Luxury

Big luxury – is the luxury industry becoming the next big tech?

It might seem premature to float the idea of “big luxury”. After all, luxury and technology are two vastly different industries. And why worry about big luxury when we are still in the early days of dealing with big tech? But it is well worth investigating since both industries share one key feature – both …

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The geopolitics of luxury and end of low-risk globalization

The age of globalization has been an enviable growth engine for the luxury industry spearheaded by Western luxury giants like LVMH, Richemont and Kering. The last 20 years have been a story of steady growth with low risk and few obstacles to global expansion. But what are luxury’s prospects in the face of a shifting …

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Hudson Yards shopping entrance. Photo credit: Juhn Maing

Retail apocalypse or renaissance? The battle for two kinds of retail mastery

That retailing is being disrupted has become painfully obvious in the last couple of years. In 2017, the phrase “retail apocalypse” was coined to describe legacy retailers closing thousands of stores in the US. This has been usually attributed to the two-pronged attack by Amazon on price and convenience. Other reasons include excessive debt held …

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Downgrade Apple? Why Wall Street is missing the boat on AAPL

Right after Apple decided to no longer report unit sales going forward last Friday, investors and analysts have pummeled AAPL by downgrading and selling off the stock. So is this reporting change innocuous or is it sign of troubling times ahead? In the words of one analyst, this reporting change at least creates the appearance that …

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Menswear brands are the star at Pitti Uomo. But what really makes a brand shine brightly?

Digital connoisseurs and the challenge for menswear brands

“Italians work a lot on product and in France, you work a lot on the marketing of product. If you integrate the two, I think you can have a great story and that’s what I was doing [at menswear brand Berluti] and what I’m doing [at Zegna].” – Alessandro Sartori, Artistic Director, Zegna (WWD, April …

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Rarity and connectivity – the case of Sicilian tailoring

This week’s Economist highlights the EU’s plan to build a “Malmo-Palermo express” linking the north and south. The funding of a “Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor” is quite substantial. The reason for this investment is that the southern reaches of Europe around the Mediterranean have lagged on most economic measures behind the rest of western Europe for decades. …

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