With lots of interesting highlights in the world of retail, Dressipi, the experts in retail personalisation, have put together July’s top stories to keep you up to date.
1) Push for Retailers to Become More Sustainable
The Drapers Sustainability Report was released this July and centred around creating a circular business model for fashion. This includes:
- Increasing clothing recycling
- Reducing the industry’s reliance on raw materials, e.g. Cotton
Rebecca Thomson, Head of Commercial Content, Drapers highlighted, “Fashion is one of the world’s most polluting industries. Its operational model is so unsustainable that profits and margins are likely to be eroded by 2030 as resource costs rise.” After years of talking about the unsustainability of the fashion industry, and shocking facts, many retailers are now introducing sustainable initiatives to create more circular models.
- Reported in Vogue, “a week on from the company’s pledge to ban cashmere, silk, down and feathers across its entire platform by the end of January 2019, ASOS is launching an initiative to educate its designers on sustainability.”
- John Lewis is another retailer who recently introduced a sustainable initiative. The Guardian explained, “Customers can arrange through an app to have any unwanted clothing that they bought from John Lewis collected from their home, and they will be paid for each item regardless of its condition.”
- The H&M Group is a leader of sustainability in the fashion industry. Among many other things, they aim to use “100% recycled or other sustainably sourced materials by 2030” and aim to collect “25,000 tonnes of unwanted garments each year through its in-store garment collecting service by 2025.” (Drapers Sustainability Report).
You can read the full report here.
2) Amazon Prime Day — Bigger and Better Than Ever
Amazon Prime Day is one of the fastest growing sales holidays of the year, with an estimate from Wedbush Securities (Retail TouchPoints) announcing “Amazon reeled in $4.2 billion throughout the 36-hour promotion”. Amazon uses Prime Day to tempt shoppers into the Prime membership programme, with deals only being available to Prime members.
According to Fashion Network, “More than 287,000 items of clothing and 400,000 beauty products were purchased by Britons on Amazon Prime Day this year, marking the busiest shopping event of the year in the UK so far.” Apparel had the highest discount levels.
All retailers are under threat from Amazon, and other retailers such as eBay created their own Sales Day in an attempt to rival Amazon. In January, it was reported that Amazon was ‘set to overtake Macy’s to be the largest seller of clothing to Americans this year’.
However, Internet Retailing reported it was not all bad for other retailers — according to data from Criteo, “Beyond Amazon, UK retailers showed a 13% uplift in sales across high-performing computing and high-tech products, with sales surging by 22% during Prime Day and browsing 17% ahead”.
3) Nike Launches New Tech Developments
Retailers are always finding new ways to connect with tech-savvy customers. In June, both H&M and Harvey Nichols announced their plans to try to bridge the gap between online and offline experiences. This July, Nike is trying to do the same by launching the following:
- Live-Concept Store
Reported in RACKED, Nike has launched their first ‘live-concept store’, in Los Angeles. It includes features such as being able to text the store and request that a new pair of trainers (or another product) be handed to you at the curb, just like a drive-thru. Michael Martin, Vice President of Digital Products, Nike, highlighted, “We wanted to optimize for speed and convenience.”
- In-Store Shopping App
Hypebeast reported that Nike has launched the Nike App at Retail. This app will let customers:
- See if their size is in store, allowing for same day reservations
- NikePlus members will be given access to special Nike products, exclusive discounts, and partner awards
- Scan barcodes to learn more about any product and find more sizes and colours
4) Missguided’s Partnership with Love Island
Reported by Marketing Week, Missguided has joined forces with ITV’s reality show, Love Island “in an effort to drive awareness of the brand”. Kenyatte Nelson, Chief Customer Officer, Missguided, highlighted that aside from Instagram, nothing allows Missguided to reach its core 16 to 29-year-old female audience with the same efficiency as Love Island. Missguided told Marketing Week that it has seen sales increase by around 40% during the evenings Love Island is on TV, with the trajectory ‘ratcheting up’ as the weeks go on.
Missguided sends free clothes to the Love Island contestants every few weeks to suit their individual style, and with over 3 million people watching Love Island every night, this gives Missguided access to large amounts of potential customers, watching contestants dressed in their products.
Retail Gazette also stated that Missguided is not the only retailer profiting from the hit reality show. “Superdrug saw both profits and revenues rise. In the 12 months to December 30, revenues edged up 2.3% to £1.2 billion, while pre-tax profits jumped 16% to £92.9 million.”
We hope you enjoyed the round-up. Please feel free to get in touch with any stories you feel would be of interest.
Dressipi is the global leader in fashion-specific personalisation, working with some of the world’s biggest retailers. Using a comprehensive set of Machine Learning and AI technologies alongside the largest set of product fit and style data available in the world, Dressipi enables retailers to match customers with products and experiences to influence buying behaviour at scale.
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