Saks Fifth Avenue celebrated its new store design in Houston with three days of parties benefiting local charities while deftly raising the bar on the city's increasingly competitive luxury shopping scene. The design is the prototype for all future Saks Fifth Avenue stores, including those in New York and Hawaii, which are next on the remodel list

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Indonesian hospitality group PTT Family and acclaimed Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto are teaming up on a new multi-purpose dining and retail complex set to open in one of Hong Kong's hottest neighborhoods. The 8,000-square-foot development, called "Potato Head Hong Kong", is slated to open next month. It will house several retail and dining concepts including a store selling artisanal Indonesian items and a restaurant helmed by chef Antoine Audran. The development also features a wood-paneled Music Room that will host disco nights, DJ gigs and other events.

Google and Levi's showed off a new denim jacket with built-in smart fabric sensors that allow cyclists to control their music, answer a phone call or respond to a message. It is unique among clothing in that it's going into developer beta testing this fall and unusual among consumer electronics in that it can go into the wash.

The Levi's Commuter jacket, due for consumer release next spring, is an evolution of Project Jacquard, which Google announced at last year's Google I/O conference. It will work with Google apps like maps and messaging, as well as third-party programs like Spotify and Strava. No word on how much it will cost.

Google said it has plans for Jacquard beyond cycling, including smart clothing lines for athletes and for the workplace.

Japan's largest department store, Isetan Mitsukoshi, has announced that its full-year net profit fell 11.3% on higher expenses as it remodelled some of its stores. It dropped to 26.5 billion yen on sales up 1.2% to 1.3 trillion yen. It has been trying out new formats such as multi-brand cosmetics stores and an airport format. It also opened Japan Duty Free Ginza on the 8th floor of its Mitsukoshi Ginza store. The company expects net profit to fall again in the current year while operating profit should grow on sales forecast up by 5.7%.

Illustration 'Japanese Department store results' (png - 0.08Mo)

Valentino is collaborating with Vanessa Beecroft on 'Rockstud Untitled' Installation. The Italian fashion house is getting in on Beecroft's signature multimodel performance aesthetic to launch its "Rockstud Untitled" collection for pre-fall, hitting stores, including the Valentino flagships in Milan, Rome, London and New York City, as well as Bergdorf Goodman, today. The capsule is a unisex collection of classics — a trench, a crewneck sweater, a white shirt, a peacoat — with gold stud trim and labeled with a number from one to 12 on a canvas satchel in which the garment is packaged.

Bergdorf Goodman is the exclusive retail partner on the installation outside of Valentino's own store network. The installation opened on April 29 in the Bergdorf Goodman men's and women's stores with dedicated windows and will be on display until May 19.

Hennes & Mauritz latest fashion collaboration will be with Kenzo. The limited-edition capsule collection will debut in 250 select H&M stores and online on November 3.

The line includes apparel for women and men and accessories. H&M did not reveal price points or the size of the collection. Kenzo creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon said: "With this collaboration with H&M we want to think big, push the boundaries and bring the new energy of Kenzo to everyone around the world."

Expect Gap to hit the Amazon trail soon. The still-struggling casualwear chain's chief executive Art Peck told shareholders Wedensday that Gap is open to selling its merchandise on Amazon or via other third-party on-liners in the US. "We are always considering all of our opportunities beyond our traditional mix of channels and stores." Peck said. He noted that Amazon accounts for roughly one-third of all e-commerce sales in the US by this year and is projected to become the largest US apparel retailer next year. "To not acknowledge that and what it means to our strategy would be to have our head in the sand, and we do not have our head in the sand," he said.

Thousands of shoppers queued on April 28 at the opening of one of the largest malls in South Africa, set in middle-class suburbia between Johannesburg and Pretoria. The 116'000 square metre shopping centre is larger than Cape Town's V&A Waterfront and a rival to Sandton City in size.

The Mall of Africa will house over 300 shops, including global brands such as Zara, H&M, Cotton On and Starbucks. They want to attract the rising number of young consumers in Africa's most developed economy which has thrived on demand for commodities.

Shiny malls have sprung up throughout South Africa, creating thousands of jobs. But they come amid a backdrop of rising debt level. And this opening comes as the outlook for the economy worsens, rising interest rates and prices putting a squeeze on spending while demand for exports such as gold and other metals is depressed.

There are still two Nama department stores operating in Zagreb, Croatia. The main one next to the square on Ilica was founded by Austrians Carl Kastner & Herman Oehler in the 1870s (Kastner & Oehler, today headquartered in Graz, southern Austria operates a dozen stores). It later became a hotel before reverting to its retail origins.

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Giorgio Armani Beauty has landed at Bergdorf Goodman. The 355-square-foot space, which includes a spa room, opened at the end of April. The counter space carries the full range of Giorgio Armani Beauty products — 425 stockkeeping units — including color cosmetics, skin care and a fragrance and the Armani Privé line, the full assortment of which is only available in Giorgio Armani boutiques. The one-chair spa room — the only U.S. location — offers four facial treatments that are exclusive to Bergdorf's. Industry sources estimate the counter will do more than $1 million in retail within the first year of opening.

Galeria Kaufhof has announced further store closures: Berlin's Ostbahnhof will close in June 2017. The performance of the ex-Centrum has been apparently unsuccessful for some time. The group's Lust for Life concept in Aachen will also close in 2017. The "trend shop" concept will be continued in the existing store in Adalbertstrasse. Since 2010, the store portfolio of Galeria Kaufhof has been reduced by 12 stores. The owners of Kaufhof, Hudson's Bay of Canada, have extended the contracts of CEO Olivier van den Bossche and purchasing and marketing director Edo Beukema until April 2019.

For the second year in a row, Galeries Lafayette is strengthening its commitment to young creative talent by inviting one of the finalists of the Hyères Festival to create a capsule collection.

This year, Sophie Harand, finalist at the 2015 event, presents her collection of men's accessories, designed in collaboration with Galeries Lafayette.

The collection will range from €29.99 to €169.99 and will be available from September

21, 2016, at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, in selected stores of the chain, in BHV Marais and on the www.galerieslafayette.com website.

see press release

Eyewear brand Linda Farrow has released a special three-piece sunglasses collection for Lane Crawford, retailing for as much as $32,000 for a pair, the most expensive the brand has created to date. The highlight of the collection is the 18-karat yellow gold aviator design, which comes with white diamonds and 24-karat gold lenses. It retails for 245,000 Hong Kong dollars, or about $32,000. Available for the month of May, Lane Crawford has only one of each luxurious pair but buyers are able to order and further customize the designs if they wish.

After Barneys in New York, the Webster in Miami and 14 other high-end retailers, Kilomètre Paris is to hit Le Bon Marché. The French shirt brand, the brainchild of former editor Alexandra Senes, is to have a 345-square-foot pop-up space at the Left Bank department store in Paris in July. The line is made of 20 shirt models, including some authentic 19th-century white dress shirts and some featuring embroideries of travel destinations. In addition, she created exclusive pieces for retailers.For Le Bon Marché, she created a basket as a tribute to the square Boucicaut, the park in front of the department store. The antique shirts are priced at around $3,175, while the new pieces, that are hand-made in Mexico, are sold at around $975.

American department store JC Penney takes an in-store approach to its #SoWorthIt Mother's Day advertising, with a real-life interactive Pinterest board that brings together digital and brick-and-mortar concepts. Realising the crossover of mothers who Pin and mums who shop at JC Penney, the two companies teamed up to host boards at 10 malls around the US, supported by in-store shopping and makeover events geared towards making mothers feel special.

Australia department store retailer Myer will close two stores as it gradually scales back its footprint, while its smaller rival David Jones prepares to expand.

Myer announced on Friday that its Wollongong, New South Wales, store will close in October and its store in Orange, in NSW's central west, will close in January, putting at risk more than 100 jobs. The latest exits follow the planned closure of Myer's Brookside shopping centre store in Brisbane and will reduce the Myer footprint from 66 to 63 stores by the end of 2017.

Meanwhile, David Jones said it plans to add another 10 stores to its portfolio of 40 stores over the next five years, including moving into Myer's Wollongong Central site in late 2017 with a "new look" store. DJs already has a store in Wollongong, which will continue to operate for now. It will also open its first New Zealand store in Wellington and its first small format store in Barangaroo, Sydney, later this year.

Galeries Lafayette Group has launched an accelerator for retail and fashion tech start-ups in partnership with global innovation platform Plug and Play, known for its investments in companies including PayPal and Dropbox.

The Lafayette-Plug and Play accelerator will be based in a dedicated office in Paris. It will offer entrepreneurs services, workspace, contacts and capital investments. The coworking space will be open to outside mentors. Edoardo Manitto, vice president of innovation and development at Galeries Lafayette Group, said it would be Plug and Play's only partner in France for retail and fashion. "With this accelerator, Galeries Lafayette Group brings innovation to the next level by creating a collaboration platform with high-potential start-ups and invent with them the fashion and retail businesses of tomorrow," he said.

See Press release

A new project of Carrefour hyper, set to revolutionize the shopping experience of the visitors, has opened in the shopping center of Grand Prés city of Mons in Belgium. The goal of Carrefour was to design a universal store that could offer its customers a single, linear and continuous shopping environment, carrying the tagline: "Don't run your errands, live them". The Belgium store has a total of more than 30 thousand products, with particular focus on beer, wine and fresh produce. The strong point is that many of these products are made directly in stores and consumers themselves can see the production process (beer, chocolate, pizze …). The store also insists on the "Esprit Boutique": each universe has its own furniture and layout, this way the clients don't feel like in a supermarket but like in an actual store. Finally, Carrefour Mons explores all the digital possibilities, to give the client a unique experience: a digital wall to order heavy products (ex. packs of water), advices in the wine section, personalization of wallpapers and a selfie station in the textile department, among others.

Tourists are out there, but they're still not spending. That's the glum news from the latest Global Blue and Barclays research. In April, global tourist spending fell 12.8% year-on-year and by 15% in Europe. That follows on from March's 14.4% dip globally and a hefty 23% decline in Europe, the worst monthly result since Barclays' records began in 2010.

Within Europe, April tourist spending fell 23% in France; Germany dipped 20.3%; followed by the UK (-10.3%); Switzerland (-7.8%); Italy (-7.8%); and Spain (-6.8%). Russians also continued the decline with a 20.8% on-year spending fall in April. Meanwhile, tourist spending in the Asia-Pacific region was down 10.3%. Chinese consumers globally posted their second consecutive negative result six years with spending down 18.5% in April after declining 23.6% in March. Chinese spending in the Asia-Pacific region dipped 12.7% after falling 6% in March. In Europe, their spending was down 23.8% last month after sliding 35% in March.

"The recent crackdown measures put in place by the Chinese government are putting further pressure on Chinese consumer spending abroad, in addition to terrorist attack fears and biometric visa changes," said Barclays Research, which purchases and analyses monthly Global Blue spending figures.

"We believe the stricter measures, effective April 8, to reduce the level of gray parallel imports into China are having an effect on Chinese purchases abroad," it added.

Cell phones have become an increasingly relevant component of the shopper journey, and Neiman Marcus is embracing that connection.

The Dallas-based retailer will begin installing mobile phone charging stations in store locations nationwide. The free stations were made by Philadelphia-based ChargeItSpot and designed to match the store aesthetic. Neiman Marcus Group chief marketing officer Wanda Gierhart said initial testing of the feature came to Bergdorf Goodman in 2014 and to Neiman Marcus in 2015, with a "very robust" response.

A customer can plug in a mobile phone in one of the eight lockers, which locks using a user's mobile number. The service is free, but it's also an opportunity for Neiman Marcus to collect a shopper's email address, which makes it a great marketing touch-point.

Nannette de Gaspé Beaubien, the Canadian private equity executive-turned-cosmetics entrepreneur has launched a namesake collection of high-tech face and body masks at Selfridges in London. Youth Revealed Restorative Techstile Masques come in five varieties, targeting eyes, mouth, face, neck and hands. They go on dry and aim to deliver active ingredients that penetrate multiple layers of the skin. The "disruptive technology" of the masks involves the creation of a reservoir under the skin that continues to slow release ingredients for six to eight hours after it's been administered. The masks range in price from 60£ to 85£, and are exclusive to Selfridges and selfridges.com.

The worlds of travel and retail are converging at Lane Crawford. The Hong Kong retailer and Luxe City Guides have teamed up to create itineraries for five luxury trips- each built around a theme tying into the destination: "Fashion in New York," "Culture in Paris," "Wellness in Los Angeles," "Design in Tokyo," and "Culinary Delights in Bangkok." Travelers can book the high-end trips through Swire Travel. Each vacation features its own exclusive activities- the LA trip allows travelers to met "notable photographers" while the Paris sojourn includes a tour of "hidden underground clubs." Lane Crawford is promoting the trips at its stores by offering customized city guides and a range of merchandise it believes ties into each destination- like a black leather Alexander Wang backpack for New York and smiley face Joshua Sanders sneakers for Tokyo.

Sergio Bucher, currently vice president at Amazon Fashion Europe, has been named chief executive officer of the British department store Debenhams.The UK group said Bucher will join in October, succeeding Michael Sharp who will step down from the board on June 24.

Bucher has served as vice-president of Amazon Fashion Europe, since 2013. Prior to that, he was the general manager, retail and e-commerce worldwide at Puma. He has also held retail roles at Nike and Inditex where he led the start-up of its lingerie retail brand Oysho.

Amazon is expanding its private-label goods to include perishable foods, detergent, and baby products, among other things. The private-label goods would only be available to Amazon Prime members, similar to Amazon's Elements private label, which has sold on the site since 2014.

The new brands will likely appear on Amazon's site this month or early next.