What: IADS attended two digital talks.

Why it is important: We gathered interesting insights about the sustainability issue in the sneakers market as well as fashion economic perspectives for the French market.

Première Vision - September 2021

What: IADS attended 6 digital talks on the future of retail.

Why it is important: We gathered interesting insights about what challenges retailers are facing after the Covid pandemic and how companies are planning to change for the better.

Financial Times Live 

Retailers have been put under extraordinary pressure for the past 2 years, and forced them to adapt to somewhat irreconcilable constraints, as outlined by David Bosshart, the former CEO of the GDI. How to deal with customers’ expectations of immediate satisfaction while, at the same time, they also expect from retailers commitments toward the environment and the society that are somewhat conflicting with this? What shall retailers pursue: long-term value by emphasizing their brand (but at the risk of running out of cash in the meantime), or compete with the “tech titans” for convenience and speed, not even knowing if they stand a chance?

The guest speakers each provided some insights and elements of reflection to answer this extraordinarily complex question:

• Sucharita Kodali, from Forrester Research, insisted on the fact that retailers had an opportunity to regain control over tech titans, or at least generate a new opportunity, by looking at alternative sources of revenue based on what they know how to do, just like what Amazon, Google or Facebook do,
• The CEOs of Hornbach Baumarkt (German DYI group), Denner (Swiss discount supermarkets) and Tegut (German supermarkets) discussed about power decentralization, trusting teams, considering societal evolutions to predict the future of business, and dealing with innovation with new stores concepts,
• The full e-commerce value chain was also represented, from Obsess which proposes to brands a different experience when it comes to e-commerce with virtual stores, Reflaunt, a resale facilitator, bookshop.org which aims at competing with Amazon on their original markets, books, or the legendary Ben Evans who gave his views on the evolution of tech and how it allowed the retail business to “unbundle”,
• Sustainability was also a topic of choice, with the CEO of Ecoalf (sustainable brand) and Green Pea (the first “green retail park”, opened last year in Turin, Italy) presenting their visions and actions.

The video captions are available here:

-    Link: <https://www.gdi.ch/en/71st-international-retail-summit-password-protected-area>

-    Password: IHT2021_ppa

71st International Retail Summit - full report

71st International Retail Summit website

Crespin

Evans

farinetti

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Hunter

Irminger

kodali

What: Erwan Rambourg, author of “The Bling Dynasty” (2014) and “Future Luxe” (2020), shared his view on the current state of the Luxury inudstry with a selected group of professionals, alumni of a French business school. This allowed to have an informal yet meaningful conversation on groups, customers and strategies.

Why it is important: Luxury brands are a significant part of many IADS members’ businesses and today, questions regarding the ability to keep on collaborating with these brands are raising. IADS attended the conference to learn more about this analyst’s expectations and views on the shifts taking place in the industry.

Erwan Rambourg is Managing Director and Global Head of Consumer and Retail Equity Research at HSBC, after having started his career in LVMH and Richemont brands. He has also been a guest lecturer in many institutions (HKUST, Columbia University), columnist (Business of Fashion, Jing Daily) and has written two books on luxury, The Bling Dynasty (2014), Future Luxe (2020).

The key learnings of this conference are:

• Even though luxury as an industry is doing well so far (as in every crisis), the picture is less homogeneous at the regional level, and the situation is different in China, Europe and the US, with different dynamics with different factors,
• Female customers are empowering themselves and represent, according to Rambourg, the growth reservoir for luxury brands in the coming 10 years, especially for jewellery, cosmetics, accessories, wines and spirits,
• The negotiating power will remain in the hands of the larger brands, which are poised to become even larger and powerful, while the other option for smaller brands is to be either super specialised and good at what they do (Moncler) or totally disruptive. Days are counted for mid-sized traditional houses. None will disappear, but they will end up being eaten up by groups,
• Stores remain central in the luxury experience, even more at a moment when so many new customers are making their first purchases now. As a consequence, there is no doubt that brick & mortar business will remain a key component of the luxury groups strategies as a whole, and they will use digital to increase adherence between brands and customers, to be visible in virtual territories, as well as to ease customers journeys, but at the same time, they keep on investing in boutiques to enhance the experience,
• CSR is long, painful, costly and luxury groups are not there yet, but are under pressure to adapt, and fast.

IADS - Erwan Rambourg HEC

What: The WRC London Summit was held on 14 September

Why it is important: The guest speakers and retailers reflected on the past months to better address the future. Talks were also about digital transformation and how to take advantage of it by converging both online and offline. A fair share of the day was dedicated to the urging question of sustainability.

•    Retail and the post pandemic global economy from the European point of view

•    Winning consumer loyalty in an age of digital transformation by converging online and offline while favoring creativity

•    The industry leader’s forum: what was at stake when Covid happened

•    Rediscovering the magic of retail by mixing the best of department stores and AR

•    Winning retail business models for a post-pandemic world

•    The sustainability opportunity

•    Google and Alibaba insights

World retail congress

What: The NRF NXT is a webinar series covering the future of digital retail.

Why it is important: This week’s topic covered the future of flagship stores in the new era of

retail and how technology is being leveraged to create lasting experiential memories.

NRF NXT Webinar

Watch the replay here

What: The Fashion Tech Breakfast presented 4 fashion tech start-ups in clientelling, connected garments, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality.

Why it is important: IADS is spotting innovation in fashion and making sure the right and interesting ideas are communicated to members.

Fashion Tech Breakfast: 5th Edition

What: A very dynamic, monthly conference to introduce 3 startups selected by The Forge and Bain in one hour.

Why it is important: IADS is spotting innovation and making sure the right and interesting ideas are communicated to members.

What: The online event evaluates the future of ‘buy now, pay later’ solutions.

Why is it important: The rise of ‘buy now, pay later’ services has changed how people shop online. Within a few years, these start-ups have gone from virtually unknown to an integral part of e-commerce, opening up the concepts of credit lines and instalment plans to millions of consumers.

Attendees: Cathaleen Chen, Correspondent at BoF, Albert Saniger, Founder & CEO at Nate, Nathan Romano, Co-Founder at Onia.

Moderator: Brian Baskin, Deputy Editor at BoF.

Nate is a universal shopping app which navigates websites in the same way humans do. It understands web code and decides where to click and what to fill out. Share an item with Nate from any website, and tap buy. Nate launched a BNPL solution on the app.

Onia is a swimwear company. Women from 20 to 35 year-old are using Klarna, the BNPL option offered on the website. Klarna is mostly used for purchases under USD 100. The company doesn’t push customers to pay with instalment plans and doesn’t advertise about them. For a retailer, Onia confirms BNPL solutions are more expensive than credit card solutions, but the process is seamless comparing to archaic bank process. Klarna services, reporting and dashboards are very clear and efficient compared to what banks and credit cards companies are offering.

BNPL to grow bigger 

While BNPL solutions will develop even more in the future and become a regular payment method, participants all agree that they won’t replace credit cards even though younger generations don’t want to own one anymore.

The payment solution is already everywhere online and will develop more and more in stores. Afterpay has a set a partnership with Simon Property Group to develop BNPL solutions in its malls and stores. For retailers, it will also be an opportunity to offer a new version of their store credit card.

Through department stores offering BNPL options, luxury is also made accessible to younger customers in an unprecedented way but luxury companies are still reluctant to offer such payment solutions even considering the business opportunity they represent. BNPL will develop more and more in the luxury area as company won’t have any other choice.

Fintechs have more ambitions than offering BNPL solutions. For instance, Klarna is now a real bank in Europe. It’s fair to ask what those companies will become in the future: new Visa companies or new JP Morgan or Chase banks? Banks have data but they don’t have the tech mindset to develop innovative solutions: while they merge with fintechs?

Regulation is coming

Klarna’s app is designed to attract younger customers (it’s pink, its gamified…). But teenagers and young customers don’t understand the late payment and the potential fees that might occur. In that sense, more regulation is coming to protect immature customers. More regulation will also come to protect privacy.

Payments will be all digitalised

The future of payment is digital with no more in-store cash registers needed in the future (payments going through sales associates phones and tablets. This will be an opportunity for retailers to rethink stores as it will save space to be used in a better way.

Business of Fashion offered a professional summit called "What's a Store For?" to understand the future of post-pandemic retail. As the pandemic is pushing retailers to think harder about the purpose of physical stores in today's world, the conference gave us a chance to hear from global experts and thought leaders on the new playbook for bricks-and-mortar retail.

NRF Retail Converge is a new virtual show that brings together retailers from a wide range of functional areas to be inspired by leaders, learn relevant and actionable insights from each other, and explore new and tested technologies. The IADS team attended a selection of events to report to the Association members.

The webinar included a 1 to 1 interview with Pippa Wicks, John Lewis, on her key learnings from the pandemic in terms of team management and human resources. There was also a presentation by Shimona Mehta, Director EMEA for Shopify.

IADS joined Printemps to discuss the new department store model with Accenture. The hour long presentation covers all the different department store models around the world their evolution over time.

GDSS 2021 website

What: A very dynamic, monthly conference to introduce in one hour 3 startups selected by The Forge and Bain.

Why it is important: IADS is spotting innovation and making sure the right and interesting ideas are communicated to members.

Why it is important: Passion is what unites leaders in that industry, and this should be communicated to the younger generations, as the retail career remains more exciting than ever, even when compared to other ones.

What: The half-day event offered advice, new perspectives and alternative models and strategies for the fashion and beauty industry facing up to the sustainability challenge.

Why it is important: Startups, investors and politicians joined in the dialogue to offer solutions and give innovative, outsider viewpoints and inspiration, rather than a platform for brands to promote their own initiatives.

What: With stores closed and tourists absent in key markets, the pandemic presented an opportunity to initiate relationships with local customers and strengthen digital ties with remote clients.

Why is it important: Attendees share how they’re continuing to cultivate these connections and discuss what ‘experiential’ luxury looks like in a post-Covid world.

What: BoF brought together a host of experts to break down how sales of tweets, memes and other digital

assets may change the possibilities for the fashion industry.

Why it is important: It is important for IADS members to understand the implications of this rapid changing

technology as it becomes ingrained in the fashion industry.

What: A very dynamic, monthly conference to introduce in one hour 3 startups selected by The Force and Bain.

Why it is important: IADS is spotting innovation and making sure the right and interesting ideas are communicated to members.

What: Journal du Luxe and Centric Software have organized a webinar to decipher the opportunities of Fashion Tech.

Why it is important: At a time of hyper-acceleration of digital uses, technology has never been so present in the luxury and fashion sector.

What: 2 days of conferences on the current state of business in a period where the end of the crisis is in sight, but not confirmed yet.

Why it is important: IADS attended 2 conferences related to topics of interest for its members:

What: FIRA organised a virtual gathering to get an update from markets

Why it is important: All presentations from various federations are available here, including the presentation made by IADS as a guest speaker

FIRA decided to organise a virtual meeting due to the impossibility to meet face to face in the current context, and the need to have an update on the evolution of the situation in each country.

• IADS presented its views of the current situation: fragmented, complex, requiring agility to adapt to a ‘permanent state of crisis’. Observing its members’ behaviour, IADS explained that there was a general trend towards organisational simplification, to adapt to new scenarios, leading to new ways to interact with customers (‘from stores networks to retailers ecosystems’), who are increasingly (and by necessity, local). This impacts several operational topics, such as sourcing, margin control and CSR.
• IDV ( Brazil) explained that, in spite of a challenging situation in the country, overall retail increased by +1.2%, lead by grocery, pharmacy and e-commerce. Retail is undergoing a transformation in the country thanks to an increased attention to “made in brazil” ecosystems development (led by retailers) and digital payment platforms (being deployed by the central bank). IDV believes that those 2 aspects will be key for Brazil’s recovery in the coming years.
• ESEE (Greece) gave a presentation on the state of small businesses in the country (which are overrepresented in the country compared to larger retailers). Overall, state support allowed such businesses to go through the crisis, and they are now looking at the domestic value chain due to a complexity at the global level. Retail decreased -3.9% in 2020, while e-commerce grew +25%. Retailers are in majority pessimistic about the impact of the crisis (88%) and it is estimated that 35% of businesses are now at risk (from 18% pre-crisis).
• Alibaba gave a keynote about the ecosystem of businesses and services it has built.
• NRF (USA) explained the supportive measures it brought to its members in the US  : lobbying actions, best practices conference calls, information and idea sharing.
• EHI (Germany) presented the difficulties and hurdles caused by the second lockdown which started in December 2020 and was still in place at the time of the meeting. They had to adapt their business model to provide blended formats of events to their members, precising that in-person meetings are needed in their economic model.
• RCC (Canada), which represents 74% of the retail industry in Canada, described the perceived disconnection between the federal and state/province practices and messages, leading to tension and frustration. RCC had to take on a lobbying role, which gave it visibility and credibility, and replaced in-person events by new partnerships and tools, such as studies co-developed with the Boston Consulting Group, more media-oriented actions and public presence. This led to a +17% membership growth and a +45% revenue growth for the RCC.
• Behv (Germany) introduced a study  co-developed with the Copenhaguen Economics, about the benefits and disadvantages of e-commerce. In Germany alone, e-commerce represents 1.2 million jobs. For every 100 new jobs in e-commerce, 66 are created in the supply chain. On average, large Germany companies sell between 19 and 21% of their total turnover online.

FIRA AM21 Meeting Minutes

Bevh Presentation (Germany) 

ESSE Presentation (greece)

IADS Presentation (France)

IDV Presentation (Brazil)

NRF Presentation (USA)

RCC Presentation (Canada)

What: Simon Sinek shares his ideas on leadership and the present day workplace.