What: John Lewis is expanding its rapid delivery service with Deliveroo and Uber Eats to eight stores in London and the home counties, offering around 10,000 products in as little as 30 minutes.

Why it is important: Rapid delivery turns John Lewis's stores into fulfilment hubs, allowing a full-line department store to compete on immediacy without building its own last-mile fleet.

John Lewis has expanded its rapid delivery service, run with Deliveroo and Uber Eats, from two stores and a limited range in 2025 to eight stores across London and select home counties, including Oxford Street, Peter Jones, Welwyn Garden City, Bluewater and Kingston. Around 10,000 products are now available for delivery in as little as 30 minutes.

Pilot data showed demand peaking between 12pm and 2pm, driven by urgent tech, emergency gifts and treats. The PlayStation 5 controller is the best-selling item so far, while personal fans sold well over the summer. John Lewis has delivered more than 1.3 million items directly from shops since scaling deliver-from-store, and offers next-day click and collect from nearly 16,000 locations, including Waitrose stores.

The rollout is accompanied by a site redesign, improved search and personalised recommendations drawn from browsing history, across the website and the app, which now generates around 40% of online sales. An AI-powered product finder is due before Christmas as traffic from digital assistants grows. John Lewis expects to process up to 150,000 online orders a day at peak. The investments form part of its £800m multi-year transformation programme and coincide with 25 years of johnlewis.com.

IADS Notes: The expansion builds on a rapid delivery service that was already in place in March 2026, when John Lewis offered a curated range through Uber Eats within 45 minutes in select cities, alongside integrations with ChatGPT and Google Gemini and a TikTok Shop trial run under its £800m transformation programme (Press Release, March 2026). The rollout now covers around 10,000 products, adds Deliveroo and shortens the promised delivery time to 30 minutes. The retailer's logistics network has been reshaped at the same time: John Lewis closed its Blakelands distribution centre in Milton Keynes after more than four decades and consolidated operations at the automated Magna Park 3 facility to support omnichannel demand (Drapers, May 2026). The rollout also coincides with chair Jason Tarry's three-year "Rise" plan, whose first year focuses on technological and operational foundations, with targets of more than £100mn in additional profit from joined-up John Lewis and Waitrose loyalty and £180mn a year from retail media (Financial Times, September 2026). These investments are being made under financial pressure. The Partnership's H1 loss widened to £124m and department store sales fell 2% to £2bn, while Tarry committed to staying in the premium tier rather than competing on price (Drapers, September 2026).

John Lewis expands rapid delivery with Deliveroo and Uber Eats

What: The Mall Group won Tourist Attraction of the Year and Content Marketing of the Year at the Travel Daily Media Travel Trade Excellence Awards 2026 for Thailand, for its Emsphere destination and its Monchhichi New Year campaign.

Why it is important: Emsphere and the Monchhichi campaign show two levers that turn footfall into tourism value: a mixed-use destination marketed on Chinese discovery platforms, and character IP staged as city-wide experiences with measured sales uplift.

The Mall Group won Tourist Attraction of the Year and Content Marketing of the Year at the Travel Daily Media Travel Trade Excellence Awards 2026 for Thailand.

The first award recognises Emsphere at EM District, which opened in December 2023 and combines shopping, dining, entertainment and nightlife, including UOB LIVE, EM WONDER, TRIBE Sky Beach Club and more than 80 restaurants. It was the No. 1 searched destination in Thailand on XiaoHongShu in 2024, ranked in Dianping's Must-Visit Places in Thailand in 2026, and generated 3.46 billion online impressions and around 2,457 media articles in 2025. The company also worked with airlines, hotels, travel platforms and payment providers to ease access for international visitors.

The second award recognises the Monchhichi New Year Celebrations, marking the character's 50th anniversary and the launch of an exclusive Thai Edition. The campaign linked Siam Paragon, Emporium and The Mall Lifestore with digital content, KOLs and experiences in Bangkok neighbourhoods, parks and restaurants. Park Pilates with Monchhichi was fully booked within three minutes, Monchhichi Christmas Town recorded a 293% rise in participation and 107% growth in spending, and the Emporium Pop-Up saw traffic rise 549% and sales increase 83% year on year.

IADS Notes: The Mall Group's two Travel Daily Media wins follow its three awards at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2026, where the Monchhichi New Year campaign took a Gold for Experiential Marketing and a Bronze for Communications and PR (Press Release, September 2026). Its reach to foreign visitors now extends upstream of the store, as it is among the launch partners of THIM, the government app that pairs immigration procedures with retail and travel privileges and has recorded more than 600,000 downloads since 1 August (The Nation, September 2026). The destination model is spreading across Thai operators, with Siam Piwat planning IconPhuket, a 12-attraction project scheduled to open in 2029 and expected to draw 80,000 to 100,000 visitors a day once fully operational (Inside Retail, October 2026). The policy backdrop favours this formula: Thailand halved its visa-free stay to 30 days for visitors from 93 countries to attract higher-spending tourists, and retailers are urged to prioritise Thai design and better payment acceptance (Inside Retail, September 2026). Hong Kong offers a measurable comparison, as K11 Musea's tourist spending rose 26% over Golden Week against 5.3% revenue growth across 78 major mainland shopping districts, driven by new brand openings (Inside Retail Asia, October 2026).

The Mall Group wins two awards at Travel Daily Media Travel Trade Excellence Awards 2026 for Thailand

What: Galeries Lafayette, Louis Vuitton, Celine, Dior, Decathlon and Apple were among the retailers looted across France on 17 October as unrest linked to student blockades and the Gilets Jaunes spread to major cities.

Why it is important: Prime retail streets and luxury flagships, which hold large amounts of high-value stock, have become direct targets as a cost-of-living protest movement spreads across France.

Retailers across France faced widespread looting on 17 October as unrest spread to major cities. Alexandre Bompard, CEO of Carrefour and president of the Federation of Commerce and Retail (FCD), condemned the damage and looting suffered by businesses.

In Paris, an Intersport store was looted, the Celine store on Avenue Montaigne was ransacked, and videos showed a Dior boutique on Rue Saint-Honoré being looted. Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire warned of extensive damage while distinguishing the protest movement from the looters. In Bordeaux, a Decathlon on Rue Sainte-Catherine was looted and set on fire, and an Apple store, Galeries Lafayette and an Intersport were also targeted. The Louis Vuitton store in Marseille was broken into, and a Rolex store was reportedly ransacked.

Galeries Lafayette confirmed incursions in Paris, Chambéry, Nantes, Perpignan, Rennes, Tours and Bordeaux, its most heavily impacted store. Most locations had closed early as a precaution, but the scale of the violence overwhelmed security measures and stretched police. The retailer expects very significant material and economic consequences; all stores were due to reopen the following day except Bordeaux, which stays closed until Monday afternoon.

Most of LVMH's concurrent Journées Particulières open-doors events in Paris went ahead.

IADS Notes: The Bordeaux store, the most heavily damaged on 17 October, is midway through a two-and-a-half-year renovation to align it with the premium standards of the Haussmann flagship while remaining open to customers (Sud Ouest, March 2026). The damage and lost trading come as Galeries Lafayette pursues a heavy investment programme during a severe downturn in French department stores, marked by declining footfall and falling textile and clothing sales (Modaes, April 2026). Elsewhere, retailers are making security a collective, funded priority. Hundreds of businesses in London's West End are pooling £23m for surveillance, police presence and deterrence technology (Retail Week, May 2026), and UK high street retailers are deploying facial recognition to counter theft and threats against staff despite privacy concerns (Financial Times, March 2026). The events of 17 October, when precautionary closures were overwhelmed in several cities, show the limits of such measures when violence reaches this scale.

Galeries Lafayette and other retailers hit by looting as unrest spreads across French major cities