Mitra Adiperkasa of Indonesia which controls Panen Lestari Internusa and the different department store formats Seibu, Sogo, Galeries Lafayette, Debenhams and Lotus in the country as well as many other brand licences, is apparently thinking of scaling back its department store business. The 58 department stores account for around half of the group's retail space but contributed only 2% of operating profit in the first three months of this year according to Asian Nikkei. Customers are spending less on fashion and more on travel and food. Decisions will apparently be made based on a study by Boston Consulting Group, announced by vice-president V.P. Sharma. Competition and slower consumer spending has triggered a focus among Indonesian retailers on profitability rather than merely top-line growth.

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After the success of Notify, opened last year to customise denim clothing, luxury Parisian department store Le Bon Marché has once again bet on customisation with the opening of a workshop to personalise shoes. Customers can embellish all their shoes, from stilettos to sneakers, with embroideries, hand-painted patterns, glitter and laser printing. Customers can also create shoes from scratch, choosing the colour of the leather, the sole, the shoelaces and other details. Surfing on the customisation wave, the department store also offers customisable bracelets, jewels and glasses.

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Harrods is opening its own Wellness Clinic, a new concept offering clients a combination of aesthetic and holistic treatments by practitioners sourced from across the globe. The new space, which occupies 10,500 square feet on Harrods' fourth floor, is not a spa, salon, or beauty space. It's more of a high-end clinic that provides clients with a bespoke offer based on their personal needs. The store said it's designed to complement — rather than compete with — Harrods spa, Urban Retreat, by focusing instead on services and products that are more results-driven. Treatments range from personal training to DNA skin care testing to nutritional therapy. Among the highlights is a personalized skin care service, called Gen Identity, that provides customers with targeted skin-care products based on their DNA. There's also a cryotherapy chamber by 111 Cryo, and an exclusive vitamin drip created with the Elixir Clinic that specializes in intravenous vitamin infusions. The new space has a retail element, stocking a selection of beauty products as well as a supplement offer that will complement the vitamin infusion treatments offered.

What: Bobbi Brown joined Lord & Taylor to introduce justBOBBI concept shops, blending exclusive products and digital content across select stores and online.

Why it is important: The integration of exclusive products and digital content demonstrates how department stores are evolving into experiential, omnichannel destinations to remain relevant and competitive.

Lord & Taylor’s collaboration with Bobbi Brown marked a significant shift in department store strategy, as the retailer appointed the renowned beauty expert as creative consultant and launched justBOBBI concept shops. These spaces, located in flagship and select stores as well as online, offered a curated selection of wellness, beauty, apparel, and accessories, reflecting Bobbi Brown’s holistic lifestyle approach. The shops featured exclusive items, such as a Parker Thatch tote and philanthropic t-shirts, alongside her best-selling book, creating a unique blend of commerce and content. The partnership also included a robust digital component, with weekly live streams and videos to engage customers beyond the physical store. This initiative not only capitalised on Bobbi Brown’s personal brand and expertise but also anticipated the industry’s move toward experiential retail, where curated environments and omnichannel engagement are key to attracting and retaining consumers. By updating the product selection monthly and integrating digital storytelling, Lord & Taylor positioned itself at the forefront of evolving department store models.

Lord & Taylor’s exclusive deal with Bobbi Brown

John Lewis is to introduce online fashion retailer Boden womenswear concessions to its department stores. The first five Boden concessions will open in October in London Oxford Street, Cambridge, Reading, Southampton and Oxford, with more planned for 2018. The range will also be sold on johnlewis.com. In launching their high street presence in John Lewis, Boden joins other online fashion brands including Hush and Finery. Last year, John Lewis opened five concessions with Hush and six with Finery and has since added a further 12 concessions with these brands.

As consumers seek more experiences rather than products and switch their spending to travel, retailers and fashion companies are responding by going with them. Online retailer gilt.com said that it is partnering with Celebrity Cruises and Starboard Cruise Services for the debut of Gilt at Sea, its first onboard pop-up shop experience. From December 3 to January 29, Gilt shops will bring a curated mix of resort fashion to passengers aboard cruise ships. The eight-week pop-up shops represent Gilt's second foray into physical retail, following the March 2016 opening of a shop within Saks Off 5th in New York. The Gilt at Sea shops will replicate the gilt.com experience, including insider deals, complete with on-board events, invite-only vintage trunk shows, and Gilt Style Ambassadors to provide shopping and styling advice. Customers will be able to shop a newly curated selection of merchandise each day, tailored around rotating themes, in categories including swim, sleepwear, casualwear, accessories, and gifts.

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South Korea's Shinsegae Department Store has launched Chicor, a Sephora-style beauty boutique in its Daegu flagship.

Luxury London department store Harrods has added a store navigation tool to its mobile app, allowing shoppers to find their location in-store, search for brands and create a route to their chosen destination. The Mobile Store Guide improves the in-store shopping experience and helps convert footfall into sales as it makes product search more straightforward. Interactive maps help shoppers find their way, while the app's curated content gives customers access to the latest news and in-store events. The new feature is now available to iOS users, with the Android version due to launch in spring 2017.

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Nordstrom is testing a feature that lets customers send gifts via email and allows recipients to choose whether to receive the item, exchange it for something else or take the value on a gift card.

South Korea's Hyundai Department Store Group is about to join the country's fashion top table. At a cost of $284.5m (KRW330bn) it is buying SK Networks Co's fashion division to create a powerhouse with KRW1.3trn in annual sales, positioned just behind E-Land, Samsung C&T and LF. Acquisition-hungry Hyundai will incorporate SK's 12 fashion brands into its own high-end women's fashion subsidiary The Handsome, acquired in 2012. The SK fashion division includes six licensed brands – Tommy Hilfiger, DKNY, Club Monaco, American Eagle Outfitters and Canali – and six own brands, which include Obzee, O'2nd and Rouge & Lounge. It has about 800 retail units, mostly department stores.

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Printemps has launched a new Web site featuring editorial content from Condé Nast as well as in-depth visual guides to the high-end department store's locations and services. The site aims to "awaken desire and create emotion before even visiting the store," the company said in a statement.

Just like "Great Place to Work" publishes an annual list of the best workplaces by country and region which for the US includes Wegmans, IKEA, Whole Foods and Nordstrom as retailers among the top 100, a company called 24/7 WallSt has published a list of the worst places to work based on employee comments. The top ten worst places to work in the US is led by Forever21 and includes retailers Sears, Kmart and department store Dillard's. Employees cite lack of values, career opportunities and trust in leadership compounded by poor work-life balance and low pay.

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In an interview on CNBC, Allen Questrom ex-CEO of JC Penney, Macy's, Neiman Marcus and Barneys described sales and discounts as a "cancer for department stores". Specialists like Uniqlo and Zara maintain traffic without constant sales. Furthermore, department stores should leverage their brick-and-mortar assets. These are valuable as is shown by online retailers such as Bonobos or Warby Parker opening stores. Department stores should worry that brands like Coach or Ralph Lauren are cutting back their wholesale shipments to department stores.

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The first edition of Harrods Magazine Arabia launched this month. "We want to be communicating with our key customer groups. And the Middle East is a key customer group. To put it into perspective, during the summer months, around half the spend of the Middle Eastern visitors in the U.K. is in Harrods" sais Michael Ward, the retailer's managing director. The 116-page title covers fashion, beauty, fine jewelry, watches and lifestyle, with all content chosen specially for Middle Eastern readers. The publication will reach existing Harrods Rewards customers based in the Middle East, and target discerning and high-net-worth individuals. The first edition of Harrods Magazine Arabia has been published in English, with plans for dual language editions next year

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Parkson has opened a new department store concept in Kuala Lumpur, expanding its fashion and beauty brand portfolio in a bid to attract younger shoppers. The 110,000 sq ft store is located at Sunway Velocity Mall, with a high level of flexibility built in for store-in-store and pop-up concepts for maximising the number of brands it can bring in. General manager Adrian Cheah said the store aimed to create a warm and private environment for customers to try products, particularly for beauty brands, with the store-in-store and individual brand stations retail format. Beauty brands that will be available in the pop-up space are a mix of European and Asian labels, and in fashion younger labels are brought in. A few key home and lifestyle tenants are also included in the assortment.

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Two Amazon grocery stores will open soon in Seattle, the company's home town. They will function around a drive-in concept with customers ordering online then staying in their car while their order is brought to them. The company is planning to grow its food and beverage business from its current $9 billion (1% market share in US) to $23 bn in five years. It will capitalise on its expertise in logistics and distribution, and the drive-in store would cut costs dramatically. Amazon is planning to open its fourth physical bookstore in Chicago next year and, apparently, has plans to start testing apparel stores.

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Check out some Christmas ads from retailers: Harvey Nichols have taken the best of Italy, while Marks & Spencer is counting on Mrs Claus to make an unforgettable Christmas.

Asian retail group Parkson will shut its last and only shopping mall in Hanoi this month after a string of closures in Vietnam over the past two years. The 11,000 sq m mall, Parkson Viet Tower, will cease operation on 15 December after eight years of operation, although the reason for the closure was kept under wraps. The group said the closure would not affect the business of other Parkson centres and shopping malls in Vietnam, or its membership programme in the country. This is the latest of a series of closure of Parkson shopping centres in Vietnam, including Parkson Paragon in Ho Chi Minh City earlier this year, and Parkson department store and Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower in Hanoi last year after years of consecutive losses.

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Kaufhof of Germany has unveiled its new concept at its Dusseldorf store. It is the beginning of a $1.1 billion modernisation programme over five to seven years. The 10 flagships will be remodelled totally while the rest of the chain will see its footwear, beauty and handbag departments changed. The Dusseldorf store has a new basement dubbed "Dream Concept" on 5000m² including a number of new shoe brands. It is transforming a "quasi self-service" concept to full-service. This is the first remodelling under the new owners HBC which took over the group in 2015 in a $3.2 bn deal.

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A recent report by Fung Global Retail and Technology looks at several European department stores including M&S, Debenhams, Galeries Lafayette and Kaufhof/Inno. It mentions the problems of middle-market positioning as well as the huge difference in department store density per inhabitant between the US and Europe.

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Selfridges has big plans for its high-end accessories space which is set to triple by 2018 to 60,000 sq ft offering 70,000 items as it creates "the ultimate global destination for luxury accessories" at its flagship on Oxford Street, London. The retailer is working with architect David Chipperfield to "bring greater meaning to each purchase" and "reinforce customers' appreciation of each product as a true investment rather than just a commodity".

Marks & Spencer has announced that it is to close its store in Paris on the Champs Elysees.  Although the official announcement will not be made until 8 November, it is widely thought that M&S is scaling back its international operations which saw profits fall by 37% last year. The 1400 m² Champs Elysees store was seen by some analysts as a very costly exercise by the current CEO's predecessor. M&S, which operates 480 stores across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, is currently cutting 525 head office jobs as well as reducing wages.

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Harrods of London has filed accounts showing a profit increase of 16.9% to £129.7m for the year 2015-2016, on sales up 2.6% to £788.9m. Harrods cited tough trading conditions due to terrorist attacks and the volatile economy. Nevertheless it has benefited from the interest of international tourists looking to capitalise on the weak pound following the Brexit referendum and is likely to continue benefiting for a while. The company has also introduced new brands such as Lululemon and other ath-leisure brands following current trends. Commentators have said that the trick for Harrods is to balance the mix of domestic shoppers and international customers, something which Selfridges and Liberty do well.

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