Footfall in airports are not expected to recover before 2023. In spite of a flight activity in China recovering faster than in the rest of the world, back to 70%, making Chinese customers the most appealing ones, spending 5 times more than Koreans and Russians, revenue in airports has fallen by -48% , leading duty-free operators to sustain a recession. This is the reason why Swiss-based Dufry is aiming to save CHF1bn in cost cuts this year, by buying back subsidiaries and rationalizing activities.

Duty-Free operators are rationalizing operations to face upcoming challenges

Kohl’s is reportedly giving Amazon grocery store, probably its new banner called Fresh, a space in a its La Verne store, California. The proposed store would share building space with an existing Kohl’s; grocery being separated by a wall connecting to the existing Kohl’s next door. For a few years now, Kohl's has been reducing selling space and teaming up with grocery brands (ex. Aldi) or fitness club to increase traffic to Kohl's stores and to make smaller, more operationally efficient stores.

Through this project the department store extends its partnership with the ecommerce giant, as it is accepting Amazon Returns instore nationwide.

Kohl's to Help Amazon Grow Grocery Footprint

The 118 years old American struggling retailer, operating 850 locations for a turnover of $10.7bn, avoided total liquidation by  selling its retail business to mall operators, valorising the company at $1.75bn and saving 70k jobs out of 85 in total.

Bankrupt J.C. Penney Is Bought by Mall Operators in Need of Tenants

Walmart is simplifying its digital structure, focalising its approach to markets and divesting from former acquisitions, by letting go the Shoes.com footwear website as well as Bare Necessities lingerie brand. The reason: focus 100% of its efforts on its own Walmart e-commerce activity.

Walmart sells two more e-commerce brands in a digital reshuffle

Macy’s has announced that it will stage a pared down version of its almost one-hundred-year-old Thanksgiving parade this year because of the covid pandemic. This year’s event will be staged over two days, the overall number of participants will be reduced by 75% and all participants will observe social distancing. The traditional 2.5 mile route will not be part of this year’s event and the massive balloons will be tied to specially rigged anchor vehicles without the traditional 80-100 handlers.

According the the New York mayor, Macy’s "is reinventing the event for this moment in history. And you will be able to feel the spirit and the joy of that day on television, online — not a live parade, but something that will really give us that warmth and that great feeling we have on Thanksgiving Day."

CEO Ewan Venters has left luxury department store Fortnum & Mason to manage an art gallery, after 8 years at his position. His previous companies include Sainsbury’s & Selfridges.

Fortnum & Mason CEO Ewan Venters to step down

Travel-retail specialist DFS, owned by LVMH, has appointed Benjamin Vuchot as its new CEO. Vuchot previously overviewed Asian development at Sephora, after having held various positions at Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, always in Asia. DFS posted a turnover of €4,01bn in 2019, and belongs to LVMH’s selective retailing division, which posted a loss of 32% on the fist semester of 2020, to €4,84bn.

DFS is managing the Samaritaine department store, which is set to reopen in Paris early 2021.

LVMH’s DFS Group Names Benjamin Vuchot Chairman, CEO

Related item:

• Louis Vuitton fashion show staged in La Samaritaine

Mall of America (Minnesota, US), the second biggest mall in the US, has announced an initiative to support local businesses hit with pandemic and recent riots in Minneapolis and St Paul, by opening starting on 1st of October a dedicated space called Community Commons. 17 businesses will be allowed to operate in this 500sqm space until Spring 21 rent-free, in a gesture to help local business but also lure customers in the mall as the traffic has been seriously decreasing post pandemic. It is from our point of view at IADS another example of the stores’ own reappropriation of their local urban role in city life, as illustrated in Paris by a similar approach at Monoprix.

MOA, with a gross area of 452.000 sqm, boasted pre-pandemic 40m visitors and employed 11.000 staff. After a closure of 12 weeks in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, it had to delay even further its reopening initially scheduled 1st June due to the civil unrest in both Minneapolis & St Paul.

MOA Opens Space for Retailers Hit Hard by Tumultuous Year

Mall Of America Extends A Hand Of Unity To Challenged Local Retailers

Starting 1st of October, GKK will gather around CEO Miguel Müllenbach and CFO Guido Mager a new team, composed of Mr. Engelbert Thulfaut, formerly from Peek & Cloppenburg, in charge of Brands and Branches management, Mr. Dirk Lessing as COO (formerly member of the board of Takkt AG), Mr. Andreas Hink as the head of  digital (formerly at Globus) and Ms. Karin Busnel-Knappertsbusch as head of category management (formerly at Manor).

GKK stärkt Chefetage mit hochkarätigem Management-Quartett

Update 30 September 2020: Rene Benko's real estate and retail group Signa is sticking to its megaproject "KaDeWe Vienna" despite the corona-related crisis in the city hotel industry and consumer reticence, but the conversion of the current Leiner flagship on Vienna's Mariahilfer Strasse into a department shop à la "Kaufhaus des Westens" will take a year longer than originally planned. The opening is scheduled for autumn 2024, said Signa managing director Christoph Stadlhuber on Thursday.

16 October 2019: Berlin-based department store KaDeWe is set to launch a new outpost in the Museumsquartier section of Vienna. Designed by OMA architecture firm, the project will comprise two volumes: a retail space and a hotel. The store should gather 30 000sqm of selling space while the hotel will house 150 rooms. Public gardens will stretch across the rooftops with a diverse layout of spaces, from tree gardens to sundecks that frame unprecedented urban views. Construction work should start first semester 2021 and be completed by fall 2023.

Start-up incubator Lafayette Plug and Play has unveiled its 9th promotion. This new year will focus on five key retail innovation challenges:

• New Distribution Channels
• Smart Content at Scale
• Circularity and Ethical Commerce
• E-commerce Boosters
• Seamless Checkout

The incubator is also launching a third course dubbed “the International Early Track” that is fully digital. This new session will end on 3 December.

See on the press release below the 19 start-ups selected for the programme.

Lafayette Plug and Play first batch of start-ups amid the “new normal”

The oldest chain of American department store, opened in 1826, is closing the doors of its 38 stores, after a series of attempts to revive the chain, the oldest being the acquisition by Le Tote in 2019, which tried to revamp it through dedicated popups.

Lord & Taylor is closing all of its stores after 194 years in business

Falabella will create a new and single e-commerce and marketplace platform to lead regional retail under the brand name falabella.com. The new platform will concentrate the entire Falabella Retail, Sodimac, Tottus and Linio offer, along with the products of thousands of sellers. This new platform will initially include more than 7 million products from 10,000 sellers. The products will correspond to categories such as home, deco, fashion, sports, health, supermarket, electronics, technology, books and products from the international marketplace. Benoit de Grave, current CEO of Linio, will lead falabella.com reporting directly to Gaston Bottazzini.

Falabella will create a new and single e-commerce and marketplace platform

Prada hosted the "Shaping a Sustainable Multilateralism" conference, a discussion on international relationships in favour of the environment, promoted by newly formed private organization the Soft Power Club. Formed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Soft Power Club goal is to “stimulate diplomacy at a cultural level and multilateral relations between the public and private sectors to encourage social progress.”

The event was part of Prada’s “Shaping a Future” conferences. The group has been promoting sustainable goals for a few years now, signing the Fashion Pact for instance, and more recently partnering with UNESCO on an education program worldwide to “raise awareness of, and promote, more responsible behavior toward the oceans.”

Sustainability a Focus at Conference at Fondazione Prada in Venice 

Related item:

• Sustainability engagements at Galeries Lafayette

According to the new CEO of South African Woolworths Holdings, parent of the Australian David Jones department store group, the department store chain is “overstored”. Plans are being accelerated to shrink the network by around 20% as losses deepen in the covid crisis. Roy Bagattini, who came from Levi’s and recently took over from Ian Moir in South Africa, said that as many as 10 stores could close. In the last year, sales at David Jones fell 6.4% to A$ 2.06 bn, with an operating loss of A$ 33 m after last year’s profit of $ 37 m. Unlike other stores, David Jones chose to trade through the lockdowns in March and April. Roy Bagattini commented on the challenging retail environment in general and in Australia in particular, but affirmed his belief in future of the department store concept as long as it remained relevant and offered a retail experience.

Online sales doubled for the year and account for 14.2% of David Jones total sales.

Woolworths' Australian fashion stablemate Country Road Group (CRG), which includes the brands Country Road, Trenery, Witchery, Mimco and Politix, fared slightly better than the department stores, with its operating profit staying in the black at A$ 40 m, though that was still down 60% on last year.

With travels still on hold and the lack of tourists, the French department store group is focusing on its local clientele for the upcoming Christmas season. In the Vogue Business article below, Chief Marketing Officer Guillaume Gellusseau talks about winter campaigns, digital development, pop-ups, collaboration and safety measures, all with a single idea in mind: seduce the French customers for the holiday season.

Galeries Lafayette are courting French customers for Christmas

According to The Times and Retail Gazette, Debenhams of the UK is again considering the sale of Magasin du Nord in Denmark. Debenhams has owned Magasin since 2009 and there have been reports of a sale before. The auction is currently being handled by investment bank Lazard and law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. The Times report suggests that any proceeds from the sale, which is estimated at between £ 150 m and £ 200 m, would go straight to Celine, the consortium of hedge funds that owns Debenhams rather than to the UK department store which is under administration. Magasin’s stores are generally agreed to be trading ahead of expectations. Debenhams, which currently trades from 124 stores in the UK and 45 sites across 17 countries, has been the subject of speculation about takeovers. But nothing specific has yet been confirmed.

John Lewis has opened its Christmas shop in the Oxford Street location this week, and is rolling over in the rest of the stores from 25th of September until the 5th of October. More than opening date (earlier than before), or the number of Christmas trees showcased in the "Christmas Forest", the most interesting innovation is a 360° visit of the floor with the possibility to buy a selection of products. The visit is accessible here. Acknowledging that Christmas might feel different to UK customers this year, the retailer decided to transfer the experience online in the hope to boost sales of gifts and Christmas decoration.

It feels at the same time odd and comforting to navigate in an empty store with a google street-like way of hovering in the various aisles. The department store is reproduced at the finest detail possible, and allows to immerge oneself into the visit. The limited and guided choices of what is available for purchase feels however somehow frustrating, as well as the fact that a click on said products gets you out of the page to land on a standard e-commerce feature.

John Lewis & Partners launches Christmas Shop including first ever virtual shop tour

Singtel, the largest mobile network operator in Singapore (4.1m subscribers) has launched its “Unboxed” popup, aiming to promote the benefits of 5G. Available 24/7, Unboxed shows that 5G, with its ultra fast speed and low latency, considerably enhances the self-serve retail experience, in addition to IoT, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Concretely, this translates into a roving live robot with personalized recommendations, staff interaction on the go via machines and purchase of services directly transferred into the cell phone or its plan. The visit is also available online for customers concerned by safety. Unboxed popup has been awarded The Most Outstanding Store Design at the World Retail Awards, during the virtual WRC this month.

pr: Singtel switches on 5G at its unmanned pop-up retail store

The 5G Unmanned Store That Won Outstanding Store Design For The Post-Pandemic World

The “Paris Good Fashion” association launches a national public consultation on responsible fashion. The aim is “to explore ideas about how to help the community do better with sustainability.” Participating brands include Galeries Lafayette, La Redoute, Petit Bateau, Vestiaire Collective, Who’s Next, Eram and Etam among others.The consultation period runs from 3 September to 25 October; conclusions will be presented to the French Ministry for the Ecological Transition and to the Paris city council in December.

French Fashion Players Ask Consumers for Help With Sustainability

Related items:

• Sustainability engagements at Galeries Lafayette
• Focus on sustainability at Fondazione Prada

Update - 25 September 2020:

Neiman Marcus Group Completes Chapter 11 Process; Emerges with Strengthened Capital Structure

21 September 2020:

The Covid-crisis accelerated the difficulties of Neiman Marcus, who was posting a loss of US $ 31,2m in July 2019, an increase of +56% on the previous year. After having closed  its first NY city store, just opened in 2019, and gone through a bankruptcy process, the iconic Department Stores is planning its comeback based on rebuilding relationships. Relationships with suppliers, first, some of whom lost money in the process. Relationship with customers, either with the existing ones with the digital channels, or the new ones, as Millennials and GenZ are crucial for its future.

Out of bankruptcy, Neiman Marcus plans a comeback

However, Neiman Marcus rebirth comes with casualties as the group announced job cuts among stores associates, both at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores. The strategy is to become a luxury customer platform, focusing on service, and CEO of the Neiman Marcus Group Geoffroy van Raemdonck said: "As we reorganize, we will separate from a number of selling and non-selling associates. While we are reducing headcount, we are transforming the functions of our store associates and focusing on best-in-class luxury client experiences."

Neiman Marcus Group Reducing Headcount in Stores and Restaurants

Retailers are testing new initiatives to support their sustainability strategy. Selfridges has unveiled this summer the Fragrance Workshop in London, where all participating brands (Guerlain, Gucci, Tom Ford, Killian, Le Labo and others) sell refillable bottles. Each brands sets the price of the refill product. Selfridges is also exploring this idea in beauty and makeup products, and in Germany, Nivea is rolling out a similar initiative with shower gel at German retail chain DM.

selfridges launches refillable fragrance bar

nivea launches first shower gel refill station

LVMH’s Louis Vuitton will present its next collection inside the not-yet-opened luxury department store La Samaritaine. Schedule on 6 October, it will be last physical show in Paris Fashion Week. Designer Nicholas Ghesquière will stage his show on the top floor of the complex, underneath a giant glass dome that casts light into a massive interior atrium. Due to social distancing restrictions, the designer will host two shows.

The luxury project La Samaritaine -which includes a department store, a luxury hotel, a hi-tech office space and even public housing- has been in the works for over 15 years and will open early next year (opening has been pushed back due to the pandemic).

Related Item:

DFS Has a New CEO

The John Lewis Partnership of the UK recently announced unaudited half-year results until 25 July 2020. The tone of the announcement was upbeat with a profit figure (loss) equivalent to last year, total trading sales up 1%, a healthy liquidity and a reduction in debt.

However, while Waitrose supermarket sales were up almost 10%, partly due to an impressive online growth to around £ 1 bn on an annualised basis, the results at the department stores were more difficult. Overall sales were down almost 10% in spite of online growth of 73%.

The group is currently undergoing major realignment with a new Board and Chairman.

See press release, presentation slides and audio recording below

press release

Presentation

audit