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IMHX, 24 Sep, 2019 NEC, Birmingham, United Kingdom STIQs verdict (of 5 possible): Event link: IMHX First of all we would like to caveat this review with saying that our experience was as a visitor. We heard from a few exhibitors that it was a bit quiet, but this may be because we visited on the first day (the show is held between September 24th - 27th). The show was brought to our attention by a number of robotics companies asking us to meet at the show. We would normally go to Ecommerce Expo in London which is held at...

FT Future of Retail Conference, 18 Sep, 2019 Royal Garden Hotel, West London, United Kingdom STIQs verdict (of 5 possible): Event link: Financial Times Live Where else can you share a table with the Group CEO at Tesco, chit chat with the CFO of Ocado, pose difficult questions re the competition to the Group CEO of Ahold Delhaize and share your love for Propercorn with its founder? Not many. However, the FT Future of Retail conference is one of these. While it may not be the cheapest conference to attend, it is almost guaranteed you will bump in to a...

Direct to Consumer As the retail industry has changed, more and more brand owners have decided to reach out directly to consumers instead of relying on a network of distributors, wholesale partners and retailers. The advantages for brand owners can be hugely attractive. In particular the increased margins and the ability to control your brand. Lego is the latest in a long line of brand owners which have pivoted from a wholesale model to an own-operated-store (OOS) revenue model. (source: FT.com) D2C vary by retail sector Fashion brands have been some of the more prolific brnad owners to pivot into...

Farfetch vs Boohoo Two pureplay online retailers (ok, Farfetch owns a few subsidiaries with physical stores and are moving towards a multi-channel set-up) compared. We have written about the Farfetch business model previously. Download our report here. Our view is that Farfetch has too many employees and should rationalise departments and its development base. At close to a third of revenue, Farfetch's salaries are going to weigh on the company for many years to come. The only hope is that they can grow into a $bn business before they run out of cash (they have a decent amount in the...

The Beauty Hall at Harrods have received an overhaul and been redesigned. As a part of this, the company has added a few [discrete] augmented reality (AR) features. One of these AR technologies is a few Magic Mirrors for make-up purposes. Magic make-up mirror at Harrods. Cleverly combined with a smartphone charger for the busy people trying on cosmetics. However, when we visited there were no users of the AR function and instead the mirrors were used as... mirrors by the make-up artists. Admittedly there were only eight (8) brands of lipsticks available on the magic mirror which probably made...