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A review of the FT Future of Retail event by Financial Times

A review of the FT Future of Retail event by Financial Times

FT Future of Retail Conference, 20 Sep, 2018 Knightsbridge, London, United Kingdom Styleintelligence verdict (of 5 possible): The third instalment of the FT Future of Retail conference attracted an excellent lineup of presenters and a super audience for a day at Jumeirah Tower, Cadogan Place, Knightsbridge. Speakers included Doug Gurr from Amazon UK. Despite Mr Gurr talking for about 15 minutes but not saying a lot, there were quite a few ears focused on the content. Could it have been a scare-tactic by Amazon to present at the event? We will never know. Doug Gurr on stage talking about digitization...

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This is how you do scaffolding in Harrod's style

Construction Harrods Luxury retail Window Display

This is how you do scaffolding in Harrod's style

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.

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Emart Everyday cashier-less store in Gangnam, Seoul

Emart Everyday cashier-less store in Gangnam, Seoul

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...

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Farfetch IPO - Our view

Farfetch Financial Performance IPO Luxury retail retail technology Stitchfix

Farfetch IPO - Our view

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...

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The story of House of Fraser

The story of House of Fraser

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...

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