What: Helene Valade, the director of environmental development for LVMH group, discusses the vision of luxe, how it looks and how it’s made concerning sustainability and reducing the LVMH carbon footprint.

Why it is important: As sustainability and reducing carbon footprints become more and more relevant to companies, it becomes important for luxury retail and fashion leaders to discover ways to lead in sustainability while continuing to inspire.

The Luxury of Engagement – Exceptional encounter with Hélène Valade of LVMH

What: A selection of interesting conferences that the IADS attended for the 2022 Retail Big Show held in New York.

Why it is important: We focused on 2 increasingly hot topics: sustainability, and digital (especially the Metaverse).

This non exhaustive selection of conferences that the IADS attended in New York includes:

• A conversation with the CEO of Target, Brian Cornell, who thinks that the most interesting outcome of the Covid-19 related crisis is the new corporate culture and cohesion that was created, and which is now an asset in the operations of the company,
• A exchange between the new NRF VP for Sustainability and the Senior Director for Sustainability at Walmart, on how to develop a sustainable mindset in companies. 2 hints: at the operational level, go for medium-range targets which are actionable, practical, and emphasize on the business advantages they will create. At the corporate level, consider implementing a Sustainable Board of Director composed of experts from outside the company, if not the industry
• A presentation of a selection of innovative concepts from GDR UK, where she talks about the store becoming increasingly a discovery and e-commerce fulfilment space, the “alt-commerce” replacing e-commerce, composed of entertainment, gamification, community, socialising and collaboration, and the Metaverse which could be very well a new channel,
• A presentation of the 8 top trends in retail as identified by Kantar
• A presentation on the promises of the Metaverse for retailers made by Wunderman Thompson Intellilgence where we have spotted an actionable and quick way for department stores to monetize their real estate assets: why not sell the “airspace” in stores for AR advertising, now that Shapchat has created Arcadia, a new division dedicated to this activity?

NRF big show 2022 - A selection of conferences

Retail Trends 2022

NRF Target CEO’s “vision” started long before pandemic

NRF Rothy’s and Walmart share insights on environmental sustainability in retail

Into The Metaverse

Challenges and promises of the Metaverse

The Robin Report: Nrf, come and gone

What: The webinar is the first of a four-part series that will analyze the outcomes of the recent Conference of the Parties (COP) climate change conference, highlight industry best practices, and outline potential net-zero and sustainability blind spots.

Why it is important: Sustainability keeps climbing higher on company agendas across the globe. Enterprise leaders must wrestle with wide-ranging stakeholder and policy interpretations about sustainable business operations and development.

Gartner Sustainability Strategy to Action

Watch the replay here

Author: Hubert Joly

What: The learnings of a seasoned CEO, who turned around the once-desperate Best Buy, about organisations, people and how to embark them into a new vision.

Why it is important: The book provides hands-on findings and lessons that can be applied quite easily, always with a larger strategical insight, but without the typical pathos and angelism usually found in books claiming to help CEOs to improve their organisations’ social skills.

Buy it on Amazon here: link

Book review The heart of business final

Former Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly Empowering Workers to Create ‘Magic’

What: A conference on how to use the Gartner Digital Disruption Toolkit to evaluate, track and plan for seven major disruptions.

Why it's important: As digital projects move from optimization to transformation, the ability to disrupt becomes critical. To cope with digital disruption, you must be able to recognize, prioritize and respond in the right way.

7 digital disruptions you might not see coming through 2025

Author:  Eswar S. Prasad

What: Prasad shows how these and other changes will redefine the very concept of money, unbundling its traditional functions as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value. The promise lies in greater efficiency and flexibility, increased sensitivity to the needs of diverse consumers, and improved market access for the unbanked. The risk is instability, lack of accountability, and erosion of privacy. A lucid, visionary work, The Future of Money shows how to maximize the best and guard against the worst of what is to come.

Why it is important: We think we've seen financial innovation. We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone. But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies. As Eswar Prasad explains, the world of finance is at the threshold of major disruption that will affect corporations, bankers, states, and indeed all of us. The transformation of money will fundamentally rewrite how ordinary people live.

Book review The future of money

The Economist Finance is changing dramatically

Buy it on Amazon here: link

What: The meeting was organised online on 21 October to get an update from markets.

Why it is important: 27 retail associations from across the world attended the meeting to hear from NRF's chief economist and vice-president, Carrefour’s general secretary and EuroCommerce's general director. They shared various statistics and insights for participants to have a better understanding of the current globel economic situation, as well as an outlook for 2022.

FIRA meeting takeaways

FIRA Participant list

FIRA Meeting Minutes

Jack Kleinhenz

Mark Mathews 

EuroCommerce

What: Organized by Luxury Venture Group, the Luxury Innovation Summit is a learning and networking event for innovative start-ups and senior-level business and creative

professionals from the luxury and fashion industry.

Why it is important: The conference pulls together CEOs, directors, partners, and owners of luxury brands to discuss the next generation of the luxury and fashion industry.

Luxury Innovation Summit

What: Industry leaders share perspectives into how pandemic-induced changes in consumer behavior have created pressure on retail inventory and operations. The webinar covers how day-to-day operations are dramatically improved using item-level RFID and setting the foundation for a new era in retailing.

Why it is important: Dean Frew from SML interviews Johan Strenstom from Stadium about how they use RFID post-covid and what the technology is offering them.

How Item-Level RFID Provides Significant Value for Retailers By Improving Inventory Accuracy

What: The NRF NXT is a webinar series every Wednesday in September covering the future of digital retail.

Why it is important: This week’s topic covered the topic “Artificial intelligence for commerce –Separating the hype from the hip.

Watch replay here

Artificial intelligence for commerce – Separating the hype from the hip

What: Paris Retail Week presents the e-commerce sector, dedicated to solutions for e-merchants, from digital marketing to logistics.

Why it is important: IADS attended the event to listen to key speakers as well as scout out promising solutions for members.

Paris Retail Week 

What: IADS attended two digital talks.

Why it is important: We gathered interesting insights about the sustainability issue in the sneakers market as well as fashion economic perspectives for the French market.

Première Vision - September 2021

What: IADS attended 6 digital talks on the future of retail.

Why it is important: We gathered interesting insights about what challenges retailers are facing after the Covid pandemic and how companies are planning to change for the better.

Financial Times Live 

Retailers have been put under extraordinary pressure for the past 2 years, and forced them to adapt to somewhat irreconcilable constraints, as outlined by David Bosshart, the former CEO of the GDI. How to deal with customers’ expectations of immediate satisfaction while, at the same time, they also expect from retailers commitments toward the environment and the society that are somewhat conflicting with this? What shall retailers pursue: long-term value by emphasizing their brand (but at the risk of running out of cash in the meantime), or compete with the “tech titans” for convenience and speed, not even knowing if they stand a chance?

The guest speakers each provided some insights and elements of reflection to answer this extraordinarily complex question:

• Sucharita Kodali, from Forrester Research, insisted on the fact that retailers had an opportunity to regain control over tech titans, or at least generate a new opportunity, by looking at alternative sources of revenue based on what they know how to do, just like what Amazon, Google or Facebook do,
• The CEOs of Hornbach Baumarkt (German DYI group), Denner (Swiss discount supermarkets) and Tegut (German supermarkets) discussed about power decentralization, trusting teams, considering societal evolutions to predict the future of business, and dealing with innovation with new stores concepts,
• The full e-commerce value chain was also represented, from Obsess which proposes to brands a different experience when it comes to e-commerce with virtual stores, Reflaunt, a resale facilitator, bookshop.org which aims at competing with Amazon on their original markets, books, or the legendary Ben Evans who gave his views on the evolution of tech and how it allowed the retail business to “unbundle”,
• Sustainability was also a topic of choice, with the CEO of Ecoalf (sustainable brand) and Green Pea (the first “green retail park”, opened last year in Turin, Italy) presenting their visions and actions.

The video captions are available here:

-    Link: <https://www.gdi.ch/en/71st-international-retail-summit-password-protected-area>

-    Password: IHT2021_ppa

71st International Retail Summit - full report

71st International Retail Summit website

Crespin

Evans

farinetti

gutberlet

Hunter

Irminger

kodali

What: Erwan Rambourg, author of “The Bling Dynasty” (2014) and “Future Luxe” (2020), shared his view on the current state of the Luxury inudstry with a selected group of professionals, alumni of a French business school. This allowed to have an informal yet meaningful conversation on groups, customers and strategies.

Why it is important: Luxury brands are a significant part of many IADS members’ businesses and today, questions regarding the ability to keep on collaborating with these brands are raising. IADS attended the conference to learn more about this analyst’s expectations and views on the shifts taking place in the industry.

Erwan Rambourg is Managing Director and Global Head of Consumer and Retail Equity Research at HSBC, after having started his career in LVMH and Richemont brands. He has also been a guest lecturer in many institutions (HKUST, Columbia University), columnist (Business of Fashion, Jing Daily) and has written two books on luxury, The Bling Dynasty (2014), Future Luxe (2020).

The key learnings of this conference are:

• Even though luxury as an industry is doing well so far (as in every crisis), the picture is less homogeneous at the regional level, and the situation is different in China, Europe and the US, with different dynamics with different factors,
• Female customers are empowering themselves and represent, according to Rambourg, the growth reservoir for luxury brands in the coming 10 years, especially for jewellery, cosmetics, accessories, wines and spirits,
• The negotiating power will remain in the hands of the larger brands, which are poised to become even larger and powerful, while the other option for smaller brands is to be either super specialised and good at what they do (Moncler) or totally disruptive. Days are counted for mid-sized traditional houses. None will disappear, but they will end up being eaten up by groups,
• Stores remain central in the luxury experience, even more at a moment when so many new customers are making their first purchases now. As a consequence, there is no doubt that brick & mortar business will remain a key component of the luxury groups strategies as a whole, and they will use digital to increase adherence between brands and customers, to be visible in virtual territories, as well as to ease customers journeys, but at the same time, they keep on investing in boutiques to enhance the experience,
• CSR is long, painful, costly and luxury groups are not there yet, but are under pressure to adapt, and fast.

IADS - Erwan Rambourg HEC

What: The WRC London Summit was held on 14 September

Why it is important: The guest speakers and retailers reflected on the past months to better address the future. Talks were also about digital transformation and how to take advantage of it by converging both online and offline. A fair share of the day was dedicated to the urging question of sustainability.

•    Retail and the post pandemic global economy from the European point of view

•    Winning consumer loyalty in an age of digital transformation by converging online and offline while favoring creativity

•    The industry leader’s forum: what was at stake when Covid happened

•    Rediscovering the magic of retail by mixing the best of department stores and AR

•    Winning retail business models for a post-pandemic world

•    The sustainability opportunity

•    Google and Alibaba insights

World retail congress

What: The NRF NXT is a webinar series covering the future of digital retail.

Why it is important: This week’s topic covered the future of flagship stores in the new era of

retail and how technology is being leveraged to create lasting experiential memories.

NRF NXT Webinar

Watch the replay here

What: The Fashion Tech Breakfast presented 4 fashion tech start-ups in clientelling, connected garments, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality.

Why it is important: IADS is spotting innovation in fashion and making sure the right and interesting ideas are communicated to members.

Fashion Tech Breakfast: 5th Edition

What: A very dynamic, monthly conference to introduce 3 startups selected by The Forge and Bain in one hour.

Why it is important: IADS is spotting innovation and making sure the right and interesting ideas are communicated to members.

What: The online event evaluates the future of ‘buy now, pay later’ solutions.

Why is it important: The rise of ‘buy now, pay later’ services has changed how people shop online. Within a few years, these start-ups have gone from virtually unknown to an integral part of e-commerce, opening up the concepts of credit lines and instalment plans to millions of consumers.

Attendees: Cathaleen Chen, Correspondent at BoF, Albert Saniger, Founder & CEO at Nate, Nathan Romano, Co-Founder at Onia.

Moderator: Brian Baskin, Deputy Editor at BoF.

Nate is a universal shopping app which navigates websites in the same way humans do. It understands web code and decides where to click and what to fill out. Share an item with Nate from any website, and tap buy. Nate launched a BNPL solution on the app.

Onia is a swimwear company. Women from 20 to 35 year-old are using Klarna, the BNPL option offered on the website. Klarna is mostly used for purchases under USD 100. The company doesn’t push customers to pay with instalment plans and doesn’t advertise about them. For a retailer, Onia confirms BNPL solutions are more expensive than credit card solutions, but the process is seamless comparing to archaic bank process. Klarna services, reporting and dashboards are very clear and efficient compared to what banks and credit cards companies are offering.

BNPL to grow bigger 

While BNPL solutions will develop even more in the future and become a regular payment method, participants all agree that they won’t replace credit cards even though younger generations don’t want to own one anymore.

The payment solution is already everywhere online and will develop more and more in stores. Afterpay has a set a partnership with Simon Property Group to develop BNPL solutions in its malls and stores. For retailers, it will also be an opportunity to offer a new version of their store credit card.

Through department stores offering BNPL options, luxury is also made accessible to younger customers in an unprecedented way but luxury companies are still reluctant to offer such payment solutions even considering the business opportunity they represent. BNPL will develop more and more in the luxury area as company won’t have any other choice.

Fintechs have more ambitions than offering BNPL solutions. For instance, Klarna is now a real bank in Europe. It’s fair to ask what those companies will become in the future: new Visa companies or new JP Morgan or Chase banks? Banks have data but they don’t have the tech mindset to develop innovative solutions: while they merge with fintechs?

Regulation is coming

Klarna’s app is designed to attract younger customers (it’s pink, its gamified…). But teenagers and young customers don’t understand the late payment and the potential fees that might occur. In that sense, more regulation is coming to protect immature customers. More regulation will also come to protect privacy.

Payments will be all digitalised

The future of payment is digital with no more in-store cash registers needed in the future (payments going through sales associates phones and tablets. This will be an opportunity for retailers to rethink stores as it will save space to be used in a better way.