British retailer Debenhams will start reopening stores next week, with first its three Northern Ireland locations. It is reported that by 15 June it should open 50 more shops. However, the London's Oxford Street flagship isn't on the list of stores to open on day one. The stores in Scotland and Wales will remain closed until the governments there allow them to open.

Like its peers across the retail sector, the company will have strict social distancing and hygiene measures in place in line with the latest government guidance.

Steven Cook, managing director of Debenhams, said: "We are delighted to be welcoming customers back to our stores in the coming weeks. From the installation of perspex screens at till points to the roll-out of social distancing procedures and PPE, we have been working hard to ensure our colleagues and customers can work and shop with confidence. Our reopening plans follow the successful conclusion of lease negotiations on 120 stores, meaning that the vast majority of our stores will be reopening."

Debenhams collapsed into administration for the second time in a year in April after coronavirus ramped up the pressures facing the business. It has also been cutting jobs at its head office and closing the majority of its store cafes in a bid to cut costs and become a leaner business. A total of 4,000 jobs will be lost as a result of these changes, as well as the 17 store closures.

press release: Debenhams to reopen UK stores from next week

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Top executive Stephan Fanderl is leaving department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, which will have to find a new CEO to manage the urgent restructuring. Fanderl has been at the head of Karstadt since 2014 and in 2018 he also took charge of the new group created by the merger with Galeria Kaufhof. He may be succeeded ad interim by financial director Miguel Müllenbach.

Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof is currently struggling for its survival and received legal protection. A restructuring plan is to be submitted by the end of June. It could be a particularly difficult operation, possibly involving the closure of 80 of the 170 German branches and the loss of some 5 000 jobs.

The restructuring plans would have little impact on the Belgian subsidiary of the merger group, Galeria Inno. The chain, which still has 16 branches, is doing well and is currently working on a recovery plan, declared CEO Armin Devender recently.

Ikea is in talks over returning money to all nine countries that gave the world's largest furniture retailer government support through furlough schemes as it has suffered less than expected from the Covid-19 crisis. Shoppers have returned in force, starting in China. Having entered lockdown before the rest of the world, Chinese consumers also emerged from it earlier— and plenty of them immediately hit Ikea shops. Many bought big and expensive items, says Jesper Brodin, chief executive of Ingka Group, the parent company that holds and operates most Ikea shops involved "an e!ort in crowd control". In Germany, Austria and Switzerland customers thronged to Ikea once its shops were allowed to open.

Ikea's online-shopping figures tell the same story. Internet sales were growing fast before the pandemic, by 43% last year compared with 2018, to 10-11% of total sales. In the past couple of months they jumped to 60% of all sales on peak days of the lockdown across the group. In America, where the furniture giant is planning to start reopening its 50 shops in June, Ikea started to bring back its furloughed workers to look after online orders and provide customer service.

Tolga Oncu, retail operations manager at Ingka Group, the main Ikea retailer, said the company had decided to start a dialogue with Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain and the US. Ikea is in early discussions with the relevant national authorities. Because of differences in how the furlough or short-time working schemes are set up, the company does not yet know how it will pay the governments back.

Mr Oncu said the flat-pack retailer also did not know how much money it would cost or exactly how many workers were involved across the nine countries.

Ikea's decision to return the money lays bare a dilemma for many companies as economies start to recover after the immediate shock following lockdowns from coronavirus across much of the world.

Some other companies have returned furlough money in individual countries, often under pressure from external scrutiny, but few large multinational companies have committed to returning all support.

Mr Oncu said Ikea's priority at the beginning of the crisis in February and March had been to protect employees and their livelihoods as it closed down most of its 374 stores worldwide.

Ikea has also set up a €26m fund for Ikea store leaders to distribute in their local communities. This is on top of looking at improving both remote solutions for its workers and customers as it boosts its digital offering.

Read full articles below

Ikea in talks with governments over returning furlough money

The boss of Ikea on dealing with the fallout of the covid crisis

The new SKP-S store -an experiential, one-of-a-kind environment opened in December 2019- is considered a benchmark in forward-thinking retail by Retail Leisure News. The store offers immersive experiences and also serves as an incubator for global brands.

SKP-s review

The world's largest retailer Walmart aims to add 1,200 Shopify sellers this year, executive Jeff Clementz said in an interview. The company's marketplace site, which already offers more than 75 million products, grew at a faster pace than Walmart's overall web business in the first quarter, and third-party sales are typically more profitable as the sellers pay a fee to list items and often shoulder the delivery costs. The collaboration is Walmart's latest attempt to expand the scale and profitability of its $21.5 billion US e-commerce business, which is gaining ground on market leader Amazon.com Inc. In recent years, Walmart has rolled out a fulfillment service for third-party sellers, allowing customers to return marketplace items in its physical stores and throwing away millions of third-party items that didn't meet quality standards. For Shopify, the deal provides its network of millions of merchants access to Walmart's customers, and follows a linkup with Facebook Inc. that allowed retailers to import Shopify product catalogs to the social-media giant's new Shops service.

Walmart partners with Shopify for expansion

How CEOs can win the fight and transform to win the future

As countries lift lock-downs, CEOs face an unprecedented challenge. They must manage two efforts on different time horizons: competing in the prevaccine pandemic environment over the next 12 to 24 months and repositioning their company to thrive in the post-pandemic world.

To succeed, CEOs should focus on five priorities now:

• Define the agenda and select the team
• Mobilize and protect people
• Win the fight
• Transform to win the future
• Accelerate digital

Download the full BCG report

full BCG report: How CEOs can win the fight and transform to win the future

The Dallas-based Neiman Marcus Group, which closed all 43 of its stores in mid-March (plus two Bergdorf Goodman stores), has re-opened two Neiman Marcus locations -in Dallas and in Atlanta- for full in-store shopping. Currently, 38 Neiman Marcus stores and the two Bergdorf stores offer curbside pickups. Also, several Neiman Marcus and the Bergdorf stores are also providing private shopping by appointment.

Neiman Marcus Group (NMG) may decide to keep some of its stores closed permanently as part of a plan of restructuring involving streamlining the business currently being formulated. It is considering pulling out of Hudson Yards in Manhattan, or downsizing the site, among other potential closings around the country. "Our restructuring plan is focused on alleviating our debt load, not mass store closures," said Amber Seikaly, vice president of corporate communications for NMG.

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current state of department stores openings

In late March, Brooks Brothers was showered with praise after announcing it would use its three clothing factories in the United States (in Massachusetts, New York and North Carolina) to make personal protective equipment to help fight Covid-19. Now those factories may become casualties of the coronavirus, and the future of Brooks Brothers is uncertain. Brooks Brothers plans to lay off nearly 700 employees at the factories, and is also trying to find buyers for the factories by mid-July, and expects to close them if it can't. The potential factory closures "seem like a dramatic move for a brand that has really hung their hat on 'Made in America,'" said Robert Burke, founder of a namesake luxury consultancy. In an interview, Claudio Del Vecchio, the 63-year-old Italian industrialist owner of Brooks Brothers, spoke for the first time about the decision to divest from the vertical made-in-America supply chain. "I feel very bad about this," Mr. Del Vecchio said. But he added, "The factories never made money for us, and at this moment all resources need to be maintained and saved to make sure we can come out on the other side of the crisis."

Brooks Brothers was founded in Manhattan in 1818 and is the oldest apparel brand in continuous operation in the United States.

Read the article below to get the full history and know more about the upcoming projects.

full article: Brooks Bros., 'Made in America' Since 1818, May Soon Need a New Calling Card

Chinese service WeChat Pay, belonging to tech giant Tencent, will support American Express RMB credit cards. The application by American Express' Chinese venture to conduct bank card clearing operations in the country was approved by China's central bank. Amex is the first foreign company to receive this license. This partnership will drive to a more open and international development of China's payment and bank card clearing services. American Express will also carry out cooperation with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, China UnionPay and Alipay.

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link to book: digital cash

Skip to 20 minutes to hear Pieter Heij, Director Multichannel at de Bijenkorf, Selfridges Group, talk about their successful operations and how they are moving ahead with "visual search" and "personalisation and product ranking".

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Swedish furniture giant Ikea has opened its first compact store in Tokyo. Ikea Harajuku, modeled on smaller compact inner-city Ikea stores popping up in Paris and New York, targets urban apartment dwellers with a smaller range of about 9500 goods selected from its big-box destination shops. Besides featuring homewares products for small-living areas, the Ikea Harajuku houses a Swedish Cafe, where customers can find a Swedish flatbread menu, and Swedish Combini which offers a wide range of snacks and beverages including cups of plant-based instant noodles. Plans to open the Ikea Harajuku store were revealed two years ago. The store was scheduled to open on April 25 this year, however that was postponed until June 8 due to the Covid-19 pandemic

Ireland department stores Brown Thomas and Arnotts, owned by UK group Selfridges, are preparing for reopening, expected on 29 June following government's guidelines (smaller retail outlets will be allowed to open on 8 June in Ireland while larger stores will reopen at the end of June). Both retailers are starting implementing safety measures for the stores.

Customers will be able to book entry to the stores via an app. Walk-in shoppers will also be facilitated, via a queuing system if necessary as capacity will be reduced to between 33 and 40 per cent to facilitate social distancing.

Steaming of garments after handling by customers, technology to allow customers to virtually "try on" make-up, and the quarantining of purchases returned by customers are also among safety measures. Both stores' fitting rooms will be open but tightly controlled, with garments sanitised and quarantined after handling.

There will also be a free same-day home delivery service for customers who buy some larger items, to avoid  bringing them on to public transport and potentially into contact with the wider public.

The measures, which may be adapted to meet guidelines from public health authorities, were derived from the Selfridges group's experience of reopening its Holt Renfrew outlet in Canada and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands.

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Bankrupted JCPenney announced the list of the 154 stores it plans to close this summer, with store closing sales kicking off June 12. It said it will announce additional closures in the coming weeks. "While closing stores is always an extremely difficult decision, our store optimization strategy is vital to ensuring we emerge from both Chapter 11 and the COVID-19 pandemic as a stronger retailer with greater financial flexibility to allow us to continue serving our loyal customers for decades to come," Chief Executive Jill Soltau said in a statement. JCPenney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 15, and is now hoping to emerge as a smaller department store chain.

list of JCPenney Store Closings

Michelle Gass, chief executive officer of Kohl's, said although sales have plummeted since the company's stores were forced to close in mid-March, there have been some bright spots that will now become a permanent part of the its strategy going forward. That includes a substantially stronger digital presence. In April, the company's online sales rose 60%, a number that jumped to 90% in May, when most Kohl's stores were closed. Even though online sales cannot begin to rival in-store sales, the move toward digital has significantly accelerated the company's ominchannel strategy. Gass said that "in normal times," getting to this penetration of online sales would have taken five years […] "COVID-19 is the great accelerator on so many trends. And clearly, for us, we're benefiting from the acceleration on an already high-growth channel for us."

Curbside pickup and working on a more-edited merchandise assortment will also become part of Kohl's permanent strategy.

wwd article: Kohl's Sees Big Digital Boost, Curbside Pickup Continuing Post-pandemic

El Corte Inglés closed the 2019-20 financial year on the upswing, with all its indicators in positive territory - just before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. The group, whose fiscal year ended on February 29 2020, increased its annual sales by 1.2%, reaching a revenue of €15.261 billion. It also reduced its debt, increased EBITDA and improved its consolidated net profit.

press release: El Corte Inglés Group reports 20% growth in net profit [...]

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Will the end of lockdown prompt the sale of the century?

Struggling retailers stuck with unsold stock after weeks of lockdown are slashing prices, but there are not the only ones: airlines, hotels and restaurants are also offering special deals to woo consumers. In retail, the biggest price reductions tend to be on goods that have sat on store shelves for weeks and are now seen as out of date. Seasonal clothing is a particular headache for the industry. Yet retailers have less need to discount other products, from video games to bicycles, that have sold well during the lockdown. Casual "athleisure" clothing is in demand because people working from home want something comfortable to wear.

The outlook for prices is also cloudy in other sectors, including aviation. Lower fares may tempt passengers to book, but will only add to financial pressure on airlines, many of which are already strapped for cash because of the grounding of the global fleet. Several airlines have said they are braced for a price war as restrictions on travel are slowly loosened.

Whether special offers will be enough to tempt back customers — many of whom remain worried about catching Covid-19 in planes, restaurants or shopping malls — is also an open question.

full article: Will the end of lockdown prompt the sale of the century?

House of Fraser located at the Westfield London White City shopping centre has set out plans to turn the store into a co-working space. The idea is to convert around two-thirds of the four floor (approx. 9660sqm) into WeWork style spaces, to create a more mixed-use destination. The plans are currently at an early stage.

House of Fraser store is one of five anchor units at the shopping centre. Debenhams, another anchor tenant, confirmed last month it will not reopen in Westfield London White City following the coronavirus crisis.

Neiman Marcus is on track to emerge from Chapter 11 in the fall. It received approval from the Texas bankruptcy court to access debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing for $250 million in immediate financing to help it through the court process. It will receive an additional $150 million in September to fund inventory, digital expansion plans and reassure brands of its future.

The DIP is crucial for any company to continue operating in bankruptcy, as it provides funds to pay employees, vendors, landlords and other parties and creditors. Neiman Marcus had about $5.5 billion in debt when it filed for Chapter 11 protection.

To date, 90% of the luxury department store's footprint is open either for curbside pickup, private appointment, full shopping or some combination.

Press release: NMG Receives Court Approval to Access Debtor-In-Possession Financing Facility

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John Lewis Partnership announced that it's linking up with health and life insurer Vitality to launch a series of free virtual workshops focused on health and well-being. The new initiative is aimed only at consumers signed up to its myJohn Lewis and myWaitrose loyalty programmes, showing that the retailer is engaging with its most committed customers. The company said the programme "has been created to help address some of the undesirable 'side-effects' of lockdown, including poor posture from lengthy spells of home working, disturbed sleep or unhealthy eating habits". Members can book a range of free live virtual classes including help on nutrition, boosting healthy sleep patterns, family fitness, cardio sessions, and posture.

A range of other virtual services have been launched by both Waitrose and John Lewis in recent weeks, including nursery, home and styling advice services.

press release: John Lewis launches well-being virtual workshops

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Lone Design Club (LDC), the short-term independent designer concept store which usually open pop-ups across the globe to showcase independent brands, has found a way to adapt to the new sanitary requirements. Indeed, has unveiled several shoppable windows on London's South Molton Street allowing independent brands to showcase their products whilst observing social distancing. The concept bridges the gap between the physical and digital, offering consumers a new "phygital" experience. Customers can also sign up to a wealth of events and activities via the LDC Digital Web Store, including 1-to-1 personal shopping experiences, beauty events and tutorials. The business said the new "powerhouse" concept will add "excitement to our short-term, immersive retail experiences with the focus on storytelling, sustainability and ethics whilst pushing the boundaries of creativity". Five units have already launched on South Molton Street, with more locations expected to open.

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UK retailer Fenwick has confirmed it will reopen all nine stores from 15 June. However, as most of the stores will reopen all departments, shopping at the Bond Street flagship will be very different. Only the ground floor of the London store will be open to the public, and the space has been reconfigured to offer a selection of items from all floors. Other fashion floors will be accessible for assisted shopping on request. Restaurants, cafes, and beauty services remain closed.

Before reopening, and to ensure safety of all, Fenwick is implementing various social distancing measures and closing fitting rooms. Returned clothing items will be steamed and other items will be quarantined for 72 hours before going back to the shop floor. Traffic will be regulated, and specific doors will act as entries and other as exists.

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update: The Breuninger hygiene standards - june 2020

In Germany, lockdown is being lift slowly. All Breuninger stores have reopened, while corporate employees are still working remotely. Sanitary measures have been instaured in store: employees are required to wear masks and customers are strongly adivse to do the same. Distances are to be respected in the store, and the number of customers inside at the same time is limited. Read below the full measures taken:

The Breuninger hygiene standard - May 2020

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Kering's Gucci has published its annual environmental statement, and at the same time boosted its communication about its sustainability initiatives by introducing gucciequilibrium, a dedicated Instagram account. The account is designed to enable Gucci to forge closer links with its community, by sharing all the initiatives it is deploying to safeguard the planet.

Gucci set itself the goal of reducing its environmental impact by 40% and its carbon footprint by 50% in the decade between 2015 and 2025. In 2019, Gucci's greenhouse gas emissions fell by 18% compared to 2018, and its global impact fell by 21% in the same period.

As of 15 June, non-essential shops were allowed to swing open their doors once again, including some of London's most iconic department stores.

Fortnum & Mason's iconic doormen, the 'Red Coats', are taking up a new role of 'social distancing ambassadors' with face masks mandatory, securing a one-way route for shoppers.

Fenwick has also implemented a one-way system nicknamed the 'Fenwick green road' - taking shoppers on a Covid-safe journey around the store.

At Harrods, footfall monitoring technology is helping staff ensure social distance guidelines are followed on every floor. A small number of fitting rooms have reopened too with a thorough cleaning regime put in place between each customer.

Harvey Nichols have offered its VIP and reward members the chance to pre-book their shopping slots to ensure there's space for them and will have the advantage of queue-dropping.

At Selfridges, the number of people instore is monitored and limited to 2000 at one time, with services such as fragrance spritzing, massages, haircuts, and other contacts transactions are still off limits.

full article: Welcome to a new era of shopping at London's top department stores

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