our values and culture is really about being inclusive where people feel comfortable not only shopping but being who they are as an employee and bring their authentic self to be with us,” added Anne Bramman, Nordstrom’s chief financial officer. “On top of that, we’re experiencing a pandemic across the world. And it’s really important to us, and we take our responsibility very seriously, about keeping our employees and our customers safe during these turbulent times.”

Nordstrom stressed that the pandemic is accelerating trends. “In particular, the last couple of months through the pandemic, the synergies between digital and physical have become more important. And we certainly believe the changes that have come on these last couple of months, which have been severe in our industry, are very much an acceleration of what’s been in place for some time now, certainly the growth of e-commerce, but the changing nature of what physical retail is, that connection between digital and physical not just having a big e-commerce channel.

“We can pivot, which in these times of uncertainty, has become even more important. I’d say a good example the last couple of months is our ability to fill orders from our stores. Normally, for full price, about 20 percent of our orders are filled from our stores. With stores being closed and inventory being somewhat trapped there, we moved over 50 percent of our [online] orders for most of the last two months from Nordstrom stores. We’re able to fill some orders from our Rack stores for rack.com. This flexibility, the synergy, has helped us get through this time. It helps us be a more efficient business, but most importantly, it helps us serve customers on their terms.”

Coming out of 2019, Nordstrom was in a “strong financial position” and saw strong sales trends and healthy inventory levels, “setting us to react very quickly to what we saw happening in the last several months. The momentum that we had in the business in the second half of 2019 continued into February. We actually were, on a top line perspective, exceeding some of our plans.

“Being based in Seattle, an early COVID-19 epicenter, I would say we had a little bit of an advantage. We reacted very quickly and had a lot of scenario planning, stress testing how this could impact us. It was really pivoting toward liquidity, cash and managing our biggest investment, which was inventory. And in our business, it’s pretty perishable. So we did some fund-raising. We really managed our cash burn. We’ve reduced our expenses, we really leveraged our inventory throughout the whole ecosystem.”

By the end of the quarter, inventory was down 25 percent, by reducing receipts and generating customer demand through marketing and promotions and utilizing fulfillment capabilities.

Nordstrom said about 75 percent of his stores are reopened and 90 percent will be by the end of this week. “We’re a little ahead of our plans so far, more so in our Rack stores than our full-line stores. It’s very early. We just opened up California last week, which is our biggest state.

“With labor scheduling, we actually have a lot of flexibility there. We have people in the stores filling orders. So depending on the traffic, we could flex that pretty easily and quickly respond.…There’s business to be had. It tends to be very promotional. That pull on the markdown lever is effective in driving some topline.”

Since COVID-19 hit, Nordstrom said he’s seen “a significant acceleration of trends that have been in place before,” such as BOPIS, shopping multiple channels, casualization, people buying fewer suits and ties as they work at home more, a blending of the work wardrobe with going-out-at-night or weekend wardrobes.

“And there’s really no evidence that it’s going to go backward to what it was, not just pre-COVID-19, but years before that.…We don’t think stores are going away. The last few weeks are confirming that. But the role changes. They do become more and more a place to discover product, to pick up product. And for us, we do benefit from engagement with customers, and that physical engagement can take more forms. It could be the traditional journey to a store, a Nordstrom store at a mall or a Rack store, but it can also include services, things like alterations. And those dropping off a return, picking up an order, those services we can do in a full-line store, we can do in a Nordstrom Local store, we can do an a Rack store for full-price customers. So leveraging the physical assets that really we already have and looking in different ways is a trend that’s only going to accelerate.

“There’s a case to be made that there’s going to be too many goods in the pipeline,” Nordstrom added. “And there’s a case to be made that actually vendors have pulled back a bit. We’ve heard some of that for the back half of the year. I think in either scenario, for us to maintain the flexibility for these uncertain times, but also to ensure we have the right goods, requires more of a partnership with our best vendors, our best brands.”

Gulf mall operators rein in expansion as retailers reel from COVID-19

DUBAI: Mall operators in the Gulf region are delaying new mega-projects as the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices upend a retail industry built around huge centres catering to tourists and wealthy locals.

Majid Al Futtaim (MAF), the Middle East’s biggest mall-operator, told Reuters it had delayed the launch of its fifth and largest centre in Oman, the 145,000 square-metre (1.5 million sq-ft) Mall of Oman, because retailers did not have the cash at hand to fit out stores.

In Dubai, Emaar Malls halted construction on two projects, according to two sources familiar with the plans. They are a mall near the site of the Expo 2020 world fair, which has been delayed by a year to next October, and a 185,000 square-metre mall in the Dubai Hills residential area, the people said.

Emaar Malls, owner and operator of the world’s largest shopping centre, Dubai Mall, did not respond to a request for comment.

“In malls under construction, timelines are being revisited. This is a fluid situation,” MAF’s Chief Executive Alain Bejjani told Reuters. “We will see how it goes and adapt,” he added. “It will be the case for the coming 12 months.”

Luxury malls, featuring international brands and entertainments such as dancing fountains and indoor ski slopes, have been the cornerstone of the oil-producing region’s retail industry, especially during the blistering summer months.

A growing population and steady stream of tourists has seen more projects planned in recent years even as competition has intensified and footfall has levelled off.

Last year, Alpen Capital forecast the Gulf retail sector to grow from US$253 billion in 2018 to US$308 billion in 2023.

‘ALL IN TOUGH SPOT’

The pandemic has changed the game in a matter of months, though.

Brick-and-mortar retailers have been among the worst hit by coronavirus closures. At Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates last week, several shop fronts were boarded up and rental dispute notices hung in some shop windows, a visitor said.

EFG Hermes forecast a 20 per cent drop in Dubai store-based sales in 2020 if foreign visitors were allowed entry in the third quarter, and a 40 per cent drop if travel bans remain until year-end.

MAF, which operates 27 malls across the Middle East, said retailers in the Gulf region were not expecting a meaningful recovery for the sector in the next 18-24 months. Foot traffic at its malls in the United Arab Emirates in May was less than half of what it was a year ago, it added.

“They are all in a tough spot. They’re focusing on liquidity issues,” Bejjani said.

He said the impact was being felt, from retailers to companies in their supply chain. Some of the firms will “throw in the towel” this year, he added.

Kuwait’s Alshaya Group, the Gulf’s largest franchise operator with brands including Starbucks, Pottery Barn and The Cheesecake Factory, provided a grim outlook in April in an internal staff video seen by Reuters.

“Today, less than 5 per cent of our stores are open … Our revenues have shrunk by 95 per cent, whilst our cost base has stayed the same,” said acting Chief Executive John Hadden. “This is not sustainable for any business anywhere in the world.”

Alshaya declined to comment.

RACE TO GO ONLINE

The slow move to online sales in the region has compounded retailers’ problems.

Though malls reopened last month in the region’s two largest markets, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, some customers still worry about COVID-19.

“I just looked at things from a distance and didn’t buy anything,” said Sahimaa in Riyadh. “I couldn’t get myself to touch anything.”

A senior executive at a large fashion conglomerate, who declined to be named, said 96per cent of sales last year in the Gulf came from malls, versus 4 per cent from e-commerce.

“To get 80 per cent from online, vs 20 per cent brick and mortar – that’s not gonna happen in the next 20 years,” the executive said.

Online sales in Saudi Arabia accounted for about 0.8 per cent of retail sales in 2018, and 1.5 per cent in the UAE, according to a Boston Consulting Group report. By contrast, online grabbed more than 14 per cent of retail sales in the United States in 2018, research firm Digital Commerce 360 found.

Many mall operators have offered a digital platform for shops to place products online to help cope with the pain.

MAF has placed some of the shops that sell household items on its Carrefour shopping marketplace, for example. Emaar Malls helped its tenants at Dubai malls place products on Namshi, an e-commerce website it owns, and Noon.com.

“People still stood on the fence, thinking e-commerce is in the future. Because of corona, they were forced to use the available technologies,” said Rabih Khoury, partner at Dubai-based venture capital firm Middle East Venture Partners.

“You have to have the digital part. If you don’t have it, it is as if you don’t have a key location at a mall.”

Ready, steady, SHOP! Retail guru MARY PORTAS reveals what you should expect as stores get set to re-open on Monday week

Like many others, I’m juggling running a business with home-schooling my seven-year-old son. I’ve never worked so hard, and more than ever I want something that will give me a lift — whether that’s new shoes or a fab top for Zoom meetings.

Much of the past ten weeks has been spent in the casual clothes I use for pottering around — but I still want to feel good. After months of lockdown, I’m longing to go shopping again.

Yes, we’ve had online shopping, but I miss bricks-and-mortar shops. Who doesn’t love a mooch around their favourite store? So I rejoiced at the news that the shutters are finally coming up on the High Street on June 15. The prospect of the ‘sale of the century’ because of all that surplus stock is of course another draw (see Femail’s sales guide on Pages 48 and 49).

Of course, we want to know we’re in safe hands, but shopping should also be about the thrill, the joy of discovery, Mary Portas explained (file image)

But then I read a bit more about what the ‘new normal’ will look like, and I wondered if I had started celebrating too early. One-way systems, screens, face masks and hand-washing points galore. There’s even talk of traffic-light entry systems for clothes shops, like the one they are introducing at Aldi.

I have spent nearly 40 years in the industry, and in so many ways, it’s a frightening time for retail. Sales in the sector saw the sharpest fall on record last month, with clothing sales plunging by 50 per cent, according to official data.

There have already been casualties. During lockdown my daughter Verity, 24, is living in floaty, floral prairie dresses, a la Laura Ashley. But the archetypal British fashion label went into administration before a rescue deal — while Oasis and Warehouse, and Cath Kidston’s stores, are gone.

Yet I believe this crisis — while it will shake our High Streets to the core — could also profoundly shape the future of fashion in positive ways. It is an opportunity for brands that have lost their way to reset and reinvigorate. And there are plenty of those.

Mary said she has spent nearly 40 years in the industry, and in so many ways, it’s a frightening time for retail (file image)

It should be out with bland and boring, and in with bold and brilliant. It’s all over for behemoth retailers pumping products out, all eyes on the profit. Post-Covid, we will be looking for shops that boost our self-esteem and understand how we feel.

The message around the great reopening is necessarily largely one of safety, hygiene, practicality. But if that’s all I am getting by venturing into a shop for the first time in three months — frankly, why would I bother?

Of course, we want to know we’re in safe hands, but shopping should also be about the thrill, the joy of discovery. In these tough financial times, shops need to give customers a reason why we should rush to do our non-essential shopping in real life.

I do not believe these desires are incompatible. I run an agency advising brands how to connect with people — and the best, most innovative, ideas often come out of finding a way around restraints.

No one can predict what’s coming next, but we know that — safety measures aside — we will step out on to a very different High Street in 11 days’ time. So what will the future of fashion look like?

IT’S NOT JUST PAYMENTS GOING CONTACTLESS

We have been warned of a whole raft of safety measures, including temperature checks on entry, staff wearing face masks and contactless-only payments. There will be one-way systems, closed cafes and toilet facilities, and hand-sanitiser stations galore.

Clothes shops will feel like showrooms: instead of digging through racks, you will ask salespeople to collect an item in a particular size, as you do in shoe shops. You’re going to end up with a near touchless experience.

Government advice is not to open changing rooms, but department stores in Canada, France and Italy are quarantining and steaming tried-on garments, and sanitising fitting rooms in between customers.

There will be one-way systems, closed cafes and toilet facilities, and hand-sanitiser stations galore (file image)

Other measures being implemented around the world, and considered here in the UK, include only opening every other changing room, asking people to wear disposable socks when trying on shoes, and using UV lighting to kill viruses.

In my view, these safety measures are basic housekeeping and should be a given.

There will always be a place for physical shops, but the added hurdles when visiting them mean that, from now on, they will have to be exceptional. This doesn’t mean expensive; it means brilliant and ingenious. And that’s good for everyone.

WHAT WILL LURE YOU BACK IN-STORE?

As more people come out of lockdown, some predict a ‘revenge spending spree’. Hermes’s flagship store in China reportedly earned more than £2 million in sales on the day it reopened in April — the biggest single-day shopping at a luxury outlet in China.

And yes, there will be people who say, ‘I’ve got to get out and buy, buy, buy!’ — but I don’t doubt this will swiftly reverse. Many of us have less money coming in, and there are warnings of a long-term global recession.

Cash-rich, privately owned chains like Zara are well placed to offer deep discounts, but the best brands will also focus on giving us a little moment of joy after the hard times we’ve been through.

We’ve been saying to brands, why not let friends come shopping together? Five friends can book in for a store appointment, giving you half an hour in store with one-to-one (socially distanced) style advice (file image)

We have an office in Melbourne, and in Australia people are now allowed to have five friends round to their house. So we’ve been saying to brands, why not let friends come shopping together?

Five friends can book in for a store appointment, giving you half an hour in store with one-to-one (socially distanced) style advice.

Consider it a private viewing, where you are talked through the collection as if you are Anna Wintour. Exciting — and safe.

The best brands will work within safety guidelines to give a better experience than before.

Recently I stood in line at B&Q, with a member of staff armed with a radio bellowing, ‘Two metres apart!’ Could you get any more depressing? In contrast, look at big entertainment players such as Disney. There are always big queues at its theme parks, and staff entertain you while you are waiting, giving out goody bags. Fashion stores would do well to harness this kind of vibe.

When I rebranded Harvey Nichols years ago, I wanted to create a sensual connection with the customer.

Around each corner there was an installation by an artist, incorporating fashion. Each floor had fashion shows, music and hang-out spaces.

That’s what the future of mall shopping will be. There’s no room for just shops full of stuff.

MAKE DOING GOOD FEEL GLAMOROUS

When I read that the CEO of M&S said the future of retail will be online or in retail parks, I wanted to cry. No! Make your stores places where people want to go. We need you, M&S, on our High Streets, not in retail parks.

In recent years M&S’s in-store experience has been confused and uninspiring. Its stores feel like warehouses of clothes, and where’s the allure in that?

The chain recognises that dozens of its High-Street stores are small and dated, and is replacing many of them with food-only stores and out-of-town units.

But there’s a better way. John Lewis is testing ideas to make its stores destinations, and we love the firm for it.

Mary said last December she gave a TEDx talk about the concept of the ‘kindness economy’ and could never have predicted how vital kindness was about to become globally

Since the lockdown, it has rolled out virtual style and interiors consultations — a brilliant way to keep the inspiration flowing.

But John Lewis — and any other major store: here’s a big growth area post-Covid that I think people would love from you.

A sustainable department in each store, and online. By which I mean a second-hand, vintage, recyclable section.

I put one of my Mary’s Living & Giving Shops — my chain of charity shops selling high-end vintage pieces — into London department store Liberty a year ago and people travelled miles to shop there. People want to do what’s right, and they want it done with a bit of sex and glamour. What’s not to love?

WE’LL STOP BUYING FROM ‘BAD’ GUYS

Last December, I gave a TEDx talk about the concept of the ‘kindness economy’. I could never have predicted how vital kindness was about to become globally.

Lockdown has had us signing up to be NHS volunteers and shopping for neighbours.

Many brands, too, will have surprised themselves with how kind and how nimble they can be when they need to be. This crisis is proving, live, that there’s more than one way for a brand to grow — yes, in revenue but also in meaning, reputation and goodwill.

Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England, wrote in April that ‘fundamentally the traditional drivers of value have been shaken, new ones will gain prominence, and there’s a possibility that the gulf between what markets value and what people value will close’. That’s what I’ve been getting at for years; businesses need to start showing they care about the things their customers care about, like wellbeing and sustainability.

It’s clear something has shifted. Many shops have offered discounts for key workers. But other big businesses haven’t got their heads round that yet, and they will lose out.

‘GLASS-BOX BRANDS’ WILL THRIVE

There was a time when a business was a black box. It was impossible to see what was going on inside. A business controlled its image and created the messages its leaders wanted its customers to see. But now the walls of every organisation are turning to glass. Anyone can see in — their processes, their production methods, their ethics. Businesses are exposed to public scrutiny like never before.

Take Amazon. It may have seen its global sales surge to $11,000 (£8,740) a second as we shopped from our homes — but sentiment towards the e-commerce giant has turned sour.

The company has been slammed for reportedly trying to shut down a virtual event for workers to speak out about its coronavirus response. Amazon could have emerged from the crisis as a hero — ‘the new Red Cross’, as a former Amazon manager grandly termed it in March — but its delivery efforts have been eclipsed by headlines denouncing its treatment of warehouse workers.

Instead, the best glass-box brands are crystal-clear with us about the decisions they are making and why.

Smaller brands are often better at this because they really believe in their products — and we really appreciate their personalised emails. Despite all the gloomy forecasts, for some smaller clothing brands trade has never been brisker, and I think that will continue precisely because they are better at being ‘glass boxes’.

Now, more than ever, big brands need to be agile. They need to embrace new business models to stay relevant. Some of those who cannot will fall.

BUILD A COMMUNITY BEYOND BUILDINGS

During lockdown, I’ve been trying to buy as much locally as possible. When my local bookshop owner brought me my online order, he told me his online sales so far this year equal 25 per cent of last year’s total business.

My advice was, ‘Always think: what can I do that Amazon can’t?’ And he said, ‘I can do this — personal delivery.’

He had wrapped the books in paper decorated with wildflowers, the most wonderful touch.

For me that sums up how small, local businesses are able to shift practices more quickly than larger brands. For shoppers, it’s very exciting. We have a window of opportunity to reclaim shopping locally, something that seemed to be dying out before this crisis.

According to researchers Global Data, almost one in three people in the UK say they will visit local shops more frequently now (file image)

According to researchers Global Data, almost one in three people in the UK say they will visit local shops more frequently now.

But we don’t support independents out of altruism alone. We’re after a better experience, a stronger connection. When I did my High-Street report for the Government in 2011, experts chided me for using words like ‘human’ and ‘connection’. I was told, ‘That’s soft power.’ But soft power is coming in, fast.

Of course profit is vital — but now, more than ever, retailers need to lean into their role as a ‘relationshop’. This means serving an existing community — and creating a new sense of community that exists beyond bricks and mortar. If they can do this, both shops and shoppers will profit.

Mary Portas is the founder of Portas Agency, a creative consultancy that explores the future of shopping and living.

Exclusive: The first look at the big changes in your favourite stores including Marks & Spencer as MAGGIE ALDERSON is given an insight into the new shopping experience

By Maggie Alderson For The Daily Mail

Oh, how I have missed browsing. Looking at clothes online is OK, but nothing beats the thrill of being in a real shop, casting your eye around like the hunter-gatherers we all are deep down, looking for the best berries on the savannah. Or in my case, a summer dress and a pair of khaki shorts.

So, with clothes shops set to reopen on June 15, I asked for a sneak peek at the new normal. Would one-way systems make browsing impossible? Would I be allowed to feel the fabric to test quality? Would there be any shorts big enough to accommodate my lockdown waistline?

At Marks & Spencer in Gillingham, Kent, I was offered an exclusive look at the changes. The store has kept its food hall open and offered a few basic clothing items during lockdown, but its whole upper floor has been shuttered for the duration. Now, it is being transformed into a safe place to shop post-corona.

At Marks & Spencer in Gillingham, Kent, Maggie Alderson was offered an exclusive look at the changes

I walk past a woman in a plastic visor and feast my eyes on rails of clothes. Summer togs are in evidence, and while some products are marked down by up to 70 per cent, M&S says there are no more sale items than usual for the time of year.

I’m glad. After being deprived of a favourite pastime for so long, I don’t want to be greeted by a sea of scruffy sale rails.

Arrows on the ground keep me walking in the right direction, with red -and-white tape lines at two- metre intervals. But numbers will be limited by a new queuing system, M&S says, so there shouldn’t be any pile-ups.

All in all, it’s far less stressful than a supermarket shop. I always wear a mask for those missions, and while I started out with one on my clothes shop, I soon took it off. It didn’t seem necessary with so much space. Drawbacks? Well, changing rooms won’t be opening yet, and you will have to get used to shopping alone (unless you are assisting someone who needs help).

But there are moments — such as the joy of spotting some bright yellow pyjamas — when it feels like old times.

John Lewis (pictured) provided exclusive photographs of its new signage and is limiting numbers using the lift to one customer or family at a time

My arrival at the till offers a stark reminder of the new normal. There’s a thick window of Perspex between me and the assistant, who is also wearing a plastic visor — though I can just about tell she’s smiling through it.

Next, to get a sense of how independent shops will cope, I head for Fleurie Gallery, a boutique in Lewes, East Sussex.

Owner Victoria Johnson shifted everything online a week before the official lockdown because her customers had already stopped coming in.

Only certain entrances will be open at John Lewis (pictured), at which hosts will welcome shoppers

Now she is preparing to re-open, and plans to solve the issue of queues in her small retail space by allowing just one customer in at a time, by prior appointment (via her Instagram account @fleurie_lewes). She will be open from 6am till 10am only, then head home to home-school her two sons.

Spending time in the beautifully styled space was a reminder of how delicious the retail experience can be.

It’s proof there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to making the new rules work.

When Femail contacted them, stores offered a host of different solutions. At John Lewis, which provided exclusive photographs of its new signage, only a quarter of branches will open at first. Only certain entrances will be open, at which hosts will welcome shoppers.

Sussex boutique Fleurie Gallery is taking only booked appointments. Owner Victoria Johnson shifted everything online a week before the official lockdown because her customers had already stopped coming in

Upmarket chain Reiss plans to reduce opening hours, allowing staff to travel safely at quiet times. Mango will offer customers sanitising gel and gloves.

At River Island, anything you try will be quarantined for 72 hours.

As for me, when June 15 rolls around, I will be making an appointment to be one of the first in Fleurie Gallery, and heading along to all my favourite High-Street spots. I really need new clothes after all — none of my old ones fit me.

Former Snap exec Imran Khan’s e-commerce startup Verishop is opening up to third-party sellers

Former Snap chief strategy officer Imran Khan’s e-commerce startup Verishop said it would start letting third-party sellers sell directly on its platform starting in September.
The idea behind the self-service option is to let Verishop expand to new product categories without spending more on inventory.
The company has raised an additional $20 million for a total of $50 million, he said.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Former Snap chief strategy officer Imran Khan’s e-commerce startup Verishop is opening the floodgates to third-party sellers.

The year-old e-commerce marketplace said it would launch a self-service option called Verified Shops that will let third-party sellers to sell directly on its platform starting in September. The company said this move would let it expand to new product categories like wellness and kids and grow sales without spending more on inventory.

“Our first year, we were focused on building a lifestyle shopping platform that has best-in-class convenience and customer care, because that’s table stakes for e-commerce companies,” Khan said. “Verified Shops gives companies like direct-to-consumer brands and small businesses another way to reach new customers on a platform where their brands will be safe and appreciated.”

Verified Shops allows Verishop to scale while managing costs

Khan has pitched Verishop as a higher-end alternative to Amazon by focusing on specific categories like fashion, beauty and wellness and buying products wholesale from brands it vets. It has differentiated itself with an emphasis on quality, by buying products wholesale from vetted brands, warehousing them, and reselling them itself.

It’s expanded to more than 600 brands from 180 at launch, including home goods and electronics and lables like Diane von Furstenberg’s DVF, Finders Keepers, and Ursa Major. Verishop said it would take an unspecified cut of purchases made through Verified Shops.

But by opening itself to third party sellers, Verishop may expose itself to problems that brands face on other open e-commerce platforms, such as discovery challenges, counterfeit goods, and unverified sellers.

Khan said Verishop would continue to use a mix of tech and people to help products get discovered, and that it would vet sellers to keep out counterfeit goods and unverified third-party sellers, similar to how Apple does with its App Store. Sellers will be authorized to sell the products they list.

“We have and will always be committed to keeping counterfeit products or illicit goods off our site,” he said. “All Verified Shops partners will also need to uphold the standards we have with fast free shipping and free returns.”

Verified Shops is also aimed at direct-to-consumer brands, which Khan said prefer a low-touch, self-service option. Verishop has been offering marketing and other support to DTC companies like Material Kitchen, Gravity Blankets and Public Goods.

Verishop has raised an additional $20 million

The pandemic has accelerated e-commerce adoption, with 7.4 million new people expected to shop online in 2020, according to a new report from eMarketer. Verishop’s revenue grew 30% and 33% month-over-month in April and May 2020, Khan said.

The company has also raised an additional $20 million for a total of $50 million, Khan said, without identifying the investors. The company raised $12.5 million in October from Rakuten Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and the real-estate company Simon Property Group.

A self-service marketplace will help Verishop compete with other e-commerce companies including Amazon, Alibaba and Etsy, but success will depend on how well it picks and vets sellers, said Forrester analyst Sucharita Kodali.

“The bigger question is, do they have a shot at success?” Kodali said. “How do they differentiate? With good product, with quality production, with something that resonates with customers who are interested in the category, and with something new.”

‘Industry Club’ to offer immersive retail experience for Detroit youth, accelerator space for women and entrepreneurs of color

– Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan’s Industry Club will be housed within the Détroit is the New Black store on Woodward in Downtown Detroit

– Industry Club to employ nearly 200 youth per year

– Bedrock to provide Woodward store rent free, $25K operational grant and long-term skilled volunteer support

– Ponyride maker space to partner with Détroit is the New Black retail accelerator program offering brick-and-mortar and e-commerce opportunities to five rotating local brands

DETROIT, June 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — This September, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan (BGCSM) will open its first Industry Club, offering an unparalleled immersive summer and after-school experience for young people interested in pursuing a career in retail or fashion merchandising. The Industry Club will be co-located with the Détroit is the New Black (DITNB) store at 1430 Woodward Ave, and employ up to 200 Detroit youth each year, ages 14 and up.

Bedrock Logo (PRNewsfoto/Bedrock)

“True equality can only be achieved through economic and social mobility and the Industry Club is designed to do just that. Metro Detroit youth will gain the economic, cultural and social capital needed to become college, career and start up ready,” said Shawn H. Wilson, President & CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan. “BGCSM is grateful that Bedrock, Ponyride and DITNB have committed to leveraging their resources to build a blueprint that can be replicated across any industry for our youth.”

Since Détroit is the New Black opened its flagship store in 2016, the signature clothing brand has offered retail floor space to other Detroit-based small businesses. That accelerator concept will continue through the Industry Club project, with Ponyride offering both brick-and-mortar, and e-commerce support to local women and entrepreneurs of color. Five rotating concepts will stock their goods alongside DITNB within the sales space in the heart of Detroit’s historic Woodward Shopping District, and offer online sales through detroitisthenewblack.com.

“The Industry Club is a dream manifested for Détroit is the New Black and such a perfect example of community partners coming together to support the future of the city,” said Roslyn Karamoko, founder of Détroit is the New Black. “I’m so pleased to welcome these partners into the space, which will allow us to expand our programming and mission to uplift entrepreneurs and minorities in business.”

Bedrock‘s contribution

Bedrock, downtown Detroit’s largest real estate company, will provide the 2,400 square-foot Industry Club retail space rent free, along with a $25,000 pre-development grant. Bedrock will also work with the Industry Club partners to build a long-term skilled volunteer support program for the small businesses participating in the Ponyride accelerator.

Since the onset of COVID-19, Bedrock has deployed millions in capital to small businesses downtown through three months of rent abatement and offering variable rent structure through the end of the year. As downtown businesses begin to reopen, Industry Club will be an important next step in Bedrock’s small business support strategy, targeted toward women and entrepreneurs of color.

“It has always been our belief that a sustainable, vibrant retail district is a place where strong local brands thrive beside big national names. That strategy needs to expand to elevate minority-owned businesses and help strengthen pathways for their growth and contribution to Detroit’s ongoing momentum. The Industry Club will be an important step in that direction,” said Matt Cullen, Bedrock CEO. “We are excited to work with the Boys & Girls Club, Détroit is the New Black and Ponyride to help create a pipeline for tomorrow’s retail leaders at the Industry Club while empowering Bedrock’s team members to become directly involved in building Detroit’s start up community.”

Industry Club members will gain experience in careers representing every aspect of the retail business development cycle, including stocking merchandise, ordering wholesale and fulfilling online orders, all while earning a wage. Outcomes include 21^st Century skills, industry certifications, industry access/mentorship/network and paid job placement.

Ponyride’s fourth location

Ponyride, a Corktown-based maker space that recently announced a robust strategic partnership with BCGSM, will offer its alumni to also sell their goods on detroitisthenewblack.com. The Industry Club will serve as Ponyride’s fourth location. BGCSM is the first Boys & Girls Clubs location in the nation to provide co-working and makers spaces for entrepreneurs through this partnership.

“This partnership and overall collaboration provide Ponyride with a unique opportunity to not only incubate but expand small business growth in the city through access to resources, retail space and capital,” said Phil Cooley, co-founder of Ponyride. “This is a powerful move to invest in the hard-working entrepreneurs of Detroit, and we’re excited to be at the table help ensure these opportunities are provided.”

The Industry Club initiative aligns with BGCSM’s efforts to address poverty through economic mobility and continue to have a positive community impact and advancement for youth and their families A second Industry Club is scheduled to be announced later this year.

BGCSM’s Industry Club also launched its limited edition “Industry Club” t-shirts sold only through detroitisthenewblack.com. Available while supplies last.

About Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan

Founded in 1926, Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan (BGCSM) has over 94 year of experience serving youth ages 6-18 by providing a safe, fun place that inspires, while offering high quality programs that provide real-world learning from caring adult mentors. Serving nearly 15,000 youth annually within eight Clubs throughout southeastern Michigan, BGCSM works every day to provide a world-class experience, empowering youth to become change agents through economic mobility. To learn more about BGCSM visit www.bgcsm.org and follow us on social media on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!

About Détroit Is The New Black

Détroit Is The New Black is a brand at the crossroads of culture, fashion & community that takes pride in the city of Detroit and the people who go out and make it their own every day. Inspired by the city, DITNB aims to give its customers an experience within its physical retail space. The store – and the brand – is more than just an apparel provider, despite the commercial retail district its located in.

About Ponyride

Since 2011, Ponyride continues to cultivate a diverse community that fosters opportunities for socially conscious artists, entrepreneurs, innovators and light manufacturers, and is committed to creating supportive environments where businesses can experiment, develop, and mature—which in turn helps to make Detroit a unique place to live, work, and thrive.

About Bedrock

Detroit-based Bedrock is a full-service real estate firm specializing in acquiring, developing, leasing, financing and managing commercial and residential buildings. Since its founding in 2011, Bedrock and its affiliates have invested and committed more than $5.6 billion to acquiring and developing more than 100 properties, including new construction of ground up developments in downtown Detroit and Cleveland totaling more than 18 million square feet.

Bedrock’s real estate portfolio consists of 210 office tenants and 125 retailers and restaurants in Detroit’s technology-centric downtown, the majority of which are new to the market. Key office tenants include Coyote Logistics, IBM, Microsoft, Quicken Loans, LinkedIn, StockX, Universal McCann, UBS, Ally Bank’s national headquarters and Fifth Third Bank’s regional headquarters. Key retail tenants include H&M, Plum Market, The Lip Bar, 6 Salon, Lululemon, Shake Shack and countless others.

Bedrock is currently developing four transformational projects including the Hudson’s Site, Monroe Blocks, Book Tower renovation and One Campus Martius expansion. Bedrock is also undergoing construction of City Modern, a community development in Detroit’s Brush Park neighborhood. Partnering with Detroit-based Shinola, Bedrock developed the world’s first Shinola Hotel on Woodward Avenue, which opened in early 2019.

Bedrock is dedicated to creating jobs for Detroiters and investing in job training. Over the last year, the company has invested in both the Randolph & Breithaupt Career and Technical Centers to build a pipeline of talent for Detroit’s growing economy.

Creating unique experiences through real estate is Bedrock’s mission. To make this a reality, Bedrock and its affiliates continuously invest in significant public art installations and placemaking initiatives throughout the city.

For more information on Bedrock’s business model, visit the For More Than Profit book. For more information on Bedrock’s projects, visit bedrockdetroit.com or engage with us on Twitter and Facebook .

Click here to view a complete timeline of Bedrock and the Rock Family of Companies’ engagement within the Detroit community.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industry-club-to-offer-immersive-retail-experience-for-detroit-youth-accelerator-space-for-women-and-entrepreneurs-of-color-301083657.html

SOURCE Bedrock

Stitch Fix Shares Fall on News of 9% Sales Drop, Revenue Miss

Click here to read the full article. ” data-reactid=”19″ type=”text”>Click here to read the full article.

Stitch Fix report their results covering the period.” data-reactid=”20″ type=”text”>The last few months have been tough for fashion retailers, and the breadth of those challenges is starting to snap into focus as operations like Stitch Fix report their results covering the period.

Over its fiscal third quarter, the online styling service on Monday reported a net loss of $33.9 million. Net revenues, which landed at $371.7 million, were a decrease of 9 percent over last year, and a big miss on expectations of $406.7 million.

Black Lives Matter: Messages from the New York City Protests

The results overshadowed other details — like 9 percent year-over-year growth in active clients to 3.4 million, and $498 in net revenue per active client, representing 6 percent growth — sending shares down 4.45 percent in after-hours trading.

Stitch Fix founder and chief executive officer, those details matter — especially in times of a health and economic crisis. “In a time period where the broader apparel and accessories market saw sales decline 80 percent, we delivered $372 million in net revenue and expect a return to positive growth in Q4,” Lake said in a statement.” data-reactid=”26″ type=”text”>But for Katrina Lake, Stitch Fix founder and chief executive officer, those details matter — especially in times of a health and economic crisis. “In a time period where the broader apparel and accessories market saw sales decline 80 percent, we delivered $372 million in net revenue and expect a return to positive growth in Q4,” Lake said in a statement.

Indeed, what’s happening at Stitch Fix is symptomatic of the much larger problem that has been plaguing retail, especially apparel merchants, recently, from coronavirus lockdowns to looting and dire economic conditions that have put less discretionary income in Americans’ pockets.

Notably, Stitch Fix’s results arrived on the same day that the National Bureau of Economic Research officially declared that, after 128 months of economic expansion, the U.S. is in the throes of a recession and has been since February.

e-commerce generally has fared better than brick-and-mortar. For Stitch Fix, which is often taken as emblematic of digital’s disruption of traditional retail, its performance matters as a potential sign of where the e-tail sector stands and where it’s going.” data-reactid=”29″ type=”text”>During the past few months, e-commerce generally has fared better than brick-and-mortar. For Stitch Fix, which is often taken as emblematic of digital’s disruption of traditional retail, its performance matters as a potential sign of where the e-tail sector stands and where it’s going.

From the looks of it, Stitch Fix’s results are perhaps not as dire as they could have been. But it’s also not clear how long its recovery will actually take, regardless of the ceo’s optimistic view. Because apparel retail’s outlook is subject to change according to domestic and global events, as well as emerging policies. These influences are not only unclear right now, but they’re also outside of the company’s control.

Still, Stitch Fix’s optimism is worth noting, if simply for the fact that it points to its moves ahead of and during these challenging times — such as cutting 1,400 stylists in California and pursuing plans to hire as many as 2,000 stylists in more affordable regions, such as Austin, Tex., and Minneapolis, among other places.

direct-buy business as a key factor in its future success. ” data-reactid=”32″ type=”text”>Stitch Fix is also very bullish on its prospects for building out its business. The company’s original model involved shipping out boxes of preselected merchandise chosen by a combination of artificial intelligence systems and human stylists, with subscribers’ choices in keeping or returning items informing future selections. Now Stitch Fix clearly sees its direct-buy business as a key factor in its future success.

The initiative has been a key talking point for several earnings periods now, and Monday’s call was no exception. ” data-reactid=”33″ type=”text”>The initiative has been a key talking point for several earnings periods now, and Monday’s call was no exception.

Elizabeth Spaulding, the company’s recently named president, shed some light on how the company aims to evolve direct-buy. The changes range from developing new interface elements to showcase a new “trending for you” area this month — with the section showcasing “hyper-personalized looks” based on subscribers’ profiles — to collaborations that feature exclusive brands and collections, she said.

One such collection is an upcoming line from influencer Katie Sturino. Spaulding elaborated that the range emphasizes inclusive looks and gives the platform the opportunity to feature shoppable outfits styled with inventory from Stitch Fix’s “broader inventory pool.” Such initiatives, she said, allow the company to loop in “clients who have historically been on the fence.” ” data-reactid=”35″ type=”text”>One such collection is an upcoming line from influencer Katie Sturino. Spaulding elaborated that the range emphasizes inclusive looks and gives the platform the opportunity to feature shoppable outfits styled with inventory from Stitch Fix’s “broader inventory pool.” Such initiatives, she said, allow the company to loop in “clients who have historically been on the fence.”

As for whether these initiatives will be enough to harden the business against whatever comes next, that remains to be seen. But Lake and her executives remain hopeful.

“Our results give us confidence in the resilience and increasing relevance of our model as more people than ever before seek out a better online shopping experience, rooted in what is meaningful and right for them,” Lake continued. “Through a combination of innovating the Fix model and expanding direct buy, we are excited to expand the Stitch Fix ecosystem, and unlock personal styling for everybody.”

Femwsev com Reviews [June] Is It really A Reliable Store? >> In this post, we are going to discuss an online platform that deals in women’s fashion and also find whether it is legit or not.

Do you like online shopping? Do you love buying clothes from online shops?

You should find out reviews of Femwsev.com and evaluate whether this is good or not? We are going to discuss the entirely new website and very few Femwsev com Reviews are visible online.

For our readers who are looking for alternatives to buy fashionable clothing at a reasonable price, we researched online and found all of the information regarding this platform. Higher numbers of e-stores are establishing, claiming to sell the new collection of fashion, jewellery, accessories, footwear, and far more.

The organizations and all the online platforms are trying to attract consumers in various ways, such as with discounts, free delivery, rewards, and so on.

The website currently covers the United States with plans to begin services in neighbouring countries shortly. There is no feedback on the platform, as users are a little scared to access new websites, due to recent scams. Let us discuss underneath to find out much more about this platform.

What is Femwsev.com?

Femwsev.com is a recent entry for online fashion clothes purchasing industry. The range contains skirts, tunics, tees, respectively. All design elements are convenient to carry and wearable every day.

They offer an excellent price. However, the issue is how secure is your cash when you purchase something from Femwsev.com. Is this legit site or a scam? Let us dig deep into these Femwsev com Reviews.

Specifications

Company Name: Anyang Junyang Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd.
Website URL: http://femwsev.com/
Shipping Duration: 1-3 working days
Shipping Fee: Applicable
Delivery Time: 5-21 days
Return: Available
Cancellation: within 24 hours
Exchange: Within seven days of receiving the order
Email Address- [email protected]
Payment Mode-Not specified

Is Femwsev.com Legit?

The platform is a few months old so that many people do not know about this new site. We discovered when verifying its status online that this address relates to China.

It is not a good thing, and other essential information such as the company contact number not available, indicating this may not be legit. The email account corresponds not to an organization but an individual, and it is on the free IP address.

Also, the platform is not secure via HTTPS; conversely, it is using HTTP, which is not safe, and all data that you enter is not protected. If we go into its list of products, there are only a few items that raise considerable uncertainty in mind, and there is no detail of the payment methods on the platform.

Pros of buying from Femwsev.com

Costs are relatively low
Shipping costs for more than $50 is free
Exchange, Return and cancellation is available
The option is available for refund

Cons of buying from Femwsev.com

Less than three months old website
Uses free third-party email address
There is a risk of fake items
Quite a few products on the platform are available
No details on payment methods
Products pictures are not looking so good
The platform is not HTTPS Secure.

What are consumers say about Femwsev.com?

Since the platform is quite fresh, there is no customer feedback on Femwsev.com available on the internet or anywhere. We conducted our research but were unable to obtain any more knowledge about it. It misses various parts that are not a positive indication for any legitimate business.

If you have feedback regarding this platform, please post in the comment section.

Conclusion

We can say after evaluating all the statements that this platform is suspicious. It loses all the essential parts, like consumer information security and protection. There are no reviews on this webpage or any other site. It offers minimal options to choose from. Although it states to offer an exchange, return, refund, cancellation, but not verified by consumers.

This is an organization based in China that aims to market its goods internationally, but the site looks imperfect. The photos are not suitable, and the company uses a free third-party email account that does not occur in the cases of a legitimate company.

We finally recommend if you wish to purchase from this platform then do an entire research on your own and tread cautiously, as, as per our research it is a suspicious website and there are no customer reviews available online and trust index is also very shallow.

Christopher & Banks Corporation (CBKC) CEO Keri Jones on Q1 2020 Results

nginx

Save up to 50% on your favorite brands during Amazon’s Big Style Sale

We all love saving money when shopping, which is why we constantly have trained our eyes to find the best deals available online. The most recent one, the Amazon Big Style Sale, has us reaching for our wallets. The e-commerce giant just launched a new sale that, unlike Prime Day deals, only focuses on fashion.

If you’re wondering what Amazon’s Big Style sale is and what you can get from it, though, we’ve got you covered. Below, find answers to all of your most pressing questions surrounding the Amazon Big Style Sale—plus, some of of the best deals we’re snagging now.

What is the Amazon Big Style Sale?

It’s Amazon’s first-ever big fashion sale, featuring deals of up to 50 percent off original pricing. It includes everything from budget-friendly companies to pricey designer brands, with big-names such as Levi’s, Steve Madden, One Teaspoon, Jeffrey Campbell, Free People, and so much more. The sale includes clothing, accessories, and shoes, and it has options for women, men, and children.

How long will the Amazon Big Style Sale last?

Amazon’s fashion sale will run from 6/22 to 6/28.

How do I shop the Amazon Big Style Sale?

Simply go to Amazon.com and start shopping! There will be tabs that break down the deals into categories, such as “Big day deals” and “Influencer loved deals.”

Now that you have all the information on what the Amazon Big Style Sale is, here are some of the best deals available right now:

Best clothing deals from the Amazon Big Style Sale:

Levi’s Women’s 721 High-Rise Skinny Ankle Jeans, $35.70 (orig. $59.50), Amazon.com
Parker Jenna Dress, $54.90 (orig. $288), Amazon.com
Amazon Essentials Short-Sleeve Surplice Cropped Wide-Leg Jumpsuit, $16.58 (orig. $25.50), Amazon.com
Free People Bailey Denim Skirt, $51 (orig. $68), Amazon.com
One Teaspoon Safari Camp Overalls, $148.50 (orig. $198), Amazon.com

Best shoe deals from the Amazon Big Style Sale: [subheader]

Adidas Women’s Cloudfoam Qt Racer Running Shoe, $41.97 (orig. $65), Amazon.com
Jeffrey Campbell Women’s Aster 2 Sandal, $24.75 (orig. $55), Amazon.com
TKEES Women’s Sarit Slidesl, $43.50 (orig. $58), Amazon.com
find. Women’s Buckle Block Heel Sandal, $33.57 (orig. $42.12), Amazon.com
Cole Haan Grand Pro Spectator 2.0 Puffer Slip-On Sneaker, $54.71 (orig. $106.84), Amazon.com

[subheader]Best accessories deals from the Amazon Big Style Sale:

Rebecca Minkoff Pippa Unlined Tote, $149 (orig. $202.23), Amazon.com
Ray-Ban Unisex Classic Gradient Aviator Sunglasses, $135.20 (orig. $169), Amazon.com
Puma Evercat Lifeline Backpack, $26.34 (orig. $32.92), Amazon.com
Anne Klein Diamond-Accented Bracelet Watch, $30.99 (orig. $75), Amazon.com
American Tourister Black Marble Moonlit Hardside Expandable Luggage with Spinner Wheels 3-Piece Set, $139.99 (orig. $249.99), Amazon.com

Shop these deals while they last!

The Greatest Threat To Global Cosmetics’ China Success: An Interview With D2C Unicorn Perfect Diary

Young Chinese consumers shopping in a busy Perfect Diary store.

Yatsen Global

As the world’s second-largest cosmetics market, Chinese consumers are a key driver of the global beauty industry. And according to Morgan Stanley

MS
, China’s share of the global beauty market will only increase, possibly by as much as 66% over the next five years.

With this massive demand and growth potential, it comes as no surprise that the majority of top international beauty brands are already heavily entrenched in and attribute a significant portion of their sales to the China market, with many of them historically dominating sales rankings on Chinese e-commerce platforms.

However, this leading position can no longer be taken for granted. Over the past few years there has been significant shift in market share of the Chinese cosmetics industry, as homegrown Chinese brands have risen in popularity, particularly among China’s young Generation Z consumers.

The most successful of these brands is Perfect Diary, which in 2019 was ranked the No.1 color cosmetics brand and Top 3 beauty brand on Alibaba

BABA
’s Tmall.

Launched by parent company Yatsen Global in 2017 and often referred to as the “Glossier of China” (and even sharing investors), Perfect Diary has already surpassed its Western counterpart with a recent valuation of $2 billion USD.

And it has no plans of stopping there – while Perfect Diary’s initial success came from its innovative online marketing strategies and ability to rapidly develop and launch new products, Perfect Diary is betting on China’s lower-tier markets and experiential retail for its next phase of growth, having unveiled ambitious plans to massively expand its offline footprint by opening 600 stores across China over the next three years.

That’s not all, on June 8, parent company Yatsen Global officially launched its second brand Abby’s Choice, during the press conference mentioning the company’s plans to continue adding new brands to its portfolio as well as its aspirations to eventually expand overseas.

In this exclusive interview, Vincent Chen, co-founder of Yatsen Global gives us a closer look at Perfect Diary’s brand culture, the reasons behind the company’s explosive growth, and its vision for the future.

Hi Vincent, Could you start by introducing yourself and Perfect Diary?

Guangzhou Yatsen Global Co., Ltd was established in 2016, and is named after the three co-founders’ alma mater, Sun Yat-sen University in China. I am one of the three co-founders. Our management team consists of alumnus of Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Sun Yat-sen University in China, with professional experience from Proctor & Gamble

PG
, L’Oreal, and Amore Pacific.

Yatsen Global co-founder Vincent Chen

Yatsen Global

In 2017, Yatsen Global launched its first brand Perfect Diary, with the mission “Unlimited Beauty”. We closely track European and American beauty trends and customize them to suit Asian women’s facial structure and skin features.

Perfect Diary is committed to developing an iconic, stylish, and high-quality Chinese cosmetics brand at an affordable price point with the goal of empowering more women to feel beautiful, both in China and globally. Currently we provide offline experiences for customers in most major cities in China and we plan to rapidly expand our offline footprint over the next few years.

Our target consumer is Generation Z or young women ages 18-28. 70% of our consumers are age 30 and under, and 50% and age 20 and under. China’s Gen Z consumers are a very diverse demographic and they are constantly changing. Generally speaking, they love expressing themselves and exploring what it is that they like and want, more so than the previous generations.

These consumer characteristics have become part of our brand attitude and keywords: perfection, discovery, difference and diversity.

Why do you think Perfect Diary has achieved such great success in only three years?

We can attribute the phenomenal growth rate of Perfect Diary to two things. First, we believe in the power of a good product, both the actual product and how it is presented, so we attach great importance to our products’ packaging, concept, and quality.

For example, we collaborated with the Discovery Channel

DISCA
to create a series of animal-themed eyeshadow palettes. For each palette we carefully considered texture and color collocation and designed it so that both beginners and professionals could get a lot of use out of it.

Perfect Diary X Discovery eye shadow palette.

Yatsen Global

With the emergence and development of domestic cosmetics brands, young Chinese consumers have greater autonomy in choosing cosmetics, and they have higher expectations on product quality and service.

Second, we work hard to maintain a close relationship with our consumers. Our team is young, at an average age of 25 years old. The company’s flat team structure and constant coordination between product, operation, and marketing teams enables us to respond quickly and launch products that are popular among young consumers.

To us, the purpose of marketing is to maintain constant, dynamic communication with consumers; therefore, we never limit ourselves to a fixed strategy. We will be where the consumers are. We hope to be a brand that stands with the consumers.

Consumers from lower-tier cities in China are seen as the next big market opportunity. Is this a segment that Perfect Diary focuses on?

Our core focus is on first-tier cities as these consumers have driven the brand’s success, particularly Guangzhou where the largest percentage of our online customers are from. It’s also where we opened our first offline store.

Yet at the same time, we firmly believe that lower-tier cities are the next growth market. According to Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com, in 2018, consumers in 3^rd to 6^th tier cities accounted for 48% of the platform’s total orders. If we look at data from 2016-2018, it’s clear that the order growth rate of Chinese brands in low-tier cities is higher than that in 1^st tier and 2^nd tier cities. Young shoppers in 2^nd tier and lower-tier cities have contributed significantly to Perfect Diary sales.

In these cities, the cost of living is lower. On top of that, this group also has more leisure time than young people in 1^st tier cities. They usually go home from work at 5 or 6 p.m. and their commutes are often shorter than those of consumers in big cities. Thus, they have more free time to eat out, chase the latest fashion trends, and shop for products that they feel can improve their quality of life and social status.

We have kept this in mind when planning our offline expansion. In order to enable consumers all over the country to have an offline experience, Perfect Diary plans to open 600 stores throughout China over the next three years, covering all the 1^st tier cities as well as many 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th tier cities.

Perfect Diary Beijing store

Yatsen Global

Speaking of offline expansion, I’d like to know more about that. Could you share how relevant offline stores are for driving sales and why Perfect Diary is planning such an ambitious offline footprint?

At present, e-commerce still accounts for the majority of sales, however, we are confident that offline stores will become a key segment for Yatsen Global and will see the most rapid growth in the coming years.

This year, we are planning to open more than 200 stores, and as we were just discussing, the lower-tier market will be our strategic focus. We expect that the number of the 3^rd and 4^th tier cities in which we have an offline presence will grow from only three in 2019 to nearly 80 by the end of this year.

Offline retail is an important part of the journey because it allows consumers to experience our brand and products with all of their senses. At Yatsen, when designing a product, we stress what we call the “four sensations” meaning how the product looks, feels, whether it is easy to apply, and whether it photographs well.

These aspects can be difficult to convey online, therefore offline stores are an important channel to engage consumers and optimize their experience with the brand.

Yatsen Global hopes to build a long-lasting brand and we feel we need to open offline channels to do so. We are willing to shoulder the costs of offline retail to give our consumers the perfect experience.

With such a strong emphasis on offline retail, how did Perfect Diary deal with shut-downs due to Covid-19?

Throughout Covid-19, our “online + offline” model has been one of our major advantages. With this model, our offline stores can flexibly shift their staff to support our online business. For example, our sales associates can begin live streaming.

A beauty adviser is live streaming, showing viewers a new eye shadow palette.

Yatsen Global

E-commerce live streaming has experienced massive growth in China during the Covid-19 pandemic and we took full advantage of this. According to statistics, in February, the number of live streaming sessions Perfect Diary held on Alibaba’s Taobao Live Streaming platform increased by 28% month-to-month, and sales grew nearly 170%.

The average number of viewers on our WeChat mini program live streams was 3-10 times higher than the month before, and the conversion rate was 2-3 times higher than streams on other platforms.

Lastly, let’s talk more about marketing. Working with mass numbers of KOCs (key opinion consumers) on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu and running thousands of private WeChat groups are two marketing tactics that Perfect Diary has become famous for.

These tactics can be very labor intensive, why has Perfect Diary chosen them?

Like I mentioned earlier, we want to be a brand that stands with consumers. To us, the term “marketing” means building a communication bridge between us and our consumers. Maintaining close contact with them allows us to gain a deeper understanding of their preferences and needs, thereby enabling us to launch products they like. That is what inspired us to use these tactics, because they let us stay close to consumers.

What’s more, we believe that reputation is not built through marketing, but by maintaining consistency between word of mouth and product quality. ‘Product power’ is the core driving force in the development and growth of Perfect Diary.

Fifth Avenue is going out of style for luxury retailers, as coronavirus erodes sales

High-end fashion stores on New York’s Fifth Avenue used to play the role of a showroom, where shoppers could browse through curated racks of clothes with a glass of champagne. However, with shopping at a near standstill and in-store sales hovering at zero, that prime real estate is becoming a drag on retailers’ balance sheets.

Italian fashion house Valentino sought court approval on Monday to immediately terminate its lease on its four-story New York Boutique on Fifth Avenue, saying its premium address had been “substantially hindered and rendered impractical, unfeasible and no longer workable,” according to a complaint filed to the Supreme Court of the State of New York. Valentino blamed “COVID-19-related restrictions, social distancing measures, a lack of consumer confidence and a prevailing fear of patronizing, in-person, ‘non-essential’ luxury retail boutiques.”

It is the latest luxury retailer scrambling to adapt to a new world order of contactless shopping and stalled international travel that could hasten the fall of some of the most iconic stores for the rich.

“Given a lot of the uncertainties, it is not surprising to see a lot of luxury retailers say, ‘Do we really need to be here paying these incredibly high rents?’” said Jonathan Woloshin, head of U.S. real estate for UBS Global Wealth Management’s Chief Investment Office. “I don’t think this is going to be the last of what we’re seeing here.”

The virus has wreaked havoc across the luxury industry. Neiman Marcus, the department store known for catering to the uber rich, filed for bankruptcy in May, citing “unprecedented disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Famed jeweler Tiffany & Co. reported its same-store sales fell about 44 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same time last year. Luxury icon LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton, which agreed to buy Tiffany in November, reported a 17 percent decline in sales during the same time. Nordstrom, the department store for society’s upper echelons, was dropped by the S&P 500 on Wednesday.

“Best-case scenario, where a vaccine becomes available or the economic ramifications of the pandemic are not too severe, people will resume shopping and traveling and give a boost to luxury goods sales,” said Sarah Willersdorf, partner and global luxury leader at Boston Consulting Group. “But in a worst-case scenario, where a vaccine takes longer to develop or the recession is more severe, companies will struggle to regain momentum and people’s ability and willingness to buy luxury goods will suffer.”

Luxury sales globally could fall anywhere between $85 and $120 billion in 2020, or by about 29 percent, according to estimates by the Boston Consulting Group published in May. The fashion and luxury sector as a whole could lose between $450 and $600 billion in sales as a result of the virus.

Heading into the pandemic, luxury retailers were buoyed by wealthy Chinese shoppers who traveled to New York’s swanky Fifth Avenue District for a Louis Vuitton clutch, Cartier bracelet or Burberry coat, according to Robert Samuels, a consumer analyst at UBS Global Wealth Management.

Chinese shoppers made up about one-third of luxury sales leading into the pandemic, he said. But with travelers from China restricted from entering the country to contain infection rates, the future of luxury’s dependence on Asian shoppers is unclear.

“We simply don’t have the same tourism that has been there,” Samuels said. “Until we get tourism to ramp up again in the U.S., luxury retailers will need to attract a different type of shopper — or they’ll continue to be at the mercy of when the Asian consumer comes back to the U.S. to shop.”

With online shopping becoming the new normal, luxury retailers are facing an uphill battle. This year, online shopping has only made up a fraction of total global luxury sales, according to UBS estimates. Roughly $40 billion in euros was expected to be spent online versus $300 billion offline, according to UBS.

Luxury’s competitive edge in the retail industry has always been its high-touch personal in-store experience. But in the time of curbside pickup and social distancing, that edge is dulled.

“The luxury brands don’t have the same e-commerce infrastructure online as they do in the store,” said Samuels. “Continued digital engagement is going to be crucial for these stores, especially as they remain closed.”

Ice’es Green, based in Newark, New Jersey, told NBC News that until the coronavirus shut down stores, she avoided shopping for luxury goods online since Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci — her most shopped brands — don’t carry their full collection on their websites, she said.

“I didn’t like online shopping with luxury goods because I wanted to see it in person,” she added.

Green said she is a member of several Facebook groups for luxury goods shoppers that have helped her connect with luxury brand sales associates to buy products that may not be available online. But she’s eager to get back to store shopping.

“I still need the in-store experience,” she said.

SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son leaves Alibaba board

SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son ended his company’s annual shareholder meeting with a surprise Thursday by announcing he’s stepping down from the board of Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

The billionaire said his departure shouldn’t be interpreted as signifying any disagreements, even though Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma is quitting SoftBank’s board at the same time. Ma and Son have maintained a close friendship since the Japanese entrepreneur was an early investor in Alibaba and helped it along to its current value of roughly $600 billion, calling it the crown jewel of SoftBank’s portfolio.

“It’s not like we had a fight,” Son said during the virtual shareholder meeting. “This was perfectly amicable.”

While the mutual departures are unlikely to have an immediate impact on either company, they mark the end of an era. The two men are among the most successful entrepreneurs of their generation and have been able to rely on each other’s advice for decades. Son was on Alibaba’s board as it went public in 2014 in the largest initial public offering in history. When SoftBank ran into trouble with investment losses this year, Son was able to use his Alibaba stake to raise much-needed capital.

“The joint board membership was a big positive for both companies because it gave them a way to benchmark their respective business models,” said Michiaki Tanaka, a business school professor at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. “Not having that board-level contact is a big loss.”

Alibaba remains Son’s most successful investment by far and SoftBank’s most valuable asset. In early 2000, Son invested $20 million into the then-unknown web portal connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers, a stake that is now worth more than $150 billion. That spectacular return cemented his reputation as an investor and later helped him raise the $100 billion Vision Fund. Son has previously spoken highly of Ma.

“He had no business plan, zero revenue,” Son said about Ma on The David Rubenstein Show. “But his eyes were very strong. I could tell from the way he talked, he has charisma, he has leadership.”

Yahoo Japan, which offers online search, shopping, auction and news services, last month reached an agreement with Alibaba’s Taobao unit allowing Chinese consumers to buy about 8 million products marketed on the Japanese site.

Son is known for anointing the entrepreneurs he finds particularly promising as “the next Jack Ma,” and Alibaba has long served as the standard against which he has judged SoftBank’s other startup investments. But that’s also made Son vulnerable to charismatic founders like WeWork’s Adam Neumann, whose many governance transgressions led to the office-sharing firm canceling its initial public offering last year. WeWork, once thought to be worth $47 billion, has lost more than 90% of its value.

Son’s recent track record has been spotty. Starting with the WeWork fiasco, he has suffered a string of setbacks at portfolio companies including Wag Labs, Zume Pizza and Brandless Inc. SoftBank lost almost $18 billion writing down the value of its startup companies in the last fiscal year.

Still, Son struck an optimistic note at the shareholder meeting Thursday. He began the presentation to investors in typical fashion, reaffirming his conviction that a global digital transformation and the advent of artificial intelligence — both accelerated during the pandemic — will help his investments in the likes of TikTok-owner ByteDance Ltd. and British chip designer Arm Ltd.

SoftBank is in the process of offloading 4.5 trillion yen (about $42 billion) of assets to bankroll stock buybacks and slash debt to reassure investors. On Thursday, the company announced a third 500-billion-yen buyback, having completed an earlier one this month.

The company this week agreed to sell a stake in T-Mobile US Inc. for as much as $20 billion. Together with the $11.5 billion from issuing contracts to sell Alibaba stock and a sale of stock in its domestic telecom unit, Son’s company has now completed 80% of its envisioned asset unwinding, he said.

Son said he was “graduating” from Alibaba’s board. But the two-decade-long relationship produced few cooperative venture of note, even while the two companies were constructing e-commerce empires in their respective markets. In 2010, the two agreed to link their online platforms to allow users of SoftBank’s Yahoo Japan to buy products on Alibaba’s Taobao site, but the project failed to gain momentum. In 2015, Alibaba backed SoftBank’s failed bipedal robotics business.

“Following Jack Ma leaving the SoftBank board, Son stepping down from Alibaba is merely a symbolic end of an era,” said Justin Tang, head of Asian research at United First Partners in Singapore. “It will be business as usual for both companies.”

A shareholder asked at the Thursday meeting how many of the 88 companies SoftBank’s Vision Fund currently has on its books will be the next Alibaba. Son’s answer was that there are one or two “mini-Alibabas.”

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Top eCommerce platforms for 2020 [Infographic]

Transcript

E-Commerce Platforms 2020 Facts Best E-commerce Platforms For 2025 I Magento Bigcommerce S shopify WiX Woo COMMERCE SQUARESPACE opencart PRESTASHOP The future of retail is online retail (aka e-tail), e-commerce sales worldwide $1.9 $4.5 trillion trillion 2016 2021 Connection between social media and eCommerce platform Instagram shopping feature H&M online fashion advice (itsapark) Pinterest shopping feature (Catalogs) in 110% Social Commerce Referral Grows Best customer experience according to ecommerce platforms More Ym Personalisation Conversational eCommerce (onsite chat) Digital Experience Optimization instead of Conversion Rate Optimization 90% of CEOS believe that their companies offer the best eCommerce customer experience 10% of the customers believe that the companies offer the best eCommerce customer experience Ecommerce platform & SEO (SEO Result higher is better) | shopify 98 97 Woo COMMERCE 95 3dcart 95 Magento 91 Bigcommerce 91 SQUARESPACE volusion weebly Shopify overtakes eBay, is behind Amazon (market capitalisation) Oct 4th 2019 amazon |shopify $860.5 $37.7 billion billion ebay $32.1 billion Mobile growth which eCommerce platform has the best mobile experience? S shopify I Magento 3 Bigcommerce Woo COMMERCE PRESTASHOP Market Share by domains, total 1.7 million Domains (Market Share) Woo COMMERCE (29.10%) 487,419 Un SQUARESPACE (18.55%) 310,795 shopify (10.83%) 181,371 MONSTERCOMMERCE (5.07%) 84,852 M Magento (4.18%) 70,014 WIX (3.95%) 66,167 Rest (28.32%) 474,351 100 200 300 400 500 » 81% 2020 of retailers will use unified commerce platforms by 2020 shopify will keep rising 25% f merchants have enabled social selling 73% shopify traffic comes from mobile 61% sales come from mobile Chatbots integration ooo 80% 2020 of businesses said they currently use or are planning to use chatbots by 2020 85% S 2020 of our engagement with businesses will be using self- service options and chatbots 50% of customers say they’re more likely to shop with a business that they can connect with via chat 1/5 1 out of 5 consumers is willing to purchase goods from a chatbot Recommendation Engines 35% amazon of Amazon.com’s revenue is generated by its recommendation engine 31% Product recommendations account for up to 31% of eCommerce site revenues The second most important feature to respondents in 2019 “O’ 30% In 2021 more than 30% of the online store will focus over new techniques on visual search and voice searches 27% consumers worldwide are currently interested on Al based tools 12% B2B buyers even wanted to meet with a sales representative Designed & Compled by GO-Globe CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT SINCE 2005 Source inks https://apiumhub.com/tech-blog-barcelona/ariicialHntalligence ecommerce https://brpcoreulting.com/downloadr2010pourvey httpa:ecommece-platforma.com/de/compare/bestecommarce-platform-na https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/use-cases-recommendation-systems httpa:wspandedrambiings.com/indesphp/uhapify-atatistica https:/ashionia.com/201903intagram-checkout-shopping hetpstashionista.com/2019/04/social-commerce-onine-shopping oitsolutions.comn/infographic/ecommerceaniticialmeligence producteecomnendations-stats tbots/charbots-ow-and-in-ourfuture -commerce-is-disrupting-bab-withno-end-in-sig 21/shopify-now-biggerthan-ebay commerce-efural-grows-110 -and-machinelearning-in-201WIS331 blog/best-ecommerce-customer-experience retalers-willuse-unilied-commerce platforms-by-2020/516481/ karess-channel-strategies/survey1-ofretallerswdepl ut-know-tipu/put-your-ahap-in-clents-hands-with-top5-mabile-sc m/statistica/37I045/worldwide-etaile-commence-ales/ com/blog/top-ecommence-plutforms-market-share-breakdown https:/www.lot.com/blog/best-ecommerce-planforms hetpa:lycharts.com/companies/AMZN/market cap https//ycharts.com/comparies/EBAYmarker cap https:/ycharts.com/companies/SHOPimarket cap

Retailers Are Leaving Malls for Good Reason, Some Better Prepared Than Others

The flood of retailers moving to open-air shopping venues is a reflection of costs and changing lifestyles, and the movement is just starting.

The news was mostly lost among all the more pressing headlines, first regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, and then more recently by protests related to racism. But there are reports that several stores brands popular in malls aren’t planning to reopen even if their host mall does … ever.

These stores were already leaving malls in droves; coronavirus-related shutdowns have merely accelerated that movement. Mall vacancy rates hit 9.7% by the end of 2019, according to Moody’s industry research arm Real Estate Solutions (REIS). And REIS predicts malls vacancy rates will soar to 14.6% by the end of next year as individual retailers regroup and rethink their store locations.

Not all of the most familiar names, like Macy’s (NYSE:M) and Foot Locker (NYSE:FL), are completely throwing in the towel on malls. But these retailers, more and more, are finding a friendlier and less-expensive environment in off-mall locations like strip malls, or less conventional locales like downtown settings, or even stand-alone venues closer to neighborhoods.

Retailers making this move are learning a bit about themselves as they go.

Image source: Getty Images.

Moving out, en masse

As my fellow Motley Fool contributor Rich Duprey explained just a few days ago, Foot Locker was already abandoning malls in favor of open-air strip malls. The fallout from the coronavirus simply accelerated that strategic shift.

Foot Locker isn’t alone. Macy’s is doing the same. Earlier this year, it unveiled Market by Macy’s, a smaller and more intimate venue than Macy’s usual department store. More noteworthy is the fact that these stores are meant to be established anywhere but malls, offsetting the impact of the 125 mall-based store closures Macy’s is targeting by 2023.

Health supplement chain GNC Holdings made the bold decision in late 2018 to shutter as many as 900 stores, with around half of those in malls.

Even mall staples like cosmetics and beauty retailers are making the change. Ulta Beauty (NASDAQ:ULTA) and Sephora, owned by LVMH (OTC:LVMU.Y), have both suggested their futures won’t be as mall-centric as their pasts have been.

Sephora Americas vice president Jeff Gaul told reporters early this year that while the company still wants to operate in malls, more of its next 100 store openings would be at off-mall locations that are more convenient to consumers. Ulta indicated early last year that about three-fourths of its store openings in the near future would be at suburban strip malls.

Were it just one or two of these retail names focusing more on open-air locations, it could be dismissed. But when so many of the industry’s stalwarts are singing the same tune at the same time, that’s a paradigm shift.

Why they’re leaving

There’s no single reason for the movement. Rather, there are several tides pushing retailers out of the mall and closer to your home.

One of those forces is burgeoning rent. While most retailers could afford to pay premium prices for square footage at a mall before the advent of e-commerce, online alternatives have made stores’ selling space less productive relative to its cost. REIS reported at the end of last year that retailers were paying a record $43.53 per square foot per year in rent. Mall landlords don’t seem to have adjusted to retailers’ new reality.

Perhaps the biggest reason neighborhood strip malls are displacing bigger and more centralized shopping malls, however, is a change in lifestyles and personal preferences. Sephora’s Gaul explained to fashion publishing brand Glossy in February, after revealing plans to build more off-mall stores, that its average customer “has been showing us that she really has a desire for more ease and convenience in her shopping. We have a terrific network of existing stores in Times Square, on Fifth Avenue, and on 34th Street, but what we have been lacking is being in those neighborhoods where she goes to SoulCycle or picks up pizza on Friday evening.”

And Sephora’s customers aren’t the only ones fitting that description.

An unexpected name in the lead

It’s still the early innings of a paradigm shift that’s long overdue, and it’s too soon to name winners and losers. All the aforementioned names have some learning curve to deal with, including finding the right balance between mall locations and off-mall stores.

But there is one name that stands out as a company capable of successfully operating mall stores and strip-mall venues simultaneously: Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN).

You read that right. It’s not the biggest department store name in the world, nor is it the most inviting to middle-income shoppers who might also visit a J.C. Penney store or Macy’s. But it’s figured out the right mix of mall stores and off-mall stores like Nordstrom Rack, which caters to the more value-minded by offering off-price goods (much of which had previously been inventory in Nordstrom’s full-priced mall locations).

It may not have been the original intent when Rack stores were being built in earnest several years ago, but that building effort leaves the company with 247 Rack stores versus only around 100 mall stores. The company already has the off-mall footprint it needs and has been doing well with it.

Every other retailer? Only time will tell how well they adapt to the move. But at least now they know they have to make it.

James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Moody’s and Ulta Beauty. The Motley Fool recommends Nordstrom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Coronavirus changed everything. Except T.J. Maxx.

The coronavirus pandemic ushered in a surge in online shopping, and most retailers are scrambling to adapt. Not T.J. Maxx.

The 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.

FUTURE OF MALLS IN QUESTION AS CORONAVIRUS COULD CLOSE THOUSANDS OF STORES

Parent TJX Cos., which also owns Marshalls, HomeGoods and other discount chains, is as focused as ever on drawing shoppers to its more than 4,500 stores world-wide, betting consumers are desperate to roam the aisles after months of being stuck at home. As of June 17, about 85% of TJX stores had reopened.

“Strategically, nothing will change,” TJX Chief Executive Ernie Herrman told analysts in May. “We will not look to e-commerce as our major leveraging point to get us through Covid and out the other side.”

Off-price retailers such as T.J. Maxx have found the economics of e-commerce unattractive, but they risk losing more sales should another lockdown occur.

A CORONAVIRUS REOPENING REQUEST: HELP RETAIL WORKERS HELP YOU, PLEASE WEAR A MASK

For now, though, shoppers are flooding reopened stores, pushing sales higher than they were a year ago, Mr. Herrman said in May. Meanwhile, other chains, including Macy’s Inc. and Kohl’s Corp., say sales are running below prepandemic levels.

Last Monday morning two dozen women waited outside a T.J. Maxx in Ann Arbor, Mich., before it reopened after months of lockdown.

“I love the deals,” said Trina Meadows, a chemical dependency counselor who drove an hour north from Maumee, Ohio. Most Ohio stores reopened last month, so her local store “is very picked over,” she said, and doesn’t have a Runway section, T.J. Maxx’s selection of discounted high-end designer brands.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
TJX	TJX	50.84	-2.40	-4.52%

Many of the opening-day shoppers went to both T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods across the street, which sells houseware, food and seasonal decorations at a discount. “It feels like Christmas today,” said one HomeGoods cashier, checking out a customer. “For us, too,” the customer said.

“There is a lot of revenge spending,” said John Kernan, an analyst with Cowen Inc. “People have been cooped up for so long they want to shop in stores.”

TJX’s approach contrasts with other retailers that are charting a post-coronavirus future less centered around drawing shoppers inside stores. The parent company of fast-fashion retailer Zara this month said it would permanently close as many as 1,200 stores and move more aggressively to selling online.

Others retailers have boosted investments in e-commerce. Walmart Inc. added online grocery pickup and delivery slots and quickly started shipping online orders from thousands more stores. Michaels Cos., a craft supply chain that closed many stores throughout the pandemic, added online pickup and same-day delivery service to most of its U.S. stores.

US ECONOMY FACES PROTRACTED RECOVERY FROM CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWNS

TJX gets just 2% of its sales from e-commerce and shut its websites during the lockdowns. Even now, it is fulfilling online orders at a slower-than-normal rate, frustrating some shoppers, as it adheres to safety standards that require social distancing in its warehouses.

The company has long catered to shoppers who enjoy the “treasure hunt” experience of browsing aisles of constantly changing merchandise, Mr. Herrman said. “In today’s environment, we believe this kind of shopping experience can serve as a break in the day, and as some ‘Me time’ for our customers, and in the future will continue to be a major draw for consumers to our stores,” he said.

There are also economic reasons for the aversion to e-commerce by TJX and other off-price retailers such as Ross Stores Inc., which doesn’t sell online, and Burlington Stores Inc., which stopped doing so earlier this year, according to analysts. It is hard for discount retailers to turn a profit when factoring in the cost of shipping and returns. Moreover, some brands that sell to discounters don’t want their items online where shoppers can easily search for deals, analysts say.

“For a lot of companies, e-commerce is a blessing and a curse,” said Janine Stichter, Jefferies Financial Group analyst, explaining that it comes with additional expenses and a reduction in shoppers visiting physical stores. “My advice is if you don’t need a big online presence, don’t do it. TJX is one of the few companies that doesn’t need it.”

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Mr. Herrman said e-commerce is complementary to stores, but added: “With more attractive financial metrics in brick-and-mortar versus online, we plan to continue growing e-commerce strategically.”

For TJX, the risk is a second wave of infections that would force nonessential retailers to temporarily close stores again. Apple Inc. recently closed nearly a dozen stores in four states as coronavirus cases climbed.

TJX swung to an $887 million loss in the three months to May 2, compared with a profit of $700 million a year earlier. Sales fell to $4.4 billion from $9.3 billion the previous year.

TJX stores reopened with safety restrictions that are now becoming familiar to American shoppers. The T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods stores in Ann Arbor each had a capacity limit and a store worker counted guests coming and going. A worker disinfected cart handles and stores had plexiglass barriers at registers. Inventory was plentiful, and some items deeply discounted.

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Some shoppers bristled at long checkout lines. “You need more cashiers!” said one shopper waiting to check out at T.J. Maxx. “We know. We just have to practice social distancing,” responded a store worker managing the line.

Most shoppers came to get out of the house and touch and see products before buying. “Isolation has been long,” said Monica Rosu, a 23-year-old nursing student who lives 30 minutes away in New Boston, Mich., as she browsed a rack of dresses at T.J. Maxx. “This is the first time I’ve been in a nongrocery store.”

Secondhand E-Commerce Sites See A Silver Lining

Consumers looking for bargains as they shop from home will contribute to secondhand’s 27% growth … [+] rate in 2020, according to a new ThredUp report.

Getty

The coronavirus pandemic has changed consumer shopping behavior and shifted dollars from brick-and-mortar retailers—many of which are only now starting to open—to online stores, and resale is a beneficiary.

“It’s definitely been a surreal time,” said Poshmark CEO Manish Chandra. “When the pandemic started in a big way in late February and into March, when it was first declared a pandemic, the initial reaction [to Poshmark] was very negative. After people adjusted, we saw a massive increase in engagement in sales and selling.”

During the pandemic, Poshmark launched Reposh, an easy, one-click way to sell items bought on Poshmark. Chandra said the company wants to support the use and reuse of items. “We see this becoming very powerful,” he said. “It’s not just great for the environment, it’s great for us as a society, too. It’s something whose time has come.”

An Instagram-like story feature introduced on the Poshmark app lets users showcase listings with short videos and photos that disappear in 48 hours. Usage of Posh Stories has been ramping up, Chandra said, adding, “People want that human connection. Stories are taking [selling] to the next level by adding the human element of a video.”

Poshmark’s community has swelled to 60 million members, with sellers from mid-March through mid-June sharing 60 million listings daily, up from 30 million prior to COVID-19. Sellers have been uploading over $175 million worth of inventory every week, a spike that occurred prior to COVID-19.

Since the pandemic was declared, Poshmark has seen a 50% increase in listings and orders and a 40% uptick in new sellers year-over-year. And with consumers homeward bound, the average time spent on Poshmark has risen to 30 to 31minutes, versus 27 minutes before the pandemic.

James Reinhart, CEO of ThredUp, said his site’s low prices have appealed to consumers during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Great value is what we offer,” he said. “When consumers are feeling a little more uncertainty about the economy, we really benefit from that.”

Reinhart believes secondhand’s upward trajectory will continue at the expense of traditional retailers such as department stores. ThredUp today released its 2020 Resale Report, which projects that the total secondhand market will reach $64 billion in five years, from $28 billion in 2019.

A selection of warm weather items from ThredUp.

ThredUp

Consumers looking for bargains as they shop from home will contribute to secondhand’s 27% growth rate in 2020, which the ThredUp report compares to the broader retail sector’s projected 23% decline.

ThredUp has partnered with retailers such as Macy’s, J.C. Penney and Madewell to bring a secondhand shopping experience to their stories through Resale-As-A-Service platform. “I’m still bullish on collaborations,” Reinhart said.

The resale giant last month partnered with Walmart on an online resale program that will give customers of the world’s largest retailer access to Thredup’s inventory of 750,000 pre-owned products. “Walmart has the ability to sell a broader assortment of brands, but at a price point that really hits the sweet spot for the customer,” Reinhart said.

Aware of fast fashion’s impact on the planet, Gen Z and Millennials are driving resale, which is expected to reach $44 billion in sales in 2029, eclipsing fast fashion, which will post $43 billion due to stagnating sales, the ThredUp survey said.

The RealReal is recovering from pandemic-related declines due to drop in supply. At its Brisbane, California, warehouse, for example, only 25 out of 200 employees were allowed to work to comply with state and local shelter-in-place orders.

Now that the orders are relaxing, The RealReal’s higher staffing levels at warehouses, along with efficiencies from its investments in automation, have allowed new supply to be processed at pre-coronavirus levels.

Julie Wainwright, CEO of The RealReal, said that while it seems counterintuitive, women have been buying trophy handbags during the pandemic. “We have a weird anomaly – high value handbags are selling really well,” she said, citing styles from Louis Vuitton, Hermes’ Birkin and Chanel. “It may be because Louis Vuitton and Chanel are pretty much shut down, and also, they raised their prices.”

The home category, art and tabletop are also doing “incredibly well,” Wainwright said, adding that products with a pop culture provenance are strong sellers, such as Michael Jordan sneakers, which shot up 55% after The Last Dance, a 10-part documentary about the basketball legend, aired in April and May.

Demand for demonstrative fashion has shifted to understated luxury, befitting the at-home work force. “It’s not as bold and not as logocentric,” Wainwright said of the prevailing looks. “Tops are overselling, as are casual dresses. We’ve gone back to classic simplicity.”

The RealReal is postponing the opening of its Chicago store, which had been scheduled for a July launch, and will now open at the beginning of 2021. “It’s such an unpredictable time for brick and mortar,” Wainwright said. “It’s also an interesting time. The second half of March and April were really tough months for us. We had to completely redo things. During that time we were completely agile. It’s been a challenging time, but also a time of innovation and reinvention.”

Virtual appointments—20,000 of them—replaced in-person white glove consignment visits that were suspended, and stood in for meeting with valuation consultants at luxury consignment offices, which were temporarily closed.

Wainwright said she was prepared for the challenged posed by the coronavirus. “This business was born out of a recession. It’s been a challenging time, but also a time of innovation and reinvention, and I think it will serve us really well.”

Online Resale Appears to Be Pandemic-Proof

Photo: Courtesy of Thredup

One of the biggest stories to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic is the devastation of retail — especially of businesses that relied on brick-and-mortar sales, many of which have declared bankruptcy or shuttered altogether due (at least in part) to the pandemic. But even as discretionary spending has dried up for many Americans, certain segments of retail are apparently thriving. One is online resale — i.e. sites like Thredup, The Real Real and Vestiaire Collective.

On Tuesday, Thredup released the results of its 2020 Resale Report, conducted in partnership with third-party research and analytics firm GlobalData, to examine the trends and trajectory of the $28 billion resale apparel market. Each year, the report illustrates how consumer spending is shifting more and more towards the secondhand market. (It’s worth noting that although data was collected in partnership with a third party, it’s presented by and supports the validity of Thredup.) Its latest findings are no different. But, for the first time, the report reflects the impact of a global health crisis and ensuing economic downturn.

While the broader retail segment is projected to shrink by 23% this year, due in part to Covid-19, online secondhand is expected to grow by 27%, according to the 2020 Resale Report. Looking further out, it projects that over the next five years, online resale will grow 414%, while overall retail will shrink by 4%.

The most obvious answer to why shoppers are directing their web browsers and money towards pre-owned goods right now is value. Plus, with people stuck at home, browsing e-commerce sites is a way to pass the time.

Thredup found that May 2020 was a record-breaking month for new Thredup visits and that overall shoppers spent 2.2 million hours on the site — a 31% increase over pre-Covid numbers. At the same time, the company is facing unprecedented inventory levels thanks to what the report calls a “quarantine clean-out frenzy.” As a result, it’s taking it longer to process consignments (a couple months versus a couple of weeks).

Slide: Courtesy of Thredup

GlobalData also surveyed around 2,000 consumers and found that most respondents are getting thriftier in a number of ways in response to Covid-19, ranging from mending clothes to cutting their clothing budgets. It also found that 44% plan to spend more on secondhand, while 66% said they plan to spend less on department stores. Additionally, 52% of respondents said they plan to spend less on luxury.

Of course, value is only one of the perceived benefits of shopping secondhand — the other being environmental impact. Over the past couple of years, there’s been a gradual shift in marketing messaging on the part of secondhand retailers towards sustainability that has more or less paralleled growing consumer interest in being environmentally conscious. The survey found that while shoppers feel guilty buying fast-fashion, they feel proud when they buy secondhand. Plus, 43% of respondents said they plan to spend more on sustainable brands in the next five years, versus only 18% who said that last year. It also found that the younger shoppers are, the less of a stigma there is to shopping secondhand, with more Gen Z-ers shopping secondhand than any other generation.

Like many retail experts, Thredup president Anthony S. Marino believes that the pandemic has accelerated trends in consumer behavior that were already underway.

“Shelter-in-place catalyzed the shift to shopping online,” he shares as one example, adding the prioritization of value as another. “Consumers who may have taken a bit longer to come around [to shopping secondhand], Covid may have pushed them into our court.” He also feels that, in the same way the 2009 recession drove interest in off-price retailers (Nordstrom Rack, T.J. Maxx, etc.), the current economic crisis is driving interest in secondhand.

Pretty much any way you slice it, the future looks bright for re-commerce.

Slide: Courtesy of Thredup

Aside from consumer interest, the sustainability aspect is driving increased interest from investors and venture capitalists (not that these sites have ever had a hard time raising money) who intend to grow their ESG assets — meaning businesses that fulfill certain criteria around environmental, social, and governance factors. “There’s a lot of capital out there looking for business focused on [sustainability],” notes Marino.

Meanwhile, traditional retailers are increasingly seeing the value in participating in the resale economy, which has resulted in many of them (like Walmart) partnering with Thredup as well as other resale sites, like The Real Real and Fashionphile. Marino says that those partnerships haven’t died down at all during the pandemic: “We still get emails every day [from retailers],” he says, noting how retailers see value in its e-commerce infrastructure and ability to rapidly process and list items digitally.

Slide: Courtesy of Thredup

Something else to note — and that is also probably of interest to investors — is that there is still plenty of market share for online resale to capture. Per the report, 82% of America hasn’t yet resold any clothing, but 67% of them are open to it. Secondhand is expected to double its market share in 10 years, claiming the second-largest share of market, after (new) off-price. And while rental and subscription models are also expected to grow rapidly, they will still make up much smaller portions of consumer spend.

You can view the full 2020 Resale Report here.

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Pinterest ‘Shop’ tab on Lens Camera makes shopping a surreal experience

If I had to pick one positive spin on the lockdown, we have seen over the past few months, it’s the growth and surge in online sales. Those who didn’t have seamless e-commerce to their brands, have taken this opportunity to up the game, and jump into the e-comm pool. Given that Pinterest is a platform that’s always celebrated design, fashion, collectibles, and products, it’s only a natural progression that they add this aspect to their offerings.

Giving ‘point and shoot’ a different meaning, the camera on Pinterest actually helps you shop for products that are similar to what you have captured through its Lens camera if they are available for sale. To give it a try, I took a picture on my Bose speakers and sure enough, recommendations of where I can buy the same speaker, as well as similar looking products – which included a tube-ish bag – popped up from the app.

The Shoppable Pins

I’m not sure what the revenue model for this new shop-tab will be for Pinterest, but it completely makes sense to monetize the platform using the buyable aspect of the products that inspire us. What I liked the most, is that Pinterest is actually asking me questions like, if the site they are leading me to buy the product, is useful enough.

I guess this will help weed out the spam sites and even help them streamline the kind of products that pop-up as recommendations. Surely, I didn’t need a tube-ish bag when I’m searching for Bose Speakers. The experience from click-a-picture to recommendations to shopping is a seamless one, that doesn’t require you to leave the platform as such.

Searching Real Inspiration

In the beginning, the intention of the camera was to help you find similar products that caught your fancy. Stuff that you saw in stores and matching them back to the options on Pinterest. However, the refinement to the process is such, that I can be sitting in my living room, take a picture of my lampshade, and find something similar or new for that matter.

The tech allows you to use photos in your Camera Roll, other blogs, and even screenshots. Since virtual search is on the rise, and it’s grown up to three times using the Pinterest camera, since 2019, indicating that people are using the Pinterest camera to search and shop. Refining their approach in this direction, we see that Pinterest has increased the number of attributes (almost double) focused on women’s fashion. Taking on Google, Facebook, and Instagram Shopping service amongst others, The Shop tab looks to be promising.

Conclusion: The feature of in-app shopping may not be new, but the experience with Pinterest is radically different from Instagram. We are used to a particular format with the latter, but I don’t see shoppers having trouble adapting to this new way to buy!

Alibaba Group and Yiwu City Expand eWTP Partnership

YIWU, China–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Alibaba Group and the municipal government of Yiwu, Zhejiang Province in China, have announced plans to develop a Digitized Comprehensive Bonded Zone under the eWTP (electronic World Trade Platform) framework, making cross-border e-commerce more accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at the world’s largest wholesale market.

The planned expansion of the strategic collaboration between Alibaba and Yiwu marks the first anniversary of the city’s establishment as an eWTP hub. The partners launched the hub last year to digitize Yiwu’s commerce infrastructure and enable new trade flows and opportunities. The expansion is especially timely, supporting the restoration and recovery of global trade under the Covid-19 pandemic.

A core part of the new initiatives is a joint venture between Alibaba Group and Yiwu-based China Commodities City Group to develop the eWTP cross-border trade service platform of Yiwu. This one-stop platform will offer SMEs digitized trade services, including customs clearance, foreign exchange settlement and tax procedures. It will be the third trade service platform established at an eWTP Hub, following the launch of trade platforms in Hangzhou, China and Liège, Belgium.

“With its advantages as a product and SME hub as well as its existing trade infrastructure, Yiwu is the definition of strategic planning for enabling businesses to navigate the digital age. Alibaba will work together with Yiwu to further facilitate the city’s transformation into a digitized small commodities trading hub and digitized port as a step toward the collective goal of complete digitization of global trade,” said Daniel Zhang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group.

Pioneering a New Retail approach to cross-border trade

The joint venture will also help develop the Yiwu Comprehensive Bonded Zone¹, ratified by China’s State Council in April this year, into one of the country’s most-digitized trade zones. A highlight of the zone will be the launch of an offline exhibition area to showcase cross-border products, scheduled for pilot launch in mid-September.

Inspired by Alibaba’s groundbreaking New Retail concept, consumers shopping at the showcase will be able to see and touch a variety of imported products offered by merchants on and beyond Alibaba’s platforms. Shoppers can also immediately pay for and bring home those imported products. This cross-border shopping area will initially occupy a floor area of around 20,000 square meters, with the potential for significant expansion.

Supporting Yiwu’s transition into an import distribution hub

To cater to rising demand from Chinese consumers for high-quality international products, Yiwu is progressing well in its transformation into a distribution hub for imported consumer goods. To this end, Alibaba Group and the municipal government of Yiwu have also announced the establishment of the eWTP Yiwu Digital Customs Clearance Port. The digital customs clearance system will enable overseas merchants exporting products to China in smaller quantities via international parcel delivery to complete and clear customs processes online, getting parcels to customers in a more-timely fashion.

Setting Yiwu SMEs on a path of growth

In the year since the eWTP’s Yiwu launch, an increasing number of SMEs have found success exporting products online. According to Alibaba.com, Alibaba’s platform for global business-to-business trade, its Yiwu-based supplier members have attracted business opportunities from close to three million active buyers over the past 12 months, generating 82% more online transactions on a year-on-year basis.

Under the eWTP framework, Yiwu businesses have access to their counterparts in various other eWTP hubs, allowing them to explore even more cross-border opportunities.

“We believe a digitized trading world where all core aspects of commerce are digitized is under formation. From merchants to products, from order settlement to logistics, and from a container to a receipt, everything is going to be inseparable from digital technology. With our shared customer base and shared markets, Yiwu and Alibaba will jointly usher in innovations in trade rules, technology and trade models to serve our customers and markets better and create better lives for consumers,” added Zhang.

Other initiatives by Alibaba to support SMEs in Yiwu, especially to support the post-pandemic recovery phase for businesses, include a solution to facilitate cross-border and foreign exchange transactions for SMEs in partnership with the Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank. A small commodities online trade show, part of Alibaba.com’s series of 20 online exhibitions, will also be held to attract five million international wholesalers to consider locally produced items from Yiwu. This follows the recent opening of the world’s largest digital exhibition featuring cross-border trade products by Alibaba.com.

Initiated by Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, the eWTP is a private-sector-led, multi-stakeholder initiative that facilitates public-private dialogue and collaboration to share best practices, incubate new trade rules and foster a more-integrated policy and business environment to help develop inclusive trade and the digital economy. To date, Alibaba Group has joined forces with the governments of Belgium, Malaysia, Rwanda, and Ethiopia as well as Hangzhou and Yiwu in China to establish six eWTP hubs around the world.

About Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. The company aims to build the future infrastructure of commerce. It envisions that its customers will meet, work and live at Alibaba and that it will be a good company that lasts for 102 years.

About eWTP

eWTP (electronic World Trade Platform) is a private-sector-led, multi-stakeholder initiative that facilitates public-private dialogue and collaboration to share best practices, incubate new trade rules, and foster a more integrated policy and business environment to support the development of inclusive trade and the digital economy.

The concept of eWTP was first initiated in 2016 by Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, and was accepted as a major policy recommendation of the Business 20 (B20) and officially included in the 2016 G20 Leaders’ Communique. The initiative aims to help small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), women and youth by developing policies and making it easier for them to leverage technology in order to participate in global trade.

The development of eWTP is driven by businesses, with support from governments. Businesses can create hubs for e-commerce, and governments can work with businesses to create free trade zones for cross-border e-commerce, develop new trade rules, share best practices, and facilitate development of e-commerce infrastructure and services. By promoting a comprehensive approach under the “4Ts” of eWTP – trade, tourism, training and technology, the initiative seeks to empower SMEs, to support the young generation and women, to facilitate global consumption and to foster a more integrated, inclusive environment for trade.

As of now, Alibaba Group has joined forces with the governments of Belgium, Malaysia, Rwanda and Ethiopia as well as Hangzhou and Yiwu in China to establish six eWTP hubs around the world with the goal of enabling SMEs across the world to support global trade.

¹Comprehensive bonded zones in China are specially-designated commercial areas that feature favorable taxation and other policies, under the supervision of customs officials.

Gooddealsus com Reviews [June] | Safe Deal Or Scam! -> In this article, you get to know about a website dealing with fashion & other ecommerce products.

Are you looking to buy fashion shoes and clothes online? It would help if you visited Gooddealsus com Once.

In the ecommerce industry, there are unlimited options available these days. Most e-commerce companies provide the best facilities and services to customers. But, believing them is not easy for us. So, we decided to Gooddealsus com Reviews for our readers today.

The website is getting more considerable attention in the United Kingdom. People in the UK are frequently shopping from this site.

Good Dealsus provide exceptional customer services and worldwide shipping. As they have written on their website, it is effortless to shop from this site, you need to click on the buy now, and the item will be delivered to your doorstep.

As they mentioned, they have world-class customer service available. You can contact them through chat anytime, they reply on tickets quickly and give customers real-time support.

Hence, if you are looking to buy some great products online, this article will help you make a solid buying decision, whether you should buy from it. If the site is legit or it is a scam.

This site deals with car accessories, fashion clothing, health and personal care, home and garden accessories, men’s fashion items, outdoor accessories, and showpieces, shoes & bags, etc.

Apart from this, they also deal with toys for kids and various tools like aquarium cleaners, electric scissors, pest repellents, etc. The products on the site look of good quality as per images.

The items on the site are vast. They have all the products someone can need for the house or themselves. Some things are tremendously good to make your life easier as per the pictures of the products. The showpieces are eye-catchy.

They have different sales for every other product, as we discussed earlier that customer support is also commendable. They also have some cute items for your loving pets.

All the shipping, refund, and return policy is accessible. These things make this site stand out of many ecommerce shopping sites available in the market.

Specifications of Gooddealsus:

Website type- Ecommerce products
Website link- https://gooddealsus.com/
Shipping time- within 48 hours of order.
Delivery time: within 8-14 days
Return Policy- within 30 days from the parcel received
Shipping charge- Free shipping above order of $30
Company address- not provided
Contact Number- 18772534927
Email address- [email protected]
Mode of payments- online

Pros of Buying of Gooddealsus:

Wide varieties of products are available.
An easy buying process is given along with the description of the products.
Most of the items are available on different discount offers, which also makes shopping affordable.
Shipping, Delivery & return details are mentioned and easy to understand.
Secure online payment options are obtainable.

Cons of Buying of Gooddealsus:

No company address is mentioned.
Most of the links are not working as it shows, the site can not be reached.
The item’s amount is available in Indian currency, and the site is in the UK.
One seller is registered on Amazon as “Gooddealsusa”; however, this site is named “Gooddealsus.”
The website does not have any mail server and shows error while opening a lot of times.

Customer Reviews about Gooddealsus:

It is very tough to open the website as the site is not opening in some browsers. The site does not have customer reviews, but there are many reviews available on the search engine. One said they ordered two bags and both arrived so late. They were of the worst quality and nasty.

The products also did not match the pictures. One ordered the bird fountain, but there is no update about the item or the person’s ability to connect to the customer support. Almost all reviews by the customer are disappointing.

Final Verdict:

The site is from the UK, and the shipping happens from china. However, the price of the products is in Indian currency. The site uses a known platform ‘Shopify,’ but the domain is linked with more than two countries.

On the home page, they mentioned the shipping is free, but it is mentioned in the policy that the free shipping is only applicable at the minimum order of $30.

We do not recommend you to use this site for your future shopping. Share your feedback with us if you have also done shopping from gooddealsus.

Virus Drives Online Sales to Record, and Some of That Will Stick

View photos

(Bloomberg) — The lockdown created a boom for online retailers, with customers stuck at home demanding everything from restaurant and food delivery to fresh flowers and pre-mixed cocktails. As the U.K. follows other parts of the world in reopening non-essential shops, e-commerce companies are betting that the shift to the web will stick.

Customers who’d previously been reluctant to shop online were forced to try it after stores and restaurants closed in March to contain the pandemic. U.K. online sales as a proportion of all retailing reached a record high of 33.4% in May, the Office for National Statistics said Friday.

At least some of that business will remain, potentially at the cost of physical shops that were already struggling to compete against customers who increasingly prefer to buy online. Older shoppers trying to minimize their exposure to Covid-19 by avoiding crowds, continued home working and an aversion to lengthy queues should keep the clicks coming.

“There has been a surge in people shopping online for the first time and, given they tend to be older demographics who are most at risk from Covid and therefore more likely to be wary of busy places, they may continue to favor it over the longer-term,” Andy Mulcahy, strategy and insight director for industry association IMRG. “The problem for high-street retailers is that many were having trouble making the finances work anyway, and Covid has accelerated a shift that was happening slowly.”

Significant Increase

Eleanor Herrin, chief executive officer of grocery delivery firm Farmdrop, said the number of customers, and the size and frequency of their orders, “have increased significantly” during the lockdown, and she’s seeing the biggest gains from customers 45 years old and up.

“Our expectation is that the preference for online shopping developed during the pandemic will continue, even as stores begin to reopen more widely,” Herrin said. “The social distancing measures are still in place and queues outside supermarkets are still common. We expect that the demand for convenient and high-quality online options like Farmdrop will continue at close to current levels.”

Read more: Shoppers in England Return to Stores After Coronavirus Pause

Many workers are also still doing their jobs from home or are furloughed, and won’t have the opportunity to pop into shops. There’s also the lingering fear of catching the virus and contributing to a second wave, though U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged people to “shop with confidence” while staying 2 meters (6-1/2 feet) apart.

During the lockdown, when only stores selling essential items such as groceries and medicine were open, footfall dropped dramatically. On Wednesday, two days after shops reopened, traffic was down 51% from a year ago, according to retail analytics firm Springboard.

Read more: Glimmer of Hope for U.K. Stores as Data Point to Shopping Surge

Data from countries that have already begun reopening show that traffic hasn’t immediately returned to normal. Retail and recreation foot traffic in Germany and Austria, which began reopening in April, was still around 10% below the baseline as of June 12 in both countries, according to Google Mobility data. France was 25% lower after letting shoppers return in May. Google compares traffic with a median value for the corresponding day of the week taken from a five-week period starting on Jan 3.

To be sure, most companies with physical shops have an online presence anyway. The surge in online traffic may mean a reallocation of resources rather than a complete overhaul. Zara owner Inditex SA had so much online demand after it was forced to close its 3,500 stores, that it had to ask volunteers to retrieve clothes from stock rooms to fulfill online orders.

Robert Vis, CEO of enterprise communications startup MessageBird, said he’d observed a trend “super clearly” of customers starting to use a retailer’s increased capacity for handling e-commerce inquiries during the pandemic to speed up their high street shopping.

“We’ve seen one customer of ours in the Netherlands, for instance, online focused but with lots of retail stores, who moved sales to instant messaging channels and turned in-store employees into support staff and salespeople,” he said in an interview. When stores reopened, fewer people came than before the lockdown, and those who did had checked the shop’s stock online first before venturing out, he said.

But companies that predominantly rely on physical stores for sales are playing catchup and are finding that web sales can’t pick up the slack, according to research from Bloomberg Intelligence.

Overall retail sales fell the most on record in April and rose 12% in May, though they’re still 13.1% lower than February, according to the ONS. A separate survey showed that from May 18-31, more than 60% of retailers with an online service said sales stayed the same or rose.

The high street’s broader difficulties — unsold inventories, slow footfall — have only been exacerbated by the store closures and need to keep customers and employees a safe distance apart.

Online-only fashion firm Boohoo.com has made a specialty of acquiring the web rights of clothing retailers that have gone into administration, announcing this week that it would buy the online rights and intellectual property of Oasis and Warehouse.

“Online retailers are accelerating market-share gains as sales shift to their platforms, while store-based retailers are playing e-commerce catch-up as shops have largely stayed shut in May. Gains in online and food retail can’t offset the dip in apparel. Costly store reopenings with unsold seasonal inventory and slow footfall revival constrain cash flows.”

–Tatiana Lisitsina and Charles Allen, Bloomberg Intelligence

Click here for the research

Green Man Gaming CEO Paul Sulyok said the seller of keys to digital games has always been an online-only retailer, and that during the lockdown the company saw “a healthy double-digit percentage growth” in sales. The industry’s shift away from stores means the gains need not be threatened by the reopening of physical shops.

“If all the retailers in the high street shut down tomorrow, I still have most of my competition online,” Sulyok said in an interview. “About 90% to 95% of sales of PC games are made online now.”

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New York City’s Shops Cautiously Reopen After Months on Lockdown

Macy’s, the quintessential New York store, isn’t opening. Nor is the Gap. But as of Monday, Mackenzi Farquer was to begin selling her merchandise — in person, at her boutiques in Queens and Brooklyn — for the first time in more than two months.

It won’t be the same, of course. Only curbside pickup is allowed in this first phase of New York’s COVID-19 reopening, but Farquer is prepared. Her five stores, called Lockwood, are for people who enjoy browsing, selling items like coffee mugs that say “Social Distancing Club,” Star Trek jigsaw puzzles, and vanilla-scented erasers.

So she had her visual merchandiser set up a curbside display that will allow shoppers to simulate Lockwood’s serendipitous shopping experience just a bit, with alcohol hand sprays and masks mixed in.

“I’m hoping that when people come to do curbside, it feels for a brief moment like shopping,” said Farquer, 41.

For New York’s small businesses, which depend almost entirely on city residents, Monday marked a vital moment to start bringing in the customers and revenue they lost during the shutdown — an undertaking all the more precarious with the current social unrest.

Farquer’s Lockwood survived by selling merchandise through her website and getting four of her five landlords to cut rent by as much as 40 percent for the summer. Nearly 90 percent of small businesses have seen a large or moderate negative effect from the pandemic, according to the US Census Bureau.

Yet even as small shops scramble to get back to business and earn some money for the families that own them, major retail chains aren’t rushing to restart. Macy’s will not yet reopen its Herald Square flagship, one of the world’s largest department stores. Tiffany & Co. will wait at least another few days before considering serving shoppers at its Fifth Avenue shop. Coach, Kate Spade, and Stuart Weitzman fashion boutiques will stay closed, as will New Balance shoe stores. Ulta Beauty hasn’t yet set a timeline for its return to the city. The Container Store will offer pickup for online and phone orders.

These big chains have hundreds of stores across the United States that have reopened in recent weeks and robust e-commerce operations fueled by vast international supply chains and distribution channels, so business elsewhere can prop up their stores in New York. Local shops didn’t have any of those benefits.

“Small businesses are typically managed by their founders and owners,” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at the Columbia Business School. “A small business owner has a rent bill due, merchandise they’ve taken in that they haven’t paid for, and employees they feel honor-bound to re-employ. So there’s probably a different motive component to small businesses reopening.”

That’s certainly the case with Christine Alcalay, a fashion designer who owns two boutiques in Brooklyn called Kiwi and Fig. She’s kept her stores afloat by revamping the company’s e-commerce to make it easier to shop, but sales are still down about 80 percent from a year ago. She furloughed all but one of her 10 employees when the pandemic hit.

That left her delivering online orders, answering customer e-mails and texts, while securing a loan from the Small Business Administration, which allowed her to start paying her staff again. She also made Instagram videos, in which she not only modeled clothes, but also talked about her struggles as a business owner.

Now she’s hoping that the first phase of reopening New York’s retail industry would at least get residents comfortable with shopping again.

“I think psychologically it will get people to shop a little more because it’s official,” said Alcalay, who has been in business for 18 years.

Alcalay initially planned to make a marketing push for the reopening, but scaled it back because of the protests over police brutality. “It doesn’t feel like the right time to be pushing merchandise with what’s going on right now,” she said. Still, she planned to fix up the front of the stores for when people pick up orders. And she already had a local artist paint pickup hours and website addresses on the windows.

“I think we are going to make it through this,” Alcalay said. “But I’m worried about the next year or two.”

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