The German online retailer Zalando is to expand into Ireland and the Czech Republic  this summer, the first new markets targeted in five years. The openings will give the fashion retailer access to a extra combined population of 15.4 million and take the number of markets it serves from 15 to 17. Zalando is the largest online fashion retailer in Europe, ahead of competitors such as Amazon and Asos. The company claims it is using the usual Zalando method: "launch, learn, iterate, and scale." Founded in 2008, Zalando sells close to 2000 brands, has 23.9m active customers, and full-year sales of €4.49bn. It is on course to increase sales by 25% this year.

For the past four years the British department store has been revamping its 220,000 square foot flagship store in London's Knightsbridge and it now unveils the latest phase of the multi-million pound project: the womenswear floor.

The 22,000 square foot space is designed to feel more like a luxury boutique than a department store. The floor has been remodelled to give visibility from one end to the other, while windows have been unveiled to give the space natural daylight. New to the floor is a dedicated lounge area, which sits alongside a revamped shoe area and an indoor rotating exhibition space. It also introduces The Restory, a new on-demand shoe and bag repair service, while an interactive digital screen gives shoppers access to a wider range of inventory via the Harvey Nichols website. In addition to the designer womenswear space, which sits on the first floor, the fourth floor — which until now has been a "swing space" accommodating departments under renovation — will have a new look and feel. Over 50 new womenswear brands will be stocked across the two floors.

The transformation of the Knightsbridge store began with its two menswear floors, which were reopened to the public in April 2016, followed by the ground floor renovation, which now houses the Harvey Nichols' Beauty Lounge.

read full article on Harvey nichols' new womenswear floor

One of the most noticed arrivals in London last year was Reserved from Poland opening in the old BhS store on Oxford Street. The store is operated by LPP, a fashion group founded in 1991 in Gdansk, one of the country's 20 largest companies and now worth over €4.6 bn. It has mainly put its efforts into developing a presence in Eastern Europe and Germany, which it entered in 2014. However, as it moves up the value chain, it needs to enter more affluent markets such as the UK, Germany, the US and France. But mature markets represent more of a challenge and LPP is still losing money in Germany, and has yet to break even in London. According to management, "London is a different league".

read article "polish companies go west in search of profits"

House of Fraser of the UK is to close 31 of its 59 stores as part of a rescue deal. According to management, this move is "brutal… and as tough as it gets". Around 2000 House of Fraser jobs will be cut as well as 4000 brand and concession roles. The closing schedule includes the Oxford Street store which, however, will stay open until early 2019. The company is seeking a 70% rent reduction on the closing stores until they shut, as well as a 25% rent reduction on stores staying open.

House of Fraser started with a shop in the centre of Glasgow almost 170 years ago. It became a retail empire with more than 100 department stores, including iconic luxury store Harrods in 1959. Owner Hugh Fraser also acquired Kendals in Manchester and Rackhams in Birmingham. Hugh's son, also called Hugh, expanded the portfolio with a further 50 stores. The Fraser dynasty came to an end in 1985, when Mohamed al-Fayed took it over. The House of Fraser Group has annual sales of £1.2bn. It employs about 5,000 people directly and also has 12,500 concession staff.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has built a fulfilment centre that handles up to 200 000 orders a day and is operated by just four employees. The centre just outside Shanghai uses artificial intelligence to scan and inspect packages as they are being processed. Once packages are taken off trucks they are scanned and the system calculates where they should be dropped off. The packages are grouped by region, picked up by autonomous forklift trucks and taken to a truck for delivery. The company employs 17 500 people at its other facilities.

See below recent Supply Chain and Planning meeting which included a visit of the recent John Lewis warehouse in the UK.

iads Supply chain & planning meeting 2018

Today, Chanel released full-year earnings for the first time. Reporting revenues of $9.6 billion in 2017 with 11 percent organic growth, the company has produced an operating profit of almost $2.7 billion.

"We have no debt. We have $1.6bn cash. All this is important. It provides us the ammunition to remain who we are: private and independent," said Philippe Blondiaux, Chief Financial Officer.

But alongside this announcement comes another important first for the French fashion group; a comprehensive report to society detailing how the company operates, its commitments to wider society, and how it collaborates with external stakeholders on sustainability issues.

See report of Chanel 2018

Macy's announced an evolution of its commercial partnership with technology powered retailer b8ta. As part of its strategic focus on enhancing the in-store customer experience, the company will leverage b8ta's best-in-class software platform to scale The Market @ Macy's, becoming strategic partners in this 'retail-as-a-service' model. The Market @ Macy's is the company's experiential retail concept launched earlier this year. Macy's has also acquired a minority equity stake in b8ta.

Launched in February 2018, The Market @ Macy's, currently open at 10 Macy's locations nationwide, helps emerging and established brands reach new audiences. Each shop brings customers a rotating selection of unique offerings in apparel, accessories, beauty, entertainment, experiences, decorative home, stationary, technology, and gifts.

The partnership with b8ta along with the recent acquisition of STORY, is the latest example of Macy's strategy to evolve its stores with more experience-based concepts and create a portfolio of unique relationships that will drive customer engagement across its store base.

press release on Macy's acquires a minority equity stake in b8ta 

Figures released in connection with the acquisition of a controlling stake in House of Fraser by C.banner of China, show a net loss in 2017 of £37m. EBITDA fell from £51.6m to £24m in the period. C.banner holds a total stake of 51% of House of Fraser after acquiring 34% from Nanjing Xinjiekou. The chairman of Sanpower, parent company of Nanjing Xinjiekou, is the brother in law of C.banner chairman. The recent transaction values the company at £278m, compared with the £480m that Nanjing Xinjiekou paid for 89% in 2014. Some 11% of House of Fraser is owned by UK Sports Direct.

Macy's is upgrading its pop-up shops, driven by the way millennial consumers discover beauty products — through technology.

The Market, a pop-up concept featured in select stores and featuring a curated selection of products not normally sold at Macy's along with a selection of fashion and tech products, already features beauty products from brands including PiperWai, Miracle Brow and Liquid Courage.

As consumers increasingly shop online for beauty and fashion products, Macy's will tap into B8ta's expertise (a tech startup that provides a Shopify-like solution for brands moving into physical retail).  to bring more tech features to its pop-up section from video to content platforms to tech-driven product testing in stores, in order to showcase beauty, fashion and tech brands.

Customers may be able to get customized beauty advice through technology or put beauty products they see in the shop to an online checkout on their phones.

Department stores are getting increasingly competitive when it comes to introducing new technologies in fashion and beauty departments.

Jennifer Walsh, the founder of retail concept Beauty Bar — which spanned e-commerce, brick-and-mortar stores and a TV program — and a cosmetics industry consultant, said beauty merchandise alone is no longer enough to draw shoppers to a store. As a result, department stores are trying to lure customers in with interesting experiences, including everything from pop-ups tailored to local tastes to custom beauty advice dished out through high-tech features such as virtual voice assistants.

Marks & Spencer of the UK has announced its results for the year to end March 2018. While group revenue is stable, pre-tax profit is down 62% to £67m. Exactly ten years ago, M&S was announcing profits of £1billion. The recently appointed chairman Archie Norman had a long list of mea culpas: the website is too slow, the warehouse incapable of handling peak order volumes, the food overpriced, the clothing ranges too confusing. Most importantly, the company has been too slow to react to the rapid shifts in consumer habits. Although the blueprint for the future is not substantially different from that announced by CEO Steve Rowe in 2016, it will be accelerated in the light of the discovery that closing stores need not materially reduce overall sales. Most of the group's problems are seen as fixable. The question is whether the costs will be worth it and whether investors have the patience to endure a five-year programme of change. Some analysts are sceptical. For example, the combination of mid-price fashion with premium food and a bit of furniture is not widely accepted as a viable model.

Walmart and  Lord & Taylor are preparing to roll out a new shopping experience on Walmart.com. Set to launch in phases in the coming weeks, the "store within a store" on Walmart's website will feature more than 125 brands sold at Lord & Taylor. The two retailers formally announced the partnership last November.

Both companies hope to see a boost in sales from the unique tie-up for different reasons. Walmart is competing with Amazon which might become the #1 apparel retailer in the U.S. It has also said it aims to grow its selection of clothing beyond every day, low-priced items, to include more high-end pieces from well-known, designer labels. Lord & Taylor faces many of the obstacles that U.S. department stores are facing today: it needs to cut costs and find ways to win sales from shoppers who are increasing online purchases. The hope is that a new customer base — i.e. Walmart shoppers — will become more familiar with Lord & Taylor over time and shop their stores too. Lord & Taylor's brands won't be available in Walmart stores, only online and on the company's mobile app.

A redesigned Walmart.com will soon have two shops — one for everyday brands (including Walmart's newer private labels) and one for premium brands, where Lord & Taylor will be housed. Walmart said it will "regularly" be adding new brands and products to the two shops in the coming months.

press release "Lord & Taylor Flagship Store will debut on Walmart.com "

Former chief executive of House of Fraser, John King, has been appointed CEO of Australian department store group Myer. He will replace Richard Umbers who stepped down in February. After starting his career in food retailing at Sainsbury's, John King moved to fashion with Marks & Spencer and Matalan, before leading House of Fraser in 2006 for eight years. He built up the department store's online presence as well as a range of own brand products, and negotiated better rent terms with landlords. The current troubles at House of Fraser would appear to be more the result of a lack of investment by Chinese owners rather than any of the measures John King put in place. Myer is facing significant changes both in consumer shopping habits, and in the retail environment where it is competing against South African-owned David Jones. Woolworths, owning David Jones, was rumoured some time ago to be evaluating a Myer take-over.

Music legend Lionel Richie has designed a bedding and bath collection for American retailer J.C. Penney. The collection includes comforters, quilts, sheets, decorative pillows and bath towels. It has a subdued classic aesthetic, with some sets offering a seventies pop flair, and is priced affordably — $129.99 for a queen comforter set, $39.99 for two decorative pillows and $24.99 for two Euro shams. The sets are designed to coordinate with other bedding, bath and window products from JCPenney Home, a premium private label, and the two brands will be merchandised together in one shop this September.

press release on Lionel Richie home collection for J.C. Penney

Macy's is jumping deeper into the experiential retail space. The department store retailer has purchased Story, a New York-based concept store founded by Rachel Shechtman, who will join Macy's as brand experience officer. She will report to Hal Lawton, president of Macy's. In this new position, Shechtman will focus on ways to enhance the in-store customer experience at the Macy's brand and work to integrate Story into the company "in a new format," Macy's said.

The Story retail store in Chelsea, which offers a storytelling retail model similar to that of a magazine and the design and merchandise mix is reinvented every six to eight weeks, will continue to operate in its original location. In addition, the company's chief operating officer, Jenny Shechtman, will assume the role of vice president, operations at Story under Macy's, Inc.'s umbrella.

Press release of macy's on acquiring story

Read full WWD article on Macy's acquiring story

Bonobos, the online men's wear fashion retailer which operates over 30 "guideshops" (where customers can try on but only purchase online) has launched a campaign emphasising fit. It claims to cover 172 sizes and fits through a campaign which features 172 men dressed in Bonobos clothing. It will run a TV spot as well as radio, digital and social marketing, and project video o buildings in Austin and Chi ago where the campaign will run. The story of the founding of Bonobos includes the search for perfectly fitting clothes.

see ad on the 172 fits by bonobos

Department store beauty departments are traditionally located on ground floors, close to store entrances and have been for very many decades. And the Saks Manhattan beauty department has been at street level since 1924. But turning its back on tradition, Saks beauty will now sit in a revamped second floor home that will also go heavily into spa services and treatment rooms. The new beauty department will be 40% larger than its ground-floor predecessor and will feature an event space as well as 15 spa treatment rooms, including Blink Brow Bar, FaceGym and Skinney MedSpa that offers fat-freezing CoolSculpting treatments. There will also be beauty concierges on hand to advise customers without being linked to specific brands -which is an important and much needed new development in order to effectively market the 122 brands that will be available in the department (61 of them new to Saks).

Saks Manhattan ground floor will now be home to handbags and leathergoods, and fine jewellery will be shunted from the ground floor to the basement.

J.C. Penney CEO Marvin Ellison is leaving the department store retailer to take the chief executive spot at Lowe's. Ellison, who has been guiding J.C. Penney through a turbulent period, will now help Lowe's try to catch up with archival Home Depot. The news dealt an immediate blow to J.C. Penney's own turnaround hopes; the company's stock fell 6.8% in pre-market trading to $2.33.

At J.C. Penney, Ellison has closed stores, enhanced the company's in-store partnership with beauty brand Sephora and started selling toys and appliances. And even if sales have suffered amid declining mall traffic and falling consumer interest in department stores, Ellison is largely credited with helping J.C. Penney get back to the basics after a rough CEO stint by former Apple executive Ron Johnson.

He is stepping down from his post as the company's board chairman immediately and will stay on as a director and CEO through June 1. J.C. Penney appointed a team of several leaders to head a new "office of the CEO" while the company searches for a permanent replacement.

press release "JCPenney Announces Resignation of Chairman and CEO Marvin Ellison"

Management of the UK department store Fenwick has announced that the company will undergo a major business review. A significant proportion of the 2000-strong workforce could be affected by the proposals. Apart from the long-awaited launch of an e-commerce website, management functions across the business will be changed.  The nine stores of the group have been run autonomously. Under the new proposals, directors are now seeking to centralise many functions and several appointments have been made to oversee group-wide functions which until now have been carried out by each store individually. Merchandising will become a group function, there will also be a group property director as well as a central retail operations director. The CEO stresses however that Fenwick will "maintain the localness" of each store.

HBC and joint venture partner RioCan REIT have signed a conditional agreement to sell HBC's downtown Vancouver store for C$675m, to an Asian buyer. The partners announced they were considering the sale last October. The buyer, who remains anonymous, is negotiating interim financing. HBC will leaseback space in the property and continue to operate the store. The deal is part of HBC's efforts to extract vale from its real estate holdings as it fights a retail slump and faces pressure from investors to lift share price. The Lord & Taylor flagship on New York's Fifth Avenue was sold to WeWork last year for $850m.

The Chinese owner of Hamleys toy stores is in talks to take a stake in UK department store group House of Fraser. Hamleys owner C.banner International has signed an understanding with Nanjing Xinjiekou which holds an 89% stake in House of Fraser and is part of Sanpower, the Chinese firm that paid £480m for the department store in 2014. House of Fraser operates 59 stores, with 6000 staff and 11 500 concession staff.

C.banner, best known as a footwear retailer, bought Hamleys in October 2015, and has shown an interest in House of Fraser for two years. It operates three Hamleys stores, in China, in Nanjing, Xuzhou and Beijing.

Lotte of South Korea, has decided to sell 21 of its stores in the Beijing metropolitan area to a local Chinese retailer, Wumart, for $231m. It will continue to hold a 5% share in the affiliate. Lotte initially considered all of its 112 stores across the country, but finally decided on a series of local sales. Wumart, founded in 1994 and which operates a similar business model to Walmart in the US, has about 900 stores around the country. Lotte has been suffering losses in China.

Swedish furniture giant Ikea has announced that it will open its first stores in South America under a franchise agreement with Chilean retailer Falabella. The group is aiming to open at least nine stores in Chile, Colombia, and Peru over the next ten years, and will sell through online channels in the three countries. According to Ikea, Chile, Peru, and Colombia have a combined population of almost 100 million people and a market potential for home furniture of more than €8bn.

Ikea has been responding to slower sales growth by pushing into new markets such as India, as well as developing smaller city-centre formats; it is is also investing in online services to adapt to the surge in e-commerce.

Amazon Go, the Amazon cashier-less convenience store, is coming to San Francisco and Chicago -The first location opened in Seattle in January after a year of testing.

To shop in the Seattle store, which is about the size of a 7-Eleven, customers must first download the Amazon Go app and link it to a payment method. Then they open the app on their phone and scan it at one of the four turnstiles to enter the 1,800 square foot store. Once inside, cameras in the ceiling, sensors on the shelves and a massive amount of computing power track every item they pick up and what goes into their pockets or bags. To check out, you just walk out — it's called Just Walk Out technology.

The actual Amazon Go store is extremely tech-heavy, was expensive to build and can only sell a narrow range of specially-selected items — nowhere near the 50,000 or so items a typical supermarket stocks. But with time that could change, making the possibility of a true revolution in the way we interact with brick and mortar stores.

Luxury London department store Harrods has refurbished its fine wine and spirits rooms creating a new customer journey that focuses on discovery and education.

Customers are invited to interact with ingredients displayed in glass bell jars on the 'aroma tables'. Instead of actually sampling the products, visitors can use atomisers to experience the scent of items, which are all associated with particular flavours of wine. At the heart of the new department is the Fine Wines room, where products are categorised by terroirs, allowing customers to discover wine by region.

Digital also plays a strong role throughout the space. Interactive screens that display product information are activated by visitors picking up the complementary bottles. There is also an 'education' room, offering live streaming to vineyards and winemakers in the best regions and chateaus in the world, giving customers an insight into where the wine is produced. Additional services include bottle personalisation, with an in-house engraving machine, personal consultations and bespoke cellar plans for those looking to build their collections.

Read full artcile below and see pictures

read full article "GDR visits the harrods wine shop"