Jane Shepherdson, Chief Executive Officer, Whistles (CEO Talk) “Perhaps it’s not surprising that, in her spare time, Jane Shepherdson does flying trapeze in Hoxton, smack in the heart of achingly hip East London. Right from her earliest days in the fashion industry, Shepherdson has been known for taking risks and having her finger on the pulse of what’s cool.”
As Luxury Growth Slows in China, Attention Turns to Mass Contemporary (The Long View) “According to a closely watched report recently published by Bain & Company, a consultancy, and Italian luxury goods trade organization Altagamma, luxury sales growth in China has started to slow. Yet the growing spending power of middle income consumers, who rarely travel outside China, but increasingly crave foreign brands at prices they can afford, is providing cause for optimism and focusing attention on the growing opportunity in the country’s emerging ‘mass contemporary’ market.”
The Problem with Most Fashion-Tech Startups (Opinion) “Many would-be fashion-tech entrepreneurs have a deep understanding of the fashion industry and no understanding of technology. Or they have a deep understanding of technology and no understanding of fashion. Or, they understand neither! The entrepreneurs who master both and understand the subtleties of each will be triumphant and realise all the potential that lies in this combination of technology and fashion.”
Growth, But Perhaps Not As It Used To Be (Market Pulse) “The Savigny Luxury Index (SLI) gained 4.2 percent in October, outperforming the MSCI World Index (MSCI) by more than 6 percentage points. Much anticipated results announcements confirmed that the sector still has strong fundamentals but that the three-year boom is coming to its close.”
Awaiting the Storm’s Price Tag (NY Times) “Even as businesses struggled on Monday to gauge and contain the damage from Hurricane Sandy’s slow move up the East Coast, economists played down the likely long-term effects. The recovery after the storm, they said, could actually pump up growth temporarily in a few sectors, like construction and retail sales, when cleanup begins in earnest in a few days.”
PVH Consolidates Calvin Klein With $2.9 Billion Warnaco Buy (Bloomberg) “PVH the owner of the Tommy Hilfiger brand, agreed to buy Warnaco Group in a $2.9 billion transaction, creating a company with $8 billion in sales and bringing all Calvin Klein-branded apparel under one roof.”
Tamara Mellon’s Next Step (NY Times) “Last November, when Tamara Mellon suddenly left Jimmy Choo, the shoe company she helped build into a global juggernaut, taking with her a reported payout of roughly $135 million, she did so without much explanation. The only thing close to an official statement was a message, sent out to her roughly 12,000 followers on Twitter, thanking them for their support and signing off with, ‘I will keep you posted.'”
