What: Business of Fashion pulled together experts in sustainability and workers’ rights to dissect what steps the fashion industry needs to take towards these efforts.

Why it is important: As the fashion industry makes sustainability commitments they face a number of challenges that they must overcome to be able to reach their projected targets and goals on time.

BoF Professional Summit : Closing Fashion’s Sustainability Gap

What: Forge Retail and Bain & Company’s Forge Retail Showcase series features disruptors who are driving the next 5-10 years of innovation and change within store operations.

Why it is important: The companies and ideas presented showcase up-and-coming technologies that could have a big impact on the future of retail operations.

Forge Retail Showcase: retail operations

What: A presentation by Amazon Shipping on Next-day delivery: reacting fast for a successful future.

Why it is important: There is a big debate around how important speed of delivery is to online retailing. Opinions are divided, as speed is generally seen as expensive. Department stores are evaluating it currently.

Internet Retailing webinar

What: McKinsey “State of Grocery Retail 2021” online launch

Why it is important: understand the key trends that will shape the industry in 2021

McKinsey-State of grocery 2021

Grocery retailers are adopting new ways for growth

Full McKinsey Report

What: An online event organised by Vogue Business.

Why it is important: A number of senior experts come together to discuss omnichannel best practices and new market place models. The forum ends with a fireside discussion with the inspiring Ian Rogers.

Vogue Business and TikTok Technology Forum

What: HGA, an HR company specialized in transitional management and retail, organised a talk with two 2 prestigious guests from the retail world, Simon Susman, Honorary Chairman of Woolworth, and Erica Vilkaus, former CEO of LK Benett. IADS attended this exclusive, unrecorded conversation with 2 retail veterans exchanging their view of the current situation.

Why is it important for IADS members:  For Simon Susman, the key point for department stores’ resilience is the story told and sold. This is not to be taken lightly, as values and commitments embodied by retailers will prove essential to be identified as trustable by customers, who are hungry for meaning.

For Erica Vilkaus, digital transformation must focus on 2 essential retail points: supply chain and the role of the sales team, both to provide the best experience to customers and deliver it efficiently.

HGA Exclusive talks with S Susman and E Vilkaus 103021

What: A two-day online event organised by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce on “Retail’s New and Resilient Future”

Why it is important: A number of international retailers and experts come together for this event, normally held “in real life”.

Retail Summit online March 2021

IADS partners with Tranoï to offer to IADS members a VIP access to the digital edition of Paris Fashion Week’s Tranoï. It is specially designed to allow buyers from all around the world to discover a curated selection of new brands without having to travel.

During 3 days, 20 brands (fashion, accessories, jewellery) will present their FW21 collection online in live and replay, including Majestic Filatures, Faliero Sarti, Bettina Vermillon, Coralie Marabelle, Persée Paris, Mes Demoiselles, Goostetech, D’Estrée, 5 Octobre, Avant Toi, Valentine Gauthier, Salut Beauté, Stella Pardo, Atelier Paulin, Pellico, Co.Go, Alonpi, QL2, Alessandro Enriquez, La Couverture, Pheonia, Mouche, Arma, Quantum Courage.

In addition, during this event, The Business of Fashion will present its annual study in partnership with McKinsey & Company, Fashion Snoops will present the FW21 general fashion trends, and 2 designers will be interviewed in their atelier, Ginette NY (jewellery), Shen Yao (Fashion).

The event will be held from 5 to 7 March 2021.

You can register here:<https://link.alkeon.app/login>

IADS negotiated a VIP treatment for its members, just send an email to Mrs Marina Lyritzi from Tranoï ([Marina.LYRITZI@tranoi.com](mailto:Marina.LYRITZI@tranoi.com)) who will be your dedicated contact.

Presentation Tranoi link 2021

Schedule

Tranoï link 2021 - schedule

What: A presentation by German data company Statista on how the nature of data, and how it is used, changed with covid.

Why it is important: One of the changes due the covid pandemic has been the situation of uncertainty in which businesses have to operate. They can no longer rely on being able to use data as they used to. They need different sources, different data, and they need it quickly and more frequently.

presentation - Statista webinar 2021

iads takeaways - Statista webinar 2021

• Circularity digital talk

Première Vision Paris trade fair is hosting a series of digital talks from 15 to 19 February 2021.

What: a talk about "Circularity – Vision and reality in the fashion industry"

Why it is important: the talk has offered a perspective on several initiatives taken by industrial textile companies as well as brands (please be informed it includes some sponsored content)

IADS takeaways - Première Vision: Cirularity digital talk

• Sourcing changes in 2020 and beyond

According to a presentation made at the recent Premiere Vision conference in Paris, research conducted by the IFM, the French fashion institute, backed up by information by the WTO, China is still key in terms of its share of the global textile market. However, it has been investing heavily in neighbouring countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia, helping them to take on a greater production role.

IADS takeaways - première vision: Sourcing changes in 2020 and beyond

French Ready-to-Wear federation conducted a video conference on 3rd February 2021 on digital wholesale (how to sell, how to buy, without being able to visit showrooms and meet people). Primarily intended for brands, there are some interesting learnings for IADS members too.

What

The French Federation of RTW (different from the French Federation of Fashion and Couture) helps its brand members by providing actionable information to adapt to the new market conditions. They organised a video seminar with a buyer, a fair and a virtual showroom to explain how the commercial job has changed.

Why is it important for IADS members

So far (and this is also validated by what we read in the press), the technological solutions helping buyers are solely focusing on placing orders (by proposing “super-Excel” solutions) but are not helping to discover new brands nor build relationships with brands. We believe at IADS that:

-    The future will not be 100% digital as the commercial relationship is key,

-    However digital is here to stay (more efficient and helps to save on costs),

-    It needs to be fine-tuned to the actual needs of multibrand buyers, instead of focusing on brands needs.

We provide for our members in addition to this recap a benchmark of buying platforms and discovery tools, to know what is available on the market now.

iads Report – What to learn from Digital Wholesale 

Wholesale videoconference - Watch the talk in video (in French):

Presentation - Benchmark: the platforms B2B digitals

What: The first in-person FIRA gathering after two years of videoconferencing.

Why it is important: Although not all members were present, it was a first glimpse of a return to normality, as well as the opportunity for IADS to meet other federations, including the IGDS which joined the FIRA back after several years of not being a member.

After almost two years of impossibility to meet due to travel restrictions, a part of FIRA Members were finally able to gather in New York on the day prior to the NRF Big Show opening. It was a good way to meet, often for the first time, other FIRA members. Also, this meeting was the opportunity for the IADS GM to finally meet the IGDS GM, as the Intercontinental Group of Department Stores joined again the FIRA this year, after having left the organisation a few years ago.

15 members were present, and 2 guest speakers were invited to share their views on retail trends and opportunities.

• In his introduction remarks, FIRA Chairman Jacques Creyssel shared his 4 topics of concerns: the long-term consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, the digitalisation of commerce and its implications, the sustainability topic and impact on margins, and the potential effects of a long-lasting inflation.
• GDR CEO Kate Anquetil exposed the 5 retail trends she sees for 2022: “come to me retail”, the store as an extension of the smartphone, “meta-vending”, sustainability and the Metaverse, which she sees as a third sales channel,
• Kearney shared the conclusions of their annual Global Retail Development Index, showing that for international retailers, Africa is probably the most promising market now.
• The NRF VP of CSR and Sustainability shared provocative thoughts on sustainability and the fact that no one really know what is encompasses. He came up with an interesting definition: sustainability is all about “creating net positive, environmental, social and community benefits”.
• Finally, the FDC (French Federation du Commerce) shared the result of their collaboration with the French government into trying to make retail jobs more glamorous, by providing more information to employees and employers through new dedicated online platforms.

Full Report FIRA Meeting Jan 2022 NY

The 2021 Global Retail Development Index™ - Kearney

Fira Jan 22 meeting participant list

Top 3 Priorities in retail worldwide by Jacques Creyssel

Global Retail Development Index by Mike Brown

Sustainability in retail by Scot Case

Last week, IADS picked out sessions from the NRF Chapter One online conferences:

• “Making sense of the aftermath of uncertainty” by WGSN’s Andrea Bell.

NRF 2021 WGSN - IADS Takeaways

• “Brand awareness to brand love: Ulta advances next-gen personalisation and loyalty” addressed by Kelly Mahoney from Ulta Beauty.

NRF 2021 Ulta - IADS Takeaways

• “Remapping the customer experience: a reinvention imperative” addressed by companies Verizon (Krista Bourne) and Suitsupply (Fokke de Jong)

NRF 2021 Verizon Suitsupply - IADS Takeaways

• “How sustainability is changing the retail landscape” addressed by the US sustainability managers of H&M, Abigail Kammerzell, and of Ikea, Jennifer Keeson.

NRF 2021 H&M / IKEA - IADS Takeaways

• “Retail’s rethink moment: Reimagining business as UNusual with Saks Fifth Avenue and lululemon” At the NRF Chapter One online conference, the CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue, Mark Metrick, and the president of global guest innovation of Lululemon, Celeste Burgoyne.

NRF 2021 Saks - IADS Takeaways

• “Retail’s hard reset: how cataclysmic events accelerate trends, transformation and innovation”  GDR gave a presentation by Kate Ancketill.

NRF 2021 GDR - IADS Takeaways

NRF 2021 GDR Presentation 

GDR’S KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM NRF 2021

Author: Doug Stephens

What: The latest book from Doug Stephens, written in the midst of the pandemic, in which he reviews and addresses the pandemic-induced changes in retail to anticipate the future of the industry.

Why it is important:  It is not all about Amazon or Ali Baba in the future, and other retailers have a word to say as long as they are able to define properly their purpose, a topic that is unfairly associated to unnecessary marketing, when it is actually crucial to define each retailer’s point of differentiation.

Book review Resurrecting Retail 2021

Buy it on Amazon here: link

What: the annual gathering of Business of Fashion to discuss the results of their 340+ brands survey.

Why it is important:  In-person retail is far from being dead, but stores are now an element of the brands’ media mix, which emphasizes the notion of community.

Business of Fashion gathered futurist Doug Stephens, Farfetch José Neves, Ali baba Group president Michael Evans, among others, to discuss the future of retail. From a brands’ perspective, Stephens mentions that their only way to counteract what he calls Apex predators (Amazon, Ali Baba…) is to make sure they have a clear purpose, in other words, the question of the brand alone is the ultimate answer for a consumer. This is also valid for department stores and will be a topic for one of our Cross Function meetings this year.

Another point of discussion was the notion of last-mile: the convenience of delivery is not a factor of loyalty. Retailers have to rethink this important moment in the customer journey to ensure the last mile also conveys the experience they would have had in store.

VOICES 2020: Retail in the Roaring ’20s

FIRA organised on 14 October 2020 its first mid-year meeting in full video-conference format, from 2pm to 4 pm Paris time, in a very similar manner with what we did at IADS for the General Assembly on 29 and 30 October 2020. 29 delegates from across the world were attending the Zoom event, to hear and listen to FIRA delegates as well as outside speakers from Visa, Kantar and McKinsey.

Although the event, by definition, was mainly centred on FMCG goods, it helped to have a global understanding of the situation worldwide.

full report: FIRA mid-year meeting 2020

To go further:

McKinsey & Company: The Great Consumer Disruption

Kantar: How COVID-19 is transforming FMCG and retail around the world

At the recent World Retail Congress (connected), after a series of speakers and panels on a diverse range of issues, a number of awards were made by international juries. Among the notable ones were:

• Stuffstr, a sustainability business in re-commerce which allows retailers to develop their post-sale life of goods. It has been applied at Adidas and at John Lewis where customers used it to sell back approximately 20% of everything they had purchased at the store over the last five years.
• SM SuperKids Day at the Mall of Asia was rewarded as the best customer experience in malls. It was a series of events involving bowling, skating, music and more which kicked off Kids Month at SM in the Philippines.
• The Retailer of the Year Award which was based on a specially expanded set of criteria to take into account the covid crisis. Exceptionally this year, it was given to two retailers: Alibaba and Walmart. In his acceptance speech, the Alibaba president made clear that Alibaba was not, strictly speaking, a retailer, but rather a business which enables brands to connect with customers.

Presentations can be seen on the WRC website 

Retail is currently living through extraordinary times which have had a major impact on its traditional ways, on its context, on its customers and its employees. Some of the most striking elements of this disruption:

• Cities are being reconceptualised in terms of traffic, pollution, services, travel, and experiences in general, in such a way that the department store, which has traditionally been such a constituent part of the city, will have to rethink its role.
• One of the changes in the city is an interest in the local. That is, for retailers, as well as other services, to focus in more detail on local customers through their assortment and their services.
• Technology will play a part in this and, although technology was a major topic in many areas before the pandemic, covid has focused on specific things such as payment, delivery and communication, as well as the possibility of enhancing sustainability.
• However, it is also clear that we cannot rely entirely on technology to shield us from the unexpected. In this sense, there are lessons to be learnt from the covid pandemic about how to cope and react to other types of risk, such as those related to weather, cybersecurity of other biological disruptions. Risk management needs to become a more integral part of our businesses, together with flexibility and reactivity.
• This aspect of running our businesses emphasises the importance of leadership and management, and the ability to deal with new forms of work, of shopping, and of caution and fragility among our customers.

70th International Retail Summit - full report

70th International Retail Summit website

Bring the future into focus

![2020 CONF NRF, NYC

click here for nrf 2020 recap

Nordstrom: the success lies in balance

![Nordstrom: success lies in balance

Nordstrom Group co-president Erik Nordstrom gave an interview at NRF on how success in today’s highly competitive selling environment lies in balance. [read interview below]

read interview: Nordstrom: success lies in balance 

Author: Richard Baldwin & Beatrice Weder di Mauro

Publisher: CEPR Press

![Economics in the time of COVID-19

Comments: *This is an e-book published as a quick response to the coronavirus epidemic by the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research (cepr.org). This is a network of 1300 researchers in economics from major institutions in Europe, formed since 1983 into a “think.net”.

The book consists of 14 chapters on a range of different issues from regional impacts to the lessons from past outbreaks as well as the effects of trade and travel, monetary policy, banks and finance.*

For example, it discusses the central role of China as “the workshop of the world” in textiles as well as Italy in Europe and the US in the Americas, and “supply-side contagion” via international supply chains. This represents a danger of permanent damage to the current trade system, leading to a potential push to repatriate supply chains.

However the epidemic plays out in time, it is clear that the effects will be felt in many areas across the world and that economics may have to adjust as a consequence.

Download the e-book for free below

e-book: Economics in the time of COVID-19

Author: Vikram Mansharamani

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Comments: *Vikram Mansharamani treads a very delicate line in this book: he argues that we have perhaps come too far in relying on experts, protocols and computer-based systems, and that we have outsourced our own thinking. He advocates re-appropriating our autonomy by learning once again to think for ourselves. The problem, for him, is that our complex data-filled world has forced us to rely increasingly on those with certain skills in sometimes very narrow areas.

There is no doubt that this is a most topical theme. The recent covid-19 pandemic has generated a great deal of interpretation and advice by experts on the origins, spread and cures for the disease. These are often complex and difficult to understand by the layperson.

Which is partly why the pandemic has also generated in parallel an astonishing array of popular theories including 5G, and the wrath of God, to explain its origins, as well as self-injection with disinfectant, and untested drug cocktails to cure the condition.

The recent rise in populism across different nations was often based to a large extent on a rejection of expertise which, it was argued, had not come up with satisfactory solutions to very real problems. This argument has been made in relation to business, to economics, to politics and others.

The answer is of course an integration of human judgement and intelligence with the information sources we cannot all possibly hope to master, in such a way that we can harness the value they provide without undermining our ability to think for ourselves, and without therefore relinquishing our autonomy.

Atul Gawande in his “Checklist Manifesto” argued for simple tools (such as a checklist) to be used in certain situations to help pilots or surgeons improve their daily practice.

The “bounded rationality” of Nobel laureate Herbert Simon can be shifted from “good enough” to better if we learn how to integrate systems into our decisions. Similarly, Gerd Gigerenzer argues that decision making under conditions of uncertainty relies on “smart heuristics” or rules of thumb which is not arbitrary but rather a very human kind of expertise.

It is certainly the case that outsourcing our thinking is not only an abdication but also can be dangerous. Outsourcing expertise, on the other hand, reinforces the role of the intelligent generalist, which Mansharamani has argued elsewhere is the real skill for the future.*

article: harvard lecture - think for yourself

the beatles - think for yourself

Author: Leonard A. Lauder

Publisher: Harper Business

Comments: *In his memoir published last month, Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies Leonard A. Lauder – whom many IADS CEOs have met or indeed personally know - recounts the story of his mother’s eponymous business founded in 1946 and its transformation through his own vision and impetus into a powerful international beauty company and a beloved iconic brand. Through many stories of personal adventures and business endeavours, Mr Lauder shares the life and business lessons he learned along the way, which may well find a new resonance in today’s troubled times.

The company is currently chaired by his son, William Lauder; and other members of the family are involved in the business.*

Author: Margaret Heffernan

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Comments: *In this book, Margaret Heffernan turns her attention to a topic that absorbs most business leaders, and the rest of us too: how to think about what the future holds.

Gazing into the future is not fruitless, she argues, but it is unnerving and hard work. Lazy and fearful, we are far too quick to reach for overblown gurus, or misleading data or other useless guides. Even a good tool, such as GPS, can dull our senses.*

*Echoing the spirit of the last book reviewed on this site (Think for Yourself), Heffernan emphasises that the importance of forecasting is not whether forecasters get it right or not, but rather what they provoke in others. If they are good, then they provoke independent thinking in others.

“What matters most isn’t the predictions themselves but how we respond to them, and whether we respond to them at all,” she writes. “The forecast that stupefies isn’t helpful, but the one that provides fresh thinking can be.”*

Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to friendships, this book challenges us to resist the false promises of technology and efficiency and instead to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.

Author: John Kay and Mervyn King

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Comments: In an extraordinarily prescient book, the well-known economist from Oxford and the ex-governor of the Bank of England teamed up to publish this book in March 2020, just as the covid pandemic was getting a grip. Some uncertainties, they argue, are resolvable. The insurance industry’s actuarial tables and the gambler’s roulette wheel both yield to the tools of probability theory. Many situations in life, however, involve a deeper kind of uncertainty, a radical uncertainty for which guidance tools are lacking. Radical uncertainty concerns events whose determinants are insufficiently understood for probabilities to be known or forecasting possible.

The authors’ target is the standard approach to uncertainty in economics and related disciplines, which requires a comprehensive list of possible outcomes with well-defined numerical probabilities attached. This is an impoverished and, at times even fraudulent, approach to decision-making, they argue. Apart from stable and repeated situations, probabilities do not exist; or they and their possible outcomes are unknowable; or all the above at once. All that probabilistic analysis does in other cases — usually where good decision-making matters most — is, at best, give a false sense of precision.

Just at the moment when we are all wrestling with the uncertainty of a world beset by a virus epidemic, in which we can not even predict when our stores will open, let alone what the future of work will look like and whether any recognisable consumption patterns will remain, we need an alternative to classical risk management tools such as those in use at insurance companies. We need something resembling much more closely what Gerd Gigerenzer at the Max Planck Institut in Berlin has called “heuristics”. He argues that when the risks, consequences and alternatives are known, we may safely use expected utility theory. In a situation of uncertainty however, we should use heuristics.

Although Kay and King’s alternative to probability models seems to be, roughly, experienced judgment informed by credible and consistent “narratives” in a collaborative process, Gigerenzer’s heuristics offers a far more practical and usable alternative.

See Gerd Gigerenzer videos of TED talks:

• How do smart people make smart decisions? | Gerd Gigerenzer | TEDxNorrköping
• Risk literacy: Gerd Gigerenzer at TEDxZurich