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20/09/2018: Passed by the famous Knightsbridge Harrods store on the way back from FT Future of Retail conference and noticed this amazing scaffolding cover. This is how you as a retailer can take advantage of refurbishment to build your brand instead of disappearing behind banners and metal bars.

We recently visited Seoul and Emart's latest cashier-less store which opened a few weeks ago in the upmarket Gangnam area of Seoul, South Korea. Source: We found out about the store opening from an article in Yonhap News. Perhaps our expectations were too high when we finally arrived. However, the main news appears to be that the store accepts payment via the SSG (parent company) mobile application. There is no tracking of what customers put in their baskets and every customer is required to self-scan each product before being given the option of using SSG's app to pay for the...

After a relatively long period of media speculation, Farfetch has finally filed an intention to list on NYSE (source). At the time of writing this blog there were no specifics on its pricing and the company is no doubt working the funding circuit hard to explore the level of interest and promote the pricing. While pricing is not known, there are a few other details that we know of. JD.com stepped in as an investor earlier in 2018 and have an option on about a third of the business. What is Farfetch? Farfetch is an aggregator platform for luxury fashion...

01 August, 2018 The saga about House of Fraser has now rolled on from the Spring without any resolution. Today BBC News reported two developments; a) Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley have been asked for a loan by the House of Fraser management and that b) the House of Fraser management has approached turnaround specialists Alteri (among others). The background is that the Chinese owner, Sanpower, has been unable or unwilling to invest in the ailing department store group. In addition, its original investment included a plan to roll out House of Fraser stores across the Chinese mainland, something that...

Online has led to widespread high-street store cannibalisation putting profitability at risk. CEO's need to look at organisational fundamentals to remedy the damage done to the many multi- or omni-channel (whatever you want to call it) retailers. At its most basic - retailers have not given any thought to new business when rolling out the online channel and have continued to focus on existing customers and demographics hence inviting channel cannibalisation. For example, John Lewis (excl. Waitrose) increased revenue by 5.6% CAGR 2008-18. In the same period online has grown as a share of revenue from 13% to 42% at...