Children’s apparel retailer Carter’s plans to open 50 new stores this year, and at least 1,000 by 2027, seeing an opportunity as its SKU rationalization, price realization between selling periods and inventory management have improved the unit economics for retail, while the online-store mix shifts a bit toward brick and mortar. Executives said consumer confidence is down but not as bad as in 2022.
American Circular Textiles Group (ACT) is a coalition seeking to establish U.S. leadership and policy in textile waste and circularity, with a focus on the waste hierarchy. Founding members include Rent the Runway, The Real Real, thredUP and Fashionphile. ACT director and founder talks about the momentum behind circularity in apparel, and how ACT is working to influence legislators and industry leaders.
A new testing protocol to gauge the protective qualities of ecommerce packaging has been released by the International Safe Transit Association to help retailers, brands and partners ensure proper packaging design that can withstand the rigors of handling along the ecommerce/DTC chain. It addresses the fact that traditional retail packaging is often not up to the task of protection.
It was quite a week in the ever-expanding universe of generative AI, as the arms race among tech titans escalates, new solutions proliferate and more retailers jump in with both feet. From Elon Musk to Google, Amazon, Walmart and Levi Strauss, more companies are moving beyond the experimentation stage and planting a flag as a wide range of applications hit the market.
Amazon is inviting other retailers to join an anti-counterfeiting cooperative, begun as a pilot program in 2021 to help stem the flood of illegitimate goods on its marketplace and across the industry, two weeks after filing three separate lawsuits against counterfeiters. The Anti-Counterfeiting Exchange (ACX) grew out of a 20211 pilot by a division of the Department of Homeland Security.
With more legacy software giants embracing cloud-based, composable commerce offerings, such as recent moves by SAP and Adobe, members of the MACH Alliance (microservices-based, API, cloud, headless) are seeking to differentiate themselves while also seeing it as validation of their model. The group says usage is growing faster in the U.S. than Europe, home to many early adopters.
In a post-SaaS world, the only shot you have at a truly future-proofed ecommerce replatforming project is constantly maintaining the ability to test and deploy new storefront capabilities quickly and easily. This means a fundamental perspective shift is needed, emphasizing superior adaptability over that elusive, false feeling of completeness. Thus, the new digital transformation is digital optimization.
Omoda, a Dutch-based retailer of premium shoes, wanted to reduce its CO2 footprint and demonstrate a commitment to the environment. Its preexisting process often resulted shipping up to 50% air, which caused a substantial impact on both sustainability and shipping costs. In this Q&A case study, Omoda talks about how Ranpak’s solution helped the retailer achieve its goals.
Wish, a once-popular online marketplace for a vast array of often bizarre, inexpensive goods that at one juncture proved to be phantom listings, has conducted a 1-for-30 reverse stock split, a move typically associated with distressed companies in danger of being delisted from an exchange. A 2022 expose found the company listed and sold items it knew didn’t exist.
Less than two months after selling off Moosejaw Mountaineering to a more appropriate home at Dick’s Sporting Goods, another of Walmart’s digital-first apparel brands is being sold. This time, menswear seller Bonobos is going to Express and WHP Global for $75 million, a $235 million discount to its $310 million acquisition in 2017.