Los Angeles-based designer Trina Turk, known for colourful prints, will debut an INC International Concepts collection for women and men with Macy's. The INC International Concepts line mini-collection will showcase the designer's signature patterns and colours, and will launch on 15 May. It will offer an INC spin on both her eponymous women's line, founded in 1995, and the six-year-old Mr Turk men's line. The Trina Turk x INC collection comprises 40 stockkeeping units including apparel, accessories, swimwear and shoes, and the Mr Turk x INC collection is 14 apparel sku's.

While a selection of Turk's contemporary line is already available in select Macy's doors, the INC collaboration marks her first entry into Macy's more accessibly priced arena as well as the first wholesale channel for Mr Turk.

Read full WWD article on Trina Turk tying up with Macy's

IKEA Group, owner of most IKEA budget furniture stores, said on Tuesday it would open one of its new, smaller city-centre stores in downtown Paris by summer 2019 as part of a push to become more accessible to shoppers. Items at its first French city-centre store will be displayed in a new way thanks to new digital technology and services. The store, which at 5,000 square metres (54,000 square feet) will be less than one-fifth the size of a standard IKEA store, is to be implemented in the upmarket Madeleine neighbourhood. It has not been decided yet how much of the range would be on display, and how many of the smaller items would be readily available to carry home from the store. Larger furniture at least would be for home delivery only. This new format should meet the habits and expectations of Parisians and will offer solutions for small spaces. Moreover, the retailer will use alternative delivery service such as bike delivery; and it even plans to have deliveries 100% electric by 2020.

In the roadmap on Circular Economy published by the French government on 23 April 2018, the Ministère de la Transition Ecologique indicates that starting 2019, it will apply the main principles of the 2016 Law Against Food Waste to the clothing industry –this 2016 law forces hypermarkets and supermarkets to donate their unsold food produce to charity organisations. With this new law, the French government will prevent companies from destroying their unsold clothes, in order to give them to charity instead.

Textile industry is the second most polluting industry worldwide, just after oil; and experts estimate that waste generated from textiles is worth $500 billion a year.

Located in a new brand village in Villefontaine (east of France), the new 1200sqm space features a wide selection of brands for fashion women, men and children, and accessories and shoes. The outlet format was launched in 2015 and offers the possibilities to acquire items from past collections, sometimes 50% reduced from the original price. This is the ninth Galeries Lafayette outlet to open.

Darktrace, founded in 2013 by Cambridge University mathematicians and intelligence experts from GCHQ and MI5, now employs 300 high level staff and has 1500 customers. Their reputation comes from the fundamentally different approach they take to cyber-threats: they talk about the "enterprise immune system" and offer products such as "Antigena". The medical metaphors reflect their use of artificial intelligence which introduces an adaptive machine learning defence component. This unusually discreet company, which recently hit a $500m valuation, agreed to an interview of one of its founders, Poppy Gustafsson, with the Financial Times, in which she predicts that artificial intelligence will also become a rising trend in cyber-attacks, not just for defence.

read full article on "Darktrace predicts AI use in security breaches"

Macy's added 20 off-price locations in the first quarter of 2018 as part of a plan to open 100 off-price outlets — dubbed Macy's Backstage — in fiscal 2018. The new locations would open in existing Macy's stores. Macy's is also expanding the geographical footprint of Backstage, venturing into the northwestern and southwestern U.S. To support the growth, the company is adding a distribution center in Ohio dedicated to the off-price unit. The facility is scheduled to open in fall 2019 and would add 400 jobs to Macy's payrolls.

press release on Macy's opening more backstage stores

Barneys is straddling the line between luxury department store and media company with this step into the still-booming podcast world. And it will be one of the first retailers to do so. The luxury department store is launching an eight-episode season, dubbed "In Conversation," beginning on May 2. The show, which will air weekly on Wednesdays will be all about fashion, style, culture and, most of all, personality. It will spotlight an array of creatives, including: artist and poet Cleo Wade, designer Rick Owens, interior designer Jonathan Adler, celebrity hair stylist Sally Hershberger and Chief Content Officer of Teen Vogue Phillip Picardi.

It appears the show won't so much be an inside look at Barneys business strategy as it will be a way for them to tap into their network of celebrity designers and stylists who will share stories about launching careers in the fashion industry. That makes for a podcast focused more on the atmosphere and lifestyle that the store promotes rather than the specific products or promotions it offers.

Press release on Barneys podcast initiative

Promotional video of the barneys podcasts

Liz Rodbell, after 32 years at Lord & Taylor where she rose from dress buyer to president, is leaving the department store at the end of this month. The HBC-owned department store veteran has been in the position as Lord & Taylor's president since 2014, where she oversees merchandising, marketing, creative, stores, e-commerce direction, and overall strategy. She started with the company as a dress buyer in 1985, then she held various management positions with the department store including Executive Vice President of Merchandising from 2008 to February 2012 and Senior Vice President General Merchandising Manager since 1992. She also simultaneously served as President of HBC Department Store Group at Hudson's Bay Company in Canada from February 2014 to June 8, 2017. She is one of only three women to have led the retailer since it was founded 190 years ago.

Hudson's Bay has disclosed that it was the victim of a security breach that compromised data on payment cards used at Saks Fifth Avenue in the US and Canada and Lord & Taylor stores.  Some reports mention millions of cards but neither exact numbers nor precise timing have been confirmed by the company yet. JokerStash which sells stolen data on the criminal underground has said that over 5 million stolen credit cards would be released.

So far around 125 000 have been and some 75% of those appear to have been taken from the Hudson's Bay units. JokerStash has been active in hacking retail and hospitality companies for some three years.

Zara owner Inditex is accelerating its digital development. Apart from a highly publicised app with which customers can bring the windows to life on their mobile screens with augmented reality images of models wearing latest designs, Inditex of Spain is now achieving 10% of its €25.3bn group sales online. Inditex has 19 warehouses globally dedicated to fulfilling online orders. Although margins are falling, the group claims it is more the effect of adverse currency exchange than the internet business. It is rolling out a centralised inventory system using RFID, already operating at Zara. Another of Inditex's strengths is the ability to get new designs in store in as little as 15 days, which is also what Asos and Zalando can do.

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The Japanese Muji, which has offered dried foods and snacks since 1980 among its usual home, apparel and accessories offer, has opened a large 4300 m² store offering fresh food in Osaka. The offer, which includes chilled fresh meat and produce, occupies 50% of the store space and also features a Café and Meal Muji eating area. The concept will be rolled out to other markets according to CEO Kei Suzuki. One of the reported rationales of the innovation, is to entice customers to visit more often.

Digitally native French fashion brand Sézane is bolstering its physical retail footprint via a new partnership with Nordstrom, its first US retail partner. Each pop-up will be merchandised in the style of a French apartment. "It was very important for us to be able to offer the Sézane experience," Sézane founder Morgane Sézalory said. "We accepted to do the Norstrom collaboration because they allowed us to create our own little world."

Founded in 2013 as an online-only, accessibly priced collection of pieces that embody quintessential French style, the brand has been delving deeper into brick-and-mortar retail: in 2015, it opened "L'appartement," in Paris, a boutique inspired by a Parisian apartment, which was followed by an apartment-style concession space at Le Bon Marché in 2016. Unlike its arrangement with Le Bon Marché, the Nordstrom partnership is a wholesale one. Sézalory insists, however, that "it's a very unique case" and that Sézane is not exploring a move away from its direct-to-consumer model.

Nordstrom will carry the label's Spring collection from April 11 in five select stores across Seattle, Chicago, Costa Mesa, San Francisco and Austin. The collection will also be sold on Nordstrom's e-commerce website.

The first Isidoro Alvarez Lifetime Achievement Awards, given at this year's World Retail Congress in Madrid, were presented to Jorge Pont, International Director at El Corte Ingles, and Gilbert Harrison, founder and chairman of investment firm Financo. The award is named after former chairman and chief executive of El Corte Ingles, who recruited Jorge Pont in 1965. The awards were presented by Marta Alvarez, daughter of Isidoro.

A mummified monkey has been found during redevelopment work in an old department store in the US in Minneapolis. The famous Dayton's store founded in 1902 by George Draper Dayton merged in 1969 with Hudson of Detroit, forming the Dayton-Hudson Corporation. Dayton was the founder of Target in 1962. Dayton-Hudson stores were in turn acquired by Chicago-based Marshall Field's, which then became May Company prior to its acquisition by Federated Department Stores which rebranded it as Macy's. The origins of the monkey are therefore uncertain. However it is thought unlikely that it was an early customer of the Dayton store. The store is currently undergoing transformation into an office building and food hall.

The founder of B8ta, the consumer electronics try and buy store, argues in an interview that a retailer's main aim should not be making a sale. Pop-up stores and concept showrooms have shifted the focus away from sales. The B8ta business model, which relies on subscriptions from producers who rent space in the store and get 100% of every sale, involves measuring every activity in the store except the sale: awareness, engagement etc. This is then given to brand partners in real time. B8ta operates stores inside other retailers' units such as Lowe's or Macy's Herald Square, NY, and its own shops in key locations. According to the founder of B8ta, the business model applies better to beauty and fashion than it does in consumer electronics; if he could do it again, he would create a fashion B8ta.

read article on B8ta

Struggling department store chain Sears is selling 16 stores on the online auction site Real Insight Marketplace, which is working in partnership with commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. The novel approach to selling stores is part of ongoing efforts by Sears Holdings to extract money from its real estate to protect its financial liquidity amid chronic and deep sales declines. The Sears stores are being marketed as sale and lease-back deals. While Sears has closed hundreds of stores in recent years, in many cases it has also simply sold a store and then leased it back to continue operating a store, or shrunk the space it occupies in a store and renting out the rest to a tenant. The stores being auctioned are for the most part connected to suburban malls and are located in Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Bids are due by 1 May 2018.

Mosaert, the creative collective built around Belgian singer-songwriter Paul Van Haver, who is known as Stromae, has transformed Le Bon Marché into a fantasy factory "Mosaert Fabrique", completed with tubes, riveted metal panels and workers in white coverall suits and safety glasses. "It's a little more fantastic than Warhol's Factory, I think. His had a rawer feel. Ours is more joyful and magical, in that it's part of our philosophy of promoting European manual crafts," said Van Haver. Presenting its latest collection "Capsule n°5", the label's fashion show (held on 6 April) featured models as performers, who stood tall and still, then moved in unison, froze suddenly and broke out into different poses before charging down the runway, buns on their heads and decked out in a whimsical lineup of streetwear with delicate Art Nouveau patterns. In the background, workers rose up and down the store's iconic elevator bank, standing still — immune to the catchy new and exclusive Stromae soundtrack. Guests entering the upscale department store were greeted with an elaborate, mechanical display of shirts, jackets and shorts that slowly rotated along a rack. Some stopped to take in the movement, and the clothing, or slip on a pair of headphones in front of a screen relaying a film about the production.

Mosaert Fabrique will run until 13 May and also include window displays and, for the first time, a homeware collection, completed by the redesign of some of La Grande Epicerie products packaging.

video: see presentation of Mosaert Fabrique

see picture of Mosaert Fabrique at Le Bon Marché

see event Mosaert fabrique on Le Bon Marché website

TaskRabbit, an online marketplace for freelance moving, cleaning and handyman tasks, shut down its website and app following a "cybersecurity incident" that was apparently a data breach. It is now back online. The size and nature of the breach, as well as how it occurred, has not yet been reported by TaskRabbit, which was acquired last year by Ikea.

A French survey claims that 48% of companies reported an increase in cyberattacks over the last year. Ransomware remains the most popular type of attack, reported by 73% of companies concerned. The consequences of an attack range from unavailability of the internet site for a significant period of time (15%), through a break in production (12%), loss of sales (9%) to delays in deliveries (7%).

One of the major victims of a cyberattack in 2017, Maersk of Denmark, has decided to split the CFO role into finance on the one hand, and IT and digital on the other. The move is thought to reflect the growing importance of IT as well as the lessons from the cyberattack. One consequence of this decision has been the resignation of the current CFO.

American department store-chain Barneys New York is wholesaling its in-house label, which includes women's and men's ready-to-wear, shoes, handbags and accessories, to Boon the Shop, the trendsetting multi-brand retailer that introduced once unfamiliar brands like Dries Van Noten and Comme des Garçons to Korean consumers. Private-apparel labels, typically manufactured by retailers and sold under their own name, have long been a staple of department stores like Barneys, where its in-house label is among the top five selling brands for men and women; and it's rarer for chains to put their in-house labels at the centre of an expansion push. But chief executive Daniella Vitale said wholesaling would help raise Barneys' profile in Asia without taking the expensive step of opening new stores overseas. Barneys chose South Korea because the country is among the company's top-performing eight markets, and online sales are growing fast there. Barneys will introduce selected pieces as part of a two-week pop-up at Boon the Shop, which is owned by Korean department store chain Shinsegae, before introducing its full-season collection. Pricing of the private label will be similar in Korea as it is in the US, where a men's cotton poplin shirt retails for $265 and a women's cropped cashmere sweater costs $495.

House of Fraser's Chinese owner Sanpower has pledged to grant the department store a £15 million cash injection to stabilise its finances. According to The Guardian, Sanpower is poised to reiterate its support for the retailer, of which it owns an 89 per cent stake, despite confirming earlier in March that it was looking to offload its majority share to Wuji Wenhua. "We at Sanpower continue to support House of Fraser as it embarks on a year of significant transformation."

The past few months have been especially difficult for House of Fraser, which recorded a slump in Christmas sales, had its credit rating downgraded, sought to reduce rents through talks with landlords, and drafted in Rothschild to help refinance its debt package. House of Fraser currently employs around 6000 staff across 59 stores and a further 11,500 staff among its concessions.

A UBS report on Myer department stores of Australia says the company needs fewer and smaller stores. It claims most of the group's 63 stores are likely to be at break-even and Myer is losing market share to online players and international fashion retailers such as Zara, H&M, and Uniqlo.

However, grave doubts subsist about whether Myer can bear the cost of of trimming its $2.7bn lease burden.

Premier Investments, Myer's largest shareholder, has disputed some of the figures given out by management, and is calling for shareholders to oust the board of the company in an extraordinary general meeting.

The German Karstadt department store group will open an Aldi discount food outlet in the basement of the large Hamburg store. Not only is the move intended to increase the mix of activities in the store, but might attract traffic in the whole store. In fiscal 2017, Karstadt reported a profit of €1.4m, its first positive report since 2006. This contrasts with the poor Kaufhof results announced by parent company Hudson's Bay.

The Nihonbashi Takashimaya department store in Tokyo has become the third and largest unit of the Japanese franchise's Pokemon Center on 1300m². Fans of the brand can buy soft toys and accessories as well as visit a café selling a range of foods including themed curries and pancakes in the shape of the Pokemon character Pikachu.