The new Galeries Lafayette in Shanghai is on schedule for an official opening in the autumn. The Galeries Lafayette teams have already carried out a remarkable job in just nine months. China is a priority for Galeries Lafayette development.

Rent the Runway, which has previously only rented out designer apparel and accessories, will let customers try out soft home goods — including quilts, blankets, shams and decorative pillows — made by West Elm beginning in the summer. The items will be available in 26 "bundles" ranging in retail value from $150 to $450. The home good bundles would count as one of the four items Rent the Runway subscribers are entitled to each month. "One of the things that we continue to hear from our subscribers, other than that they want more, was 'what other parts of my life can you solve?' and home was something that kept popping up," said Maureen Sullivan, chief operating officer at Rent the Runway , adding that the partnership would give the company more access to data in hopes of luring in new customers. The partnership with Rent the Runway, whose customer is an average age of 29, will also potentially help West Elm attract a younger generation of shoppers, Sullivan said. This is the first time West Elm has made products available for rent.

Luxury, 96-year-old Manhattan-based retailer Barney's New York will open a flagship store at American Dream in New Jersey. The store will span 50,000 square feet and two floors within The Collections, the luxury shopping area inside the 3 million-square-foot entertainment and shopping complex. The department store will also feature Freds at Barneys New York, the retailer's Italian-inspired modern American restaurant. The eatery will be spread over both floors of the store and offer patio seating for open-air dining. join Saks Fifth Avenue, Hermes and other luxury businesses that will be tenants at American Dream, which will include 450 retail, food and specialty shops and more than 18 acres of entertainment.

In the last year, Sogo department stores in Hong Kong operated by the Lifestyle group saw an increase in sales of 16% to HK$4.36bn. There was a drop in profit due, according to the company, to the comparison with 2017 when it received a one-off gain from the sale of its majority stake in its subsidiary. The Sogo flagship on Causeway Bay increased sales by 10.5%, and the Tsim Sha Tsui store experienced a 30% lift, thanks to mainland tourist customers. Management predicts this year will be challenging for retail as declining wage growth and weakening asset values may dent consumer sentiment.

Luxury rental service Armarium is working with Parisian department store Le Bon Marché to offer customers the opportunity to rent pieces from the Spring/Summer 2019 collections. The service has launched on February 23, just before Paris Fashion Week, and is part of a wider initiative at Le Bon Marché called "Geek Mais Chic," a store-wide technology exhibit. "We carefully curated the assortment with Le Bon Marché's team featuring some overlapping brands and some exclusive ones," said Armarium chief executive Trisha Gregory. The service features around 50 brands from mostly small labels.

Armarium has worked with Browns, Net-a-Porter and several independent boutiques but this is its first partnership with a major department store and its first foray into France.

A picture from the JEM Robinsons in Singapore has been getting a lot of attention on the net. Some positive ad some negative. A mannequin has been dressed in bed linen and a pillow to advertise bed linen in the store. A pillow has been used as a hat.

Irish retailer Primark has confirmed 11 April as the opening date of its new Birmingham flagship store. The new store is to be the retailer's largest store in the world, covering 14 960sqm of retail space and five storeys. The new store will not only stock Primark's usual women's, men's and children's fashion and homeware and beauty ranges, but also come with three "unique and amazing" dining experiences. It will also features what Primark is calling its latest "contemporary shop fit" for "enhanced customer experience". The value retailer's largest ever beauty studio for nails, make-up, hair, eyebrows and lashes, and a barber are also going to be found at the new store, along with a personalisation service, recharge seating areas and free wifi.

Harrods is turning to a digital luxury marketplace for help with e-commerce technology. Harrods, number 388 in the Europe 500 ranking, is using Farfetch's enterprise white-label offering, Farfetch Black & White Solutions, to create a global e-commerce site. Farfetch Black & White builds e-commerce applications for retailers and brands and will provide Harrods with e-commerce management and operations, international logistics and technical support. Harrods will continue to manage marketing, brand relationships and product strategy, all creative and editorial content and customer services for the e-commerce site and operations.

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A recent report on Amazon's Q4 earnings showed a fall in online sales from 17% to 14% of the total. Although more customers signed up for Prime in 2018 than ever before, the rate of growth fell 21 percentage points.  Prime now includes Prime Wardrobe, Prime Video, Twitch Prime, Audible Channels, Prime Reading, Prime Now, and Amazon Key In-Home and In-Car Delivery. Will the price of Prime continue to increase?

The services business is booming with AWS up 46%, third-party seller services up 28% and advertising up 97%. The revenue from physical stores declined by 3%. This was, however due to the fall in orders placed online and picked up at Whole Foods. Whole Foods as a business was up 6%.

The Wanda Group of China has sold its department stores to retailer Suning.com in its latest move to downsize its wide-ranging operations. Suning, an appliance retailer and e-commerce platform, said that it purchased 37 stores for an undisclosed amount. The stores are mostly in central areas of major cities. Wanda has diversified rapidly in recent years with acquisitions in entertainment, theme parks, sports and other sectors and has been squeezed by heavy debts.

Karl Lagerfeld, one of the world's most iconic designer, has died in Paris. He was 85. In a seven-decade career, Lagerfeld created collections simultaneously for the celebrated houses of Chanel and Fendi, in addition to his signature label. For Lagerfeld, to design was to breathe, "so if I can't breathe, I'm in trouble," he often quipped to journalists who were astonished by his inexhaustible work ethic and his insistence that he would never retire. His incredible longevity and success as a designer, and the fortunes of the companies for which he worked, owed at least partly to Lagerfeld's intentional detachment from the business side of fashion. He claimed never to discuss sales figures or budgets with management. "I work my own marionette in a way, my own puppet," he told The New York Times. "It's something I control." That extraordinarily rare freedom from the restraints of financial responsibility enabled him to continually make clothes that inspired consumers to dream.

As designers half his age complained of burnout from fashion's maddening pace, Lagerfeld made himself even busier by dabbling in a constant stream of publishing, photography, film and design projects. Ignoring the traditional expectations of a luxury player, he designed hotel rooms, video games, motorcycle helmets, a BMW, and a cosmetics range inspired by his also-famous cat, Choupette, and directed an ad campaign for Magnum ice cream bars.

Despite all this extra-curricular output, though, he was driven by one thing in fashion, he said, which was to make his designs better than they were the season before.

Read below the full article from Business of Fashion.

Business of Fashion: Karl Lagerfeld Dies in Paris

Swedish furniture retailer Ikea will begin offering the option to lease certain furniture pieces in Switzerland this month. Customers can rent pieces of furniture for a set period until it is no longer needed; the retailer will then refurbish the pieces and keep them in circulation and prolong their lifecycle, which means less waste and more recycling. The service is the first in a series of tests that may ultimately result in "scalable subscription services" of various furniture items. The company said leasing office furniture to business customers would be among the first trials, but kitchens could be the next space to be explored.

The Beverley Hills branch of Barneys will be the first department store to introduce a section devoted to cannabis. The department called The High End, occupies 300 sq ft on the fifth floor of the Beverley Hills flagship location. It will also sell a number of lifestyle products such as vaporiser pens and pastilles, as well as CBD-infused beauty products. Lighters, trays and cases are also available and customers will have the option of purchasing these items on the Barneys website. Last year, the number of CBD consumers doubled following a rise in easily available products around the world.

Saks Fifth Avenue flagship has revealed its newly renovated ground floor accessories department. The 5000 m² ground floor which was previously the beauty department now offers 50 handbag brands, of which 14 are new to the store.

A striking aspect of the floor is its Rem Koolhaas-designed escalator which changes colour. The beauty department has been moved to the upper floor while the fine jewellery now has its place called The Vault in the basement. This floor is part of the $250 million grand renovation kicked off four years ago with the "0022-SHOE" department.

Signa has started outlining some of the changes it will implement as part of the consolidation of Kaufhof and Karstadt department store chains in Germany. In the last quarter of 2018, Kaufhof announced sales down 4% on the previous year's quarter, and online sales were also down 1%.

Administration and management of Kaufhof will be transferred from Cologne to Karstadt offices in Essen. Cologne will become a digital centre and will also include the food business. Around 1000 jobs are expected to be lost in the headquarters. A further 1600 losses in stores are expected but have not been announced yet.

The Saks Off 5th, which had been introduced by Hudson's Bay, will be transformed into Karstadt Sports stores. Hudson's Bay, which acquired Kaufhof in 2015, now controls 49% of the business.

After a triumphant return to hometown New York City last year, FAO Schwarz announced that on 1 November 2019, it will open its first European flagship, within Selfridges' Oxford Street location in London.

The new shop at the upscale U.K. department store will occupy over 20,000 square feet of space and will feature play-based experiences similar to those in New York, including in-store demos and the FAO Raceway where shoppers "work alongside trained 'mechanics'" to build custom remote-control cars.

FAO Schwarz owner ThreeSixty Group and Selfridges are working together with third-party brands to introduce other experiences for customers as well.

press release: FAO Schwarz to open at Selfridges in London

Hudson's Bay Company., which runs North American retailers Saks Fifth Avenue, Hudson's Bay, Lord & Taylor and off-price retailer Saks OFF 5TH, said it is shutting down its Home Outfitters business in Canada. The company is also looking to close up to 20 locations of Saks OFF 5TH in the U.S.A. "These actions are part of the company's strategic plan to reduce costs, simplify the business and improve overall profitability," the company said.

press release: HBC shuts down home business, considers Saks off-price closures

Debenhams has secured £40 m in liquidity as it attempts a broader refinancing. The company issued three profit warnings last year and is struggling under a £ 360 m debt. The extra lending gives Debenhams some breathing space but the renegotiating of leases appears to be more complicated. Negotiations have been ongoing for one year without any obvious progress. One investor with a large stake forced the ousting of Debenhams chairman last month as well as driving the CEO off the board. The share value has increased by up to 49% on the news, but this was after a 96% fall since May 2015. The company has also signed an agreement with export and logistics company Li & Fung on a sourcing partnership for Debenhams own-brand products.

Department store retailer  Kohl's is moving into the health and wellness areas it has unveiled a pilot program with WW — previously known as Weight Watchers — for an in-store WW Studio. Select Kohl's stores and Kohls.com will begin offering WW Healthy Kitchen products in June, and store associates can also gain subsidized WW Freestyle program memberships through the Kohl's Healthy Rewards program. The first WW Studio this year will take up about 1,800sqft (approx. 168sqm) inside a Chicago Kohl's store, and will host WW Wellness Workshops for local WW members, as well as a specially curated WW space for Kohl's customers and associates.

Kohl's has already been trying to establish itself as a destination for health and wellness gear. Last year, it started devoting more square footage in some stores for athletic apparel, saying that was helping lift sales. The tie-up is also another way Kohl's hopes to differentiate itself from its peers that are struggling to keep shoppers coming to their stores rather than shop online.

Press release: Kohl's and WW collaborate to Support Wellness and Healthy Living

In one of its first major moves under new CEO Jill Soltau (who joined the company last year), J.C. Penney is discontinuing the sale of major appliances and limiting furniture sales to online and Puerto Rican stores, starting 28 February. It believes that removing appliances will help improve the shopping experience and allow for additional focus on higher-margin apparel and soft home furnishings sales.

Blog post by JC Penney on a repositioning of its Home Department

The technology wave has taken over retail Le Bon Marché is embarking on a wide-sweeping tech exhibit that will run from 23 February to 22 April 2019. The department store will be stocked with futuristic gadgets of all shapes and sizes, including interactive displays, virtual reality, holograms, full-body massage machines and an infinite supply of personalized products — down to the very soles of shoes. Project organizers have roped in every department to take part in this futuristic experiment, and dozens of brands are participating in the technology event.

"It's about more than simply selling merchandise", explained style director Jennifer Cuvillier. "We wanted to go further, for the client and really go for the experience, go beyond the products, to offer people a unique experience linked to new technologies," said Cuvillier. "The idea was to do something fun," she added.

full article by wwd on le bon marché "geek mais chic"

According to its CEO interviewed by the Financial Times, Ikea will begin testing a multi-brand platform. It is currently finalising details of its selling on a third-party website such as Amazon or Alibaba. But the company says there is room for another type of platform between those big global platforms and the company's own website. He cites Zalando as an example for fashion. Ikea, which is engaging in a major transformation, has begun testing leasing furniture, selling on other websites and city-centre smaller stores.

article: is ikea ready to rundle?

Jérôme Gilg, CEO of the Swiss DIY chain Jumbo since 2010, has switched to the CEO position at the department store chain Manor. Both companies belong to the Maus Frères group. At Manor, Gilg supersedes Stéphane Maquaire who has been CEO there since 2017 and who has created a new organisational structure both at the locations as well as at the headquarters.

Jérôme Gilg began his career at the Maus Frères group in 2000 in the hypermarkets with leadership responsibilities in the areas of food and non-food. He switched to Jumbo in 2004, initially as director of sales networks and then as director of purchasing before becoming CEO in 2010.

press release: Jérôme Gilg becomes CEO of Manor [in french]

Liberty store of London has been put on the market with a potential price tag of £350 m. Private equity Blue Gem acquired the business in 2010 for £32m and refinanced in 2014 reducing its stake to around 40%. Blue Gem is trying to offload its stake but it is unclear whether other investors are willing to sell. Group sales reached £133m in the year to February 2018, up 8% on the previous year, while pre-tax profit more than trebled to £7m. Around 60% of the store's profits come from selling own-label merchandise.

The company was founded by Arthur Lasenby Liberty in 1875 with a £2000 loan from his future father-in-law. It has become an international brand selling its fabrics and leather goods around the world. It is this aspect of the business which might appeal, according to some, to high net worth investors such as the Weston family, whose Canadian arm owns Selfridges, Brown Thomas, de Bijenkorf and Holt Renfrew, while the British arm owns Fortnum & Mason and Heal's in London.