What: A presentation by German data company Statista on how the nature of data, and how it is used, changed with covid.

Why it is important: One of the changes due the covid pandemic has been the situation of uncertainty in which businesses have to operate. They can no longer rely on being able to use data as they used to. They need different sources, different data, and they need it quickly and more frequently.

presentation - Statista webinar 2021

iads takeaways - Statista webinar 2021

• Circularity digital talk

Première Vision Paris trade fair is hosting a series of digital talks from 15 to 19 February 2021.

What: a talk about "Circularity – Vision and reality in the fashion industry"

Why it is important: the talk has offered a perspective on several initiatives taken by industrial textile companies as well as brands (please be informed it includes some sponsored content)

IADS takeaways - Première Vision: Cirularity digital talk

• Sourcing changes in 2020 and beyond

According to a presentation made at the recent Premiere Vision conference in Paris, research conducted by the IFM, the French fashion institute, backed up by information by the WTO, China is still key in terms of its share of the global textile market. However, it has been investing heavily in neighbouring countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia, helping them to take on a greater production role.

IADS takeaways - première vision: Sourcing changes in 2020 and beyond

French Ready-to-Wear federation conducted a video conference on 3rd February 2021 on digital wholesale (how to sell, how to buy, without being able to visit showrooms and meet people). Primarily intended for brands, there are some interesting learnings for IADS members too.

What

The French Federation of RTW (different from the French Federation of Fashion and Couture) helps its brand members by providing actionable information to adapt to the new market conditions. They organised a video seminar with a buyer, a fair and a virtual showroom to explain how the commercial job has changed.

Why is it important for IADS members

So far (and this is also validated by what we read in the press), the technological solutions helping buyers are solely focusing on placing orders (by proposing “super-Excel” solutions) but are not helping to discover new brands nor build relationships with brands. We believe at IADS that:

-    The future will not be 100% digital as the commercial relationship is key,

-    However digital is here to stay (more efficient and helps to save on costs),

-    It needs to be fine-tuned to the actual needs of multibrand buyers, instead of focusing on brands needs.

We provide for our members in addition to this recap a benchmark of buying platforms and discovery tools, to know what is available on the market now.

iads Report – What to learn from Digital Wholesale 

Wholesale videoconference - Watch the talk in video (in French):

Presentation - Benchmark: the platforms B2B digitals

What: The first in-person FIRA gathering after two years of videoconferencing.

Why it is important: Although not all members were present, it was a first glimpse of a return to normality, as well as the opportunity for IADS to meet other federations, including the IGDS which joined the FIRA back after several years of not being a member.

After almost two years of impossibility to meet due to travel restrictions, a part of FIRA Members were finally able to gather in New York on the day prior to the NRF Big Show opening. It was a good way to meet, often for the first time, other FIRA members. Also, this meeting was the opportunity for the IADS GM to finally meet the IGDS GM, as the Intercontinental Group of Department Stores joined again the FIRA this year, after having left the organisation a few years ago.

15 members were present, and 2 guest speakers were invited to share their views on retail trends and opportunities.

• In his introduction remarks, FIRA Chairman Jacques Creyssel shared his 4 topics of concerns: the long-term consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, the digitalisation of commerce and its implications, the sustainability topic and impact on margins, and the potential effects of a long-lasting inflation.
• GDR CEO Kate Anquetil exposed the 5 retail trends she sees for 2022: “come to me retail”, the store as an extension of the smartphone, “meta-vending”, sustainability and the Metaverse, which she sees as a third sales channel,
• Kearney shared the conclusions of their annual Global Retail Development Index, showing that for international retailers, Africa is probably the most promising market now.
• The NRF VP of CSR and Sustainability shared provocative thoughts on sustainability and the fact that no one really know what is encompasses. He came up with an interesting definition: sustainability is all about “creating net positive, environmental, social and community benefits”.
• Finally, the FDC (French Federation du Commerce) shared the result of their collaboration with the French government into trying to make retail jobs more glamorous, by providing more information to employees and employers through new dedicated online platforms.

Full Report FIRA Meeting Jan 2022 NY

The 2021 Global Retail Development Index™ - Kearney

Fira Jan 22 meeting participant list

Top 3 Priorities in retail worldwide by Jacques Creyssel

Global Retail Development Index by Mike Brown

Sustainability in retail by Scot Case

Last week, IADS picked out sessions from the NRF Chapter One online conferences:

• “Making sense of the aftermath of uncertainty” by WGSN’s Andrea Bell.

NRF 2021 WGSN - IADS Takeaways

• “Brand awareness to brand love: Ulta advances next-gen personalisation and loyalty” addressed by Kelly Mahoney from Ulta Beauty.

NRF 2021 Ulta - IADS Takeaways

• “Remapping the customer experience: a reinvention imperative” addressed by companies Verizon (Krista Bourne) and Suitsupply (Fokke de Jong)

NRF 2021 Verizon Suitsupply - IADS Takeaways

• “How sustainability is changing the retail landscape” addressed by the US sustainability managers of H&M, Abigail Kammerzell, and of Ikea, Jennifer Keeson.

NRF 2021 H&M / IKEA - IADS Takeaways

• “Retail’s rethink moment: Reimagining business as UNusual with Saks Fifth Avenue and lululemon” At the NRF Chapter One online conference, the CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue, Mark Metrick, and the president of global guest innovation of Lululemon, Celeste Burgoyne.

NRF 2021 Saks - IADS Takeaways

• “Retail’s hard reset: how cataclysmic events accelerate trends, transformation and innovation”  GDR gave a presentation by Kate Ancketill.

NRF 2021 GDR - IADS Takeaways

NRF 2021 GDR Presentation 

GDR’S KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM NRF 2021

Author: Doug Stephens

What: The latest book from Doug Stephens, written in the midst of the pandemic, in which he reviews and addresses the pandemic-induced changes in retail to anticipate the future of the industry.

Why it is important:  It is not all about Amazon or Ali Baba in the future, and other retailers have a word to say as long as they are able to define properly their purpose, a topic that is unfairly associated to unnecessary marketing, when it is actually crucial to define each retailer’s point of differentiation.

Book review Resurrecting Retail 2021

Buy it on Amazon here: link

What: the annual gathering of Business of Fashion to discuss the results of their 340+ brands survey.

Why it is important:  In-person retail is far from being dead, but stores are now an element of the brands’ media mix, which emphasizes the notion of community.

Business of Fashion gathered futurist Doug Stephens, Farfetch José Neves, Ali baba Group president Michael Evans, among others, to discuss the future of retail. From a brands’ perspective, Stephens mentions that their only way to counteract what he calls Apex predators (Amazon, Ali Baba…) is to make sure they have a clear purpose, in other words, the question of the brand alone is the ultimate answer for a consumer. This is also valid for department stores and will be a topic for one of our Cross Function meetings this year.

Another point of discussion was the notion of last-mile: the convenience of delivery is not a factor of loyalty. Retailers have to rethink this important moment in the customer journey to ensure the last mile also conveys the experience they would have had in store.

VOICES 2020: Retail in the Roaring ’20s

FIRA organised on 14 October 2020 its first mid-year meeting in full video-conference format, from 2pm to 4 pm Paris time, in a very similar manner with what we did at IADS for the General Assembly on 29 and 30 October 2020. 29 delegates from across the world were attending the Zoom event, to hear and listen to FIRA delegates as well as outside speakers from Visa, Kantar and McKinsey.

Although the event, by definition, was mainly centred on FMCG goods, it helped to have a global understanding of the situation worldwide.

full report: FIRA mid-year meeting 2020

To go further:

McKinsey & Company: The Great Consumer Disruption

Kantar: How COVID-19 is transforming FMCG and retail around the world

At the recent World Retail Congress (connected), after a series of speakers and panels on a diverse range of issues, a number of awards were made by international juries. Among the notable ones were:

• Stuffstr, a sustainability business in re-commerce which allows retailers to develop their post-sale life of goods. It has been applied at Adidas and at John Lewis where customers used it to sell back approximately 20% of everything they had purchased at the store over the last five years.
• SM SuperKids Day at the Mall of Asia was rewarded as the best customer experience in malls. It was a series of events involving bowling, skating, music and more which kicked off Kids Month at SM in the Philippines.
• The Retailer of the Year Award which was based on a specially expanded set of criteria to take into account the covid crisis. Exceptionally this year, it was given to two retailers: Alibaba and Walmart. In his acceptance speech, the Alibaba president made clear that Alibaba was not, strictly speaking, a retailer, but rather a business which enables brands to connect with customers.

Presentations can be seen on the WRC website 

Retail is currently living through extraordinary times which have had a major impact on its traditional ways, on its context, on its customers and its employees. Some of the most striking elements of this disruption:

• Cities are being reconceptualised in terms of traffic, pollution, services, travel, and experiences in general, in such a way that the department store, which has traditionally been such a constituent part of the city, will have to rethink its role.
• One of the changes in the city is an interest in the local. That is, for retailers, as well as other services, to focus in more detail on local customers through their assortment and their services.
• Technology will play a part in this and, although technology was a major topic in many areas before the pandemic, covid has focused on specific things such as payment, delivery and communication, as well as the possibility of enhancing sustainability.
• However, it is also clear that we cannot rely entirely on technology to shield us from the unexpected. In this sense, there are lessons to be learnt from the covid pandemic about how to cope and react to other types of risk, such as those related to weather, cybersecurity of other biological disruptions. Risk management needs to become a more integral part of our businesses, together with flexibility and reactivity.
• This aspect of running our businesses emphasises the importance of leadership and management, and the ability to deal with new forms of work, of shopping, and of caution and fragility among our customers.

70th International Retail Summit - full report

70th International Retail Summit website

Bring the future into focus

![2020 CONF NRF, NYC

click here for nrf 2020 recap

Nordstrom: the success lies in balance

![Nordstrom: success lies in balance

Nordstrom Group co-president Erik Nordstrom gave an interview at NRF on how success in today’s highly competitive selling environment lies in balance. [read interview below]

read interview: Nordstrom: success lies in balance 

Author: Richard Baldwin & Beatrice Weder di Mauro

Publisher: CEPR Press

![Economics in the time of COVID-19

Comments: *This is an e-book published as a quick response to the coronavirus epidemic by the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research (cepr.org). This is a network of 1300 researchers in economics from major institutions in Europe, formed since 1983 into a “think.net”.

The book consists of 14 chapters on a range of different issues from regional impacts to the lessons from past outbreaks as well as the effects of trade and travel, monetary policy, banks and finance.*

For example, it discusses the central role of China as “the workshop of the world” in textiles as well as Italy in Europe and the US in the Americas, and “supply-side contagion” via international supply chains. This represents a danger of permanent damage to the current trade system, leading to a potential push to repatriate supply chains.

However the epidemic plays out in time, it is clear that the effects will be felt in many areas across the world and that economics may have to adjust as a consequence.

Download the e-book for free below

e-book: Economics in the time of COVID-19

Author: Vikram Mansharamani

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Comments: *Vikram Mansharamani treads a very delicate line in this book: he argues that we have perhaps come too far in relying on experts, protocols and computer-based systems, and that we have outsourced our own thinking. He advocates re-appropriating our autonomy by learning once again to think for ourselves. The problem, for him, is that our complex data-filled world has forced us to rely increasingly on those with certain skills in sometimes very narrow areas.

There is no doubt that this is a most topical theme. The recent covid-19 pandemic has generated a great deal of interpretation and advice by experts on the origins, spread and cures for the disease. These are often complex and difficult to understand by the layperson.

Which is partly why the pandemic has also generated in parallel an astonishing array of popular theories including 5G, and the wrath of God, to explain its origins, as well as self-injection with disinfectant, and untested drug cocktails to cure the condition.

The recent rise in populism across different nations was often based to a large extent on a rejection of expertise which, it was argued, had not come up with satisfactory solutions to very real problems. This argument has been made in relation to business, to economics, to politics and others.

The answer is of course an integration of human judgement and intelligence with the information sources we cannot all possibly hope to master, in such a way that we can harness the value they provide without undermining our ability to think for ourselves, and without therefore relinquishing our autonomy.

Atul Gawande in his “Checklist Manifesto” argued for simple tools (such as a checklist) to be used in certain situations to help pilots or surgeons improve their daily practice.

The “bounded rationality” of Nobel laureate Herbert Simon can be shifted from “good enough” to better if we learn how to integrate systems into our decisions. Similarly, Gerd Gigerenzer argues that decision making under conditions of uncertainty relies on “smart heuristics” or rules of thumb which is not arbitrary but rather a very human kind of expertise.

It is certainly the case that outsourcing our thinking is not only an abdication but also can be dangerous. Outsourcing expertise, on the other hand, reinforces the role of the intelligent generalist, which Mansharamani has argued elsewhere is the real skill for the future.*

article: harvard lecture - think for yourself

the beatles - think for yourself

Author: Leonard A. Lauder

Publisher: Harper Business

Comments: *In his memoir published last month, Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies Leonard A. Lauder – whom many IADS CEOs have met or indeed personally know - recounts the story of his mother’s eponymous business founded in 1946 and its transformation through his own vision and impetus into a powerful international beauty company and a beloved iconic brand. Through many stories of personal adventures and business endeavours, Mr Lauder shares the life and business lessons he learned along the way, which may well find a new resonance in today’s troubled times.

The company is currently chaired by his son, William Lauder; and other members of the family are involved in the business.*

Author: Margaret Heffernan

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Comments: *In this book, Margaret Heffernan turns her attention to a topic that absorbs most business leaders, and the rest of us too: how to think about what the future holds.

Gazing into the future is not fruitless, she argues, but it is unnerving and hard work. Lazy and fearful, we are far too quick to reach for overblown gurus, or misleading data or other useless guides. Even a good tool, such as GPS, can dull our senses.*

*Echoing the spirit of the last book reviewed on this site (Think for Yourself), Heffernan emphasises that the importance of forecasting is not whether forecasters get it right or not, but rather what they provoke in others. If they are good, then they provoke independent thinking in others.

“What matters most isn’t the predictions themselves but how we respond to them, and whether we respond to them at all,” she writes. “The forecast that stupefies isn’t helpful, but the one that provides fresh thinking can be.”*

Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to friendships, this book challenges us to resist the false promises of technology and efficiency and instead to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.

Author: John Kay and Mervyn King

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Comments: In an extraordinarily prescient book, the well-known economist from Oxford and the ex-governor of the Bank of England teamed up to publish this book in March 2020, just as the covid pandemic was getting a grip. Some uncertainties, they argue, are resolvable. The insurance industry’s actuarial tables and the gambler’s roulette wheel both yield to the tools of probability theory. Many situations in life, however, involve a deeper kind of uncertainty, a radical uncertainty for which guidance tools are lacking. Radical uncertainty concerns events whose determinants are insufficiently understood for probabilities to be known or forecasting possible.

The authors’ target is the standard approach to uncertainty in economics and related disciplines, which requires a comprehensive list of possible outcomes with well-defined numerical probabilities attached. This is an impoverished and, at times even fraudulent, approach to decision-making, they argue. Apart from stable and repeated situations, probabilities do not exist; or they and their possible outcomes are unknowable; or all the above at once. All that probabilistic analysis does in other cases — usually where good decision-making matters most — is, at best, give a false sense of precision.

Just at the moment when we are all wrestling with the uncertainty of a world beset by a virus epidemic, in which we can not even predict when our stores will open, let alone what the future of work will look like and whether any recognisable consumption patterns will remain, we need an alternative to classical risk management tools such as those in use at insurance companies. We need something resembling much more closely what Gerd Gigerenzer at the Max Planck Institut in Berlin has called “heuristics”. He argues that when the risks, consequences and alternatives are known, we may safely use expected utility theory. In a situation of uncertainty however, we should use heuristics.

Although Kay and King’s alternative to probability models seems to be, roughly, experienced judgment informed by credible and consistent “narratives” in a collaborative process, Gigerenzer’s heuristics offers a far more practical and usable alternative.

See Gerd Gigerenzer videos of TED talks:

• How do smart people make smart decisions? | Gerd Gigerenzer | TEDxNorrköping
• Risk literacy: Gerd Gigerenzer at TEDxZurich

The takeaways

Why do big players like Amazon fail in the Chinese market? Where does a human workforce create added value for customers? How can stationary retail continue to function in the future? - These were questions asked by retail experts at GDI’s 69th International Retail Summit.

takeaways from GDI’s 69th International Retail Summit

![GDI’s 69th International Retail Summit TAKEAWAYS

The theme: More Retailing, Less Retailers: New purpose in a new ecosystem

The mechanics of retail are simple: procure goods cheaply and place them on the shelves with a decent margin. But the ecosystem of consumption and value add are being reconfigured, and roles are changing. Fewer retailers are needed, and time comes before space in the always-on world; the right product must be available in the right place both faster and more agile. This means retailers must acquire new skills or enter into innovative partnerships. An entrepreneurial – not managerial – attitude is required. The retail world of tomorrow belongs to those who take initiative.

The 69th International Retail Summit at GDI will tackle the following questions:

• Convenience and sustainability: full stomach or morals first?
• How can we create customer relationships in an era of total digital transparency?
• What do fragmentation, niches and small volume mean for traditional retail?
• What will brands provide in the new ecosystem?
• Location, location, geolocation – what role does physical location play?
• Which technology trends are actually relevant?
• ... and, once again: what exactly will we need retail for in the future?
• The power play between retail and industry is replaced by cooperation.

more information on 69th International Retail Summit

World Department Store Forum 2019

TOKYO

The 2019 edition of the World Department Store Forum finished its two-day run in the Japanese capital Friday, after presentations and talks by more than 20 retailers, experts and industry leaders.

The event’s theme was the role of department stores in mega cities, but one topic came up more than any other over the course of the conference: the importance of experiences in the future of retail.

Other things touched on throughout the two days included the growth of mega cities and midsized cities, creating department stores that are destinations that offer something online shopping cannot, how to get customers into stores (and how to get them to stay), renovating and innovating historic buildings, infusing empathy into the retail experience and using department stores to anchor communities.

Click here to read some of the highlights

Reports

WRC 2019 - Day 1 Report

WRC 2019 - Day 2 Report

WRC - POST EVENT REPORT

Videos

video: WRC 2019 DAY 1 - highlights

video: wrc 2019 day 2 - highlights

Winners

world retail awards 2019

More information

world retail congress website

NRF 2019 – A selection of takeaways

Introduction

The NRF 2019 convention reached a new record with nearly 40 000 attendees (up 10%) from 100 countries.

President and CEO Matthew Shay told delegates to the Federation of International Retail Association Executives (FIRAE, now renamed FIRA), that 2018 had been a good year for retail in the US. Although no definitive figures were available because of the government shutdown, it was expected that retail sales will have grown by around 4.5% in the year. Other countries could not all report such upbeat figures.

The main issues for US retailers during the year had been tax, trade and immigration. For others around the world, issues such as uncertainty, and the consequent need for agility, customer centricity, the search for new business models, were mentioned. All agreed that the world was now characterised by increasing polarisation, and that this had a parallel in retail.

Main themes

China is the future

Chinese presence at the conference was important, both in terms of attendees and in terms of presentations. Large companies such as Alibaba, and JD.com were present, referenced, and contributed presentations. But there were a number of smaller companies also.

Stand out features were retail models, including e-commerce penetration highest in the world, and tech innovations used in business such as drones, facial recognition, robots, cashless and cardless payments….

Intelligent retail

A number of technologies appear to be on the verge in terms of implementation, and the distinction from past years is that talk is not about long-term future “wow” tech, but more about the application of technological innovation in stores. AI is now increasingly used in retail and in stores for pricing, for example.

In the same way, there is increasing talk of types of partnerships in practice such as Macy’s with Story, Marxent and B8ta.

Zalando’s Algorithmic Fashion Companion (AFC) is an example of the application of machine learning in retail: it suggests other items customers can buy, like a human stylist would. In other words much more sophisticated than a common recommendation tool, it works by identifying appropriate outfits. This increases order size, which was precisely the problem behind the recent profit warning by Asos.

Customer experience

There is increasing talk of “frictionless” shopping and the frictionless customer experience. The aim is to make retail simpler for the customer in particular in their experience of transactions, ordering, payments, deliveries… However, this emphasis on frictionless comes with a warning: a frictionless experience can generate a “slippery” or fickle customer. There is a certain amount of friction lying behind engagement and loyalty and human relationship with the customer.

The New Retail

Although this is a phrase attributed to the founder of Alibaba, there is a definite interest in exploring new business models in retail. This sense of renewal is powered partly by technology, partly by leadership, and partly by customers. Examples such as the “recurrent revenue model” in which companies bind the customer with a membership commitment, are arousing interest (partly as a result of the Amazon Prime phenomenon); similarly, the “retail as a service model” (RaaS) as used by B8ta is discussed, as well as the platform model which is now used by amazon and Alibaba as well as the tech companies. (See also Taskrabbit, Caastle, Poshmark for examples.)

Although many examples of traditional retail were presented with an emphasis on getting the basics right (notably Target and Lowe’s for example), they were nonetheless using modern methods to get those basics right. Macy’s, actively exploring collaboration and a number of presentations by more recent retail formats (see above) underlined the many-faceted aspect of retail today. Retail covers a much broader spectrum of models than it has done in the recent past.

Values in retail

Responsible retail and doing good were almost ubiquitous in the NRF conference presentations, reflecting a massive growth in retailers’ preoccupation with helping communities, “giving back”, ethical standards, sustainability, as well as authenticity and purpose. The issue of diversity, both gender and ethnicity, were a big part of the considerations of the show with a “girls’ lounge” devoted to gender questions.  While some talked of foundations set up to help certain targeted groups in society, others emphasised sustainability, “woke” values, wage levels, and even inequality. Some retailers made a case for their own values such as Brandless, or Warby Parker, while commentators invoked larger political issues of ethics and the social duties of retailers (see Scott Galloway).

Download Takeaways from NRf 2019

Innovation Area

The girls' lounge

AI with JD.com, Guess, MarkableAI, and Coresight Research

International overview with Ira Kalish, Deloitte

Macro trends with Kara Swisher, Janet Yellen, and Deloitte

Forecasts with Scott Galloway, L2 Gartner

Macy’s partnering with Story, Marxent and B8ta

Presentations

Recordings of sessions

click here for recording of sessions

Articles about the conference

click here for articles about NRF 2019

City guide

New York: opening 2018-19

Author: David T. Courtwright

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Date: 2019

Comments:*Professor Courtwright from North Florida has written several books on addiction and has become an expert. Here, he extends his reach from drugs such as opiates to a range of activities including internet porn, gaming such as Assassin’s Creed, shopping, and Big Macs, which he claims, reward the same human brain’s centres driving us to addiction. A sufficient number of businesses are involved in this process to justify calling it “the age of addiction”.

“Addictions”, he writes, “begin as journeys, usually unplanned, toward a harmful endpoint on a spectrum of consumption”. This has led to what he labels, “limbic capitalism” with reference to the limbic system of the brain, held to support emotion, behaviour, motivation, and memory. Of course, addiction may be social as well as biological.  Thus, “limbic capitalism”, for Courtwright, refers to a technologically advanced but socially regressive business system in which global industries, often with the help of complicit governments and criminal organisations, encourage excessive consumption and addiction.*

Listen to audio interview of the author on this book:

Audio interview of the author

And see article from Boston Globe on The Age of Addiction and compulsive shopping:

boston globe article: Why we shop and shop and shop

Author: Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Date: 2019

Comments:Writer and speaker Marcus Buckingham, known among others for his TED Talk, and his co-author Ashley Goodall explode nine common myths about the workplace. For example, the widely accepted view:

• that people at work crave feedback;
• that an organisation’s culture is key to its success;
• that strategic planning is essential;
• that competencies should be measured and weaknesses shored up;

These are taken for granted truths of the workplace. According to the authors, however, they cause dysfunction and frustration, resulting in workplaces that are a mere shadow of what they could be. These “lies”, for the authors, constitute the fake news of the workplace. They emerge from a desire for conformity. Thus the emphasis and belief in work culture presumes a uniformity of experience across the company. In fact, the opposite is true, and work experience depends more of the team people are working with. The lie of company culture thus misses what is most valuable to companies and people.

Similarly, feedback puts people into fight or flight mode and impairs learning; it imagines that learning is a question of telling you what you can’t do, rather than understanding what you can do; and third, it presumes that excellence is the same for everyone and therefore that feedback can say how far you fall short of it, rather than understanding that excellence is profoundly and wonderfully different for each of us.

Freethinking leaders understand the power of individual uniqueness and that the goal should be to focus less on top-down planning and more on giving reliable, real-time intelligence; that rather than try to align people’s goals we should try to align people’s sense of purpose and meaning; that people don’t want constant feedback, but rather helpful attention. This is the real world of the subtitle.

 See videos by Marcus Buckingham

read: The Feedback Fallacy by Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall

Author: Simon Sinek

Publisher: Portfolio

Comments: *Simon Sinek, speaker and author of Start with Why, has turned his attention to what he calls “infinite games”, types of games unlike “finite games” of football, or chess, which have no clear winner, changeable rules and no fixed endpoint. These are the types of games which fit business today and yet leaders still talk about “winners” or who is “the best”. He give the example of Microsoft talking about how they were going to best Apple; while Apple was emphasising how they were going to help teachers to teach and students to learn.

There are five key elements to the infinite game: having a just cause; trusting teams; having a worthy rival; show existential flexibility; and have the courage to lead.

See videos below:*

video: The Infinite Game: How to Lead in the 21st Century

Most Leaders Don't Even Know the Game They're In

Author: Dana Thomas

Publisher: Apollo

What: A panorama of the sustainability initiatives from production to selling steps, with a didactic approach enabling everyone to understand what is at stake

Why it is important: Written in 2019, Thomas refers to brands, labels and organisations that either pivoted or disappeared since then. Moreover, the pandemic in 2020 has changed a lot of things and now sustainability is much more a must-have for all value chain players than at the time of writing. However, her insights are still very much valid as Fashion is slow to reform, and such books help to diffuse among general public ideas about sustainable initiatives and the reason why consumption patterns and attitude towards garments (especially in the West) should change, after 20 years of so of fast fashion domination.

Dana Thomas, who lives in Paris, has been the fashion and style columnist for many newspapers and magazines: The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post. She has also written books about legends from the fashion world, Alexander Mc Queen and John Galliano. Prior to this book, her best seller was Deluxe: how Luxury lost its luster, a deep dive into the mechanisms of the luxury business models.

Dana Thomas starts her book by reminding us of the Zara jacket Ms Melania Trump wore in Texas in 2018, with “I really don’t care, do you?” written in the back. Leaving aside any political comment, Thomas recalls that Zara, in 2017, produced 450 million pieces, each of them being worn on average seven times before being thrown away. The rise of fast fashion over the recent decades has accustomed customers to think that garments are perishable and cheap products, a mindset which has some severe consequences:

• The system is unsustainable on the long range (in 2018, 80 bn garments were bought in the world, and it is expected, if the growth rate stays the same, that this value will grow by +63% within 2030, from 62 to 102 million tons of garments a year). Fashion as an industries represents a quarter of total carbon emissions worldwide during the production process, not even taking into account the fact that unwanted clothes are generally thrown away without any circularity.
• Due to the competitive production costs in emerging economies, it has destroyed vast areas of the production capabilities in developed countries: in 1991, 56,2% of all garments sold in the US were made in USA, a portion that fell to 2,5% in 2012, leading to the loss of 1,2 million jobs,
• Factory workers from emerging economies producing the clothes are not protected, often subject to harassment, overexploitation and human rights abuses. 98%of them are paid less than the minimum vital salary according to Thomas.

Thomas conducts a journey through the fashion system by interviewing, and explaining what is at stake, various brands and production units. This allows her to dive progressively, along with the reader, into the secrets of the industry.

The case of Mary Katranzou allows her to explain the seasonality process and how collections are produced, leading to an historical perspective on how the worldwide production evolved. Thomas ends this part by explaining the competitive advantages of Zara which led to its rise, before also describing to what extent the business and industrial model of fast fashion is not sustainable on the long range.

The study of some factories in LA lead to a focus on the working conditions in the industry. Thomas provides with an historical perspective, explaining what was at stake and giving a glimpse of the negotiations and fights that happened in the past to improve working conditions in the “west”, which,  unfortunately, did not trickle down in emerging countries such as Bangladesh, leading to major catastrophes such as the Tazreen building fire in Dhaka in 2010, and the Rana Plaza in 2013. Thomas explains how this affected western brands and how they had to deal with the situation while also preserving their sales, leading to unsatisfactory solutions.

The author uses the case of the blue jean to explain the rise and fall of major brands such as Levi’s, going through an industrialisation and a de-industrialisation process all along the 20th century, and the solutions found more recently for the blue jeans producers to produce differently (locally and more sustainably). She then explores the initiatives on various topics such as cotton production (Chanin), “rightshoring” (bringing back the production centers) (Cornejo, Theory), slow fashion ventures (Momotaro jeans in Japan), and, above all, initiatives to make the new system profitable.

Stella Mc Cartney is taken as an example of commitment at a large level (at the time of writing, Mc Cartney was still part of the Kering group), along with the Higgs Index (see our Exclusive article on the topic here),and technical initiatives: Modern Meadows (lab-grown leather), Bolt threads (lab-grown silk), Evrnu (artificial cotton 100% made from used garments), Worn Again and Aquafil (circular initiatives to infinitely recycle garments), Iris Van Herpen and her collaboration with Daniel Widrig (the first couture dress to be 100% printed in 3D), Unmade (made to request knitwear). Ultimately, she also explains that there are different ways to sell fashion, with initiatives such as Modaoperandi (order straight from the fashion show), matchesfashion (local showroom), le Bon Marché, Selfridges (including its sustainable commitments and the fact that it is part of IGDS), Amazon, the Real Real, runt the runway, Panoply (closed since then).

She concludes by hinting that there are many initiatives to change the way garments are made, but ultimately, the responsibility is shared with the customer, who should review its consumption needs and attitude towards clothes.

Buy it on Amazon here: <https://www.amazon.fr/Fashionopolis-Price-Fashion-Future-Clothes/dp/1789546060>