🇨🇳 PDD takes $55 billion share hit after warning of ‘inevitable’ profit decline. The owner of e-commerce apps Pinduoduo and Temu has warned of a decline, leading shares to fall 29 percent in New York. The warning arose as PDD’s e-commerce apps face rising competition in China and around the world, and as the tech sector has to tread a careful line in Beijing, where authorities are prioritising high-end manufacturing. On Monday, PDD’s executives said they were “committed to high-quality development”, parroting Beijing’s current policy priority. [Financial Times]

🇨🇳 Shein reveals child labour cases as it steps up supplier audits. Shein said in the report on Thursday it had suspended orders from the suppliers that had employed children under 16, sourcing from them again only after they had strengthened their processes, including checking workers’ identity documents. The company said both cases had been “resolved swiftly,” with remediation steps including ending underage employees’ contracts, arranging medical checkups, and facilitating repatriation to parents or guardians as necessary. [Reuters]

🇮🇳 Asos debuts in India via Reliance’s Ajio. India’s leading fashion e-tailer, Ajio, has launched Asos exclusively in India, offering over 3,000 curated options, including Asos Design, Asos Edition, Asos Luxe and Miss Selfridge. Ajio plans to expand the range to 20,000 options over the next year. Vineeth Nair, CEO of Ajio, and José Antonio Ramos, CEO of Asos, highlighted the partnership’s potential to meet the demand for international fashion in India. [Fibre2Fashion]

🇨🇳 Walmart sells $3.74 billion JD.com stake to focus on its own China operations. The US retail giant plans to double down on its warehouse business Sam’s Club in China after the stake sale that underscores the country’s e-commerce sector, once an investor darling, is losing its appeal as it grapples with poor margins due to brutal price competition and weak consumer demand. [Reuters]

🇧🇩 Flooding upends Bangladesh supply chain across rail, road and ports. Heavy flooding along sections of the Dhaka-Chattogram highway have caused congestion along the primary cargo route. Local authorities also suspended rail services due to the flooding. This has caused yet another hurdle to the Bangladesh garment sector after weeks of anti-government protests. [Sourcing Journal]

🇨🇳 Lanvin Group posts 20% drop in sales amid luxury slowdown. The luxury group’s revenue decreased 20 percent year over year to €171 million ($191 million) in the first half of 2024. The company attributed its slowdown to lagging demand in China and Europe and disappointing sales with retail partners. The group also generated a €42 million loss during the period as a result of the dip in sales. Lanvin’s revenue dropped 15 percent to €48 million, and Sergio Rossi’s revenue fell 38 percent percent to €20 million. It expects the slowdown to continue this year. [BoF]

🇵🇪 Peru ratifies protocol for UK’s accession to CPTPP. Peru has ratified the accession protocol of the UK to the CPTPP trade partnership, the former’s ministry of foreign affairs announced. The protocol will allow the UK to become the first economy to join the 11 CPTPP members. With the United Kingdom as a member, CPTPP will have a combined GDP of €12 trillion, or $15.7 trillion, and will account for 15 per cent of global gross domestic product. Once implemented, the UK will immediately eliminate tariffs on 94 percent of products exported from Peru. [Fibre2Fashion]

🇵🇰 Cotton arrivals in Pakistan fall by 49% amid slow start to new season. Pakistan received 1.075 million bales of cotton up to August 15 in the 2024-25 marketing season. This was a 49.17 percent decrease compared to the same period last year. The slow initial arrivals in July contrast with the early influx in previous years due to favourable weather. Overall, the 2023-24 season saw a significant increase from the previous year. [Fibre2Fashion]

🇮🇳 Amazon India set to tweak seller fees ahead of festive season. The e-commerce giant has adjusted its sellers fees by reducing commissions in the range of 3 to 12 percent for 59 categories across the site. The reduction is focused on products with low average selling prices. [Economic Times]

🇮🇳 KL Rahul invests in Drip Project’s perfume brand Metaman. The Indian cricketer has invested in Drip Projects premium perfume brand, ‘Metaman.’ The amount invested has not been disclosed. Rahul will also be the brand’s new ambassador for the Metaman line. The men’s jewellery brand Metaman was founded by Harsh Maskara and Anil Shetty in 2022 and later acquired in 2023 by Drip Project. [Economic Times]

The plunging value of Japan’s yen has kept archival-fashion seller Sam Barback busy.

The Japanese secondhand market has been an important source of vintage items from labels like Undercover, Number (N)ine and Issey Miyake for Barback’s Los Angeles-based web store, Groupie, since its launch in 2016. But over roughly the past year, Barback said he’s been to Japan three times, including one 11-day trip in January where he visited more than 60 secondhand stores.

“A lot of inventory that’s normally inaccessibly high actually came down to affordable prices,” he said. The biggest opportunity arrived in June, he noted, when the yen fell to a 38-year low relative to the US dollar.

The currency’s historic decline this year fueled a boom in shoppers from around the world visiting Japan in search of designer goods at a relative discount. Luxury has been one target as well-heeled travellers flooded cities like Tokyo, driving double-digit growth for a number of brands.

But it has also powered a surge in sales in Japan’s robust secondhand trade, which has long drawn foreign shoppers looking for used designer fashion. Today secondhand shopping has become a hallmark of visiting Japan popularised on TikTok, while customers outside the country also buy goods online through services such as Buyee, which connects its more than 500 million users to Japanese e-commerce marketplaces such as Mercari Japan, Yahoo! Japan Auctions and Zozotown.

“When I interact with those customers, I think many of them are early adopters to purchasing items from Japan, especially in the US,” said Sei Sato, head of the cross-border e-commerce division at Buyee, which saw sales for used fashion goods double between April and June 2024, with the largest numbers of users buying from the US and greater China. “They’re aware of this financial situation and smart enough to take advantage of it.”

At retailers in Japan sales have risen as well, thanks to tourists and domestic shoppers, who still make up the bulk of Japan’s used-fashion sales, seeking cheaper options amid a cost-of-living crisis. Komehyo, a Japanese department-store chain specialising in used goods, reported record-high net sales for its “brand fashion” business — up 34.5 percent compared to the previous year in the quarter through June. Zozotown reported a 10.2 percent increase in used-fashion sales between April and June of 2024.

The yen is now rebounding against a softening dollar, climbing back to where it was in January. But Japan’s strong secondhand market remains set to keep growing. Strategy and consulting firm EY forecasts it will grow to $27 billion by 2030.

Japanese Thrifting’s Viral Growth

Sato said Japan’s vast inventory of used luxury and high-fashion goods traces back to the 1990s, a period of economic stagnation known as “The Lost Decade.” Japanese consumers who had become hooked on luxury during the boom years of the 1980s wanted to keep shopping but were looking for bargains. Eventually the country started attracting international shoppers looking to buy used fashion.

“I would say that the biggest change has been the influx of people that are coming to Japan to buy secondhand clothing,” said Reginald Aaron Pipkin, a creator who has lived in Japan since 2010 and is behind the Japanese fashion YouTube channel The Casual.

Pipkin believes the Western appetite for Japanese secondhand clothing grew with the rising interest in archival fashion. Even before the yen’s depreciation, thrifting within Japan and buying vintage Japanese clothing from proxy sites was a common practice among fashion obsessives.

The yen’s fall made it that much easier for these international shoppers to take advantage of the offerings from sellers in Japan. The US-based resale marketplace Grailed said direct transactions between Japanese sellers and US buyers increased nearly 60 percent year-over-year in June and July 2024. Sales were primarily for Japanese-founded brands such as Kapital, Number (N)ine, Yohji Yamamoto and Undercover, while Japanese marketplace Rakuten Rakuma said domestic brands such as Issey Miyake, Angelic Pretty and Goro’s were popular amongst foreign buyers.

Prices haven’t just plummeted to clearance levels and remained there, though. Barback said they are loosely tied to the dollar. “But the quick fluctuations — the 10-percent up or down within a month — can really change things,” he pointed out.

Sato noted that high international shipping costs make inexpensive items less appealing to buyers outside of Japan, which is one reason pricey luxury products are more sought-after on Buyee. The most popular brands are currently Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermes, Cartier and Dior. The company’s proxy customers aren’t too different from shoppers flying into Japan to take advantage of the exchange rate when purchasing luxury at retail. Women who use the service are in their 30s and 40s and buying bags or clothing. Men are mostly buying watches.

Cultural Commerce

Although the Bank of Japan intervened in the yen’s plunge by raising interest rates in March and July — and most economists expect another hike before year end — Sato isn’t concerned about a stronger yen reducing sales. He believes proxy shoppers are generally drawn to the condition of used goods and the large supply of vintage clothing in Japan.

“In Japan, the smallest defects or damages [on used goods] affect resale prices dramatically. Whereas in the United States, the same damage will not affect the resale value much,” Sato said.

Tourists find Japan’s secondhand market alluring in part because of the vast number of thrift stores. One of the most popular domestic chains is 2nd Street, which grew from 419 stores in Japan in 2015 to 838 stores in 2024, according to company filings. Since 2018, 2nd Street has also been opening US stores and currently has 37 locations across several states.

Pipkin finds that Japanese thrift stores also attract tourists because of how they’re merchandised to address specific consumer tastes. One floor of used-goods department store Komehyo will be dedicated to handbags while another is focused on menswear. The company said in its most recent earnings that it “enhanced the in-store inventory” to respond to more in-store shoppers and foreigners.

“A lot of these chain [thrift] stores aren’t targeting Japanese shoppers as much as they used to, especially in high-density areas like Shimokitazawa or Harajuku,” said Pipkin.

He believes larger awareness around Japanese fashion overall is just a byproduct of Japanese pop culture going mass. The country’s exports of anime and similar content are nearly equal to those of semiconductors and steel, Nikkei recently reported. The Japan National Tourism Organisation reported that more than 21 million tourists visited Japan through July, on pace to break its annual record-high of 31.9 million tourists in 2019.

“Now, everybody’s coming to Japan, and with the advent of platforms like TikTok, Reels and Shorts, you have more people sharing this information than ever before,” Pipkin said.

The uniqueness of Japan’s used-fashion market makes it a draw on its own, according to Barback. There’s a much greater supply of used designer clothing than in the US. He added that he’s glad shoppers in the West are realising how good the secondhand shopping is in Japan.

“I would love for more people to get over there,” he said. “There’s enough clothes to go around.”

Thousands of current and former employees at British clothing retailer Next Plc won an equal pay claim in a ruling that could have significant repercussions for similar cases in the country.

The employment tribunal said in a ruling published on Tuesday that Next’s in-store sales workers, who are mostly women and paid lower hourly rates, were put at a particular disadvantage when compared with men doing equal work.

The decision means the retailer could be forced to pay more than £30 million ($39.7 million) in back pay to 3,540 claimants, according to Leigh Day & Co., the legal firm representing the retail workers.

The legal victory, the first of its kind against a national retailer in the UK, is an indication of the risks facing the UK’s five major supermarkets, which face a similar equal pay claims from 112,000 workers. J Sainsburys Plc, Tesco Plc and W Morrison Supermarkets Ltd, Asda Group Ltd and Co-operative Group Ltd are all the subject of similar claims from workers represented by Leigh Day, which could cost the retailers billions of pounds if successful.

Next argued that pay rates for warehouse workers were higher than for retail workers in the wider labour market and that discrepancies reflected the need for 24/7 staffing in its warehouses, including during public holidays.

The company intends to appeal the result. “This is the first equal pay group action in the private sector to reach a decision at tribunal level and raises a number of important points of legal principle,” the retailer said in a statement.

In 2023 an employment tribunal in Leeds ruled that the work done by retail workers at Next was equal to the warehouse operative work in terms of the demands involved. Almost 78 percent of its sales workers were women, while 53 percent of warehouse employees were men.

In its most recent ruling, the tribunal agreed with Next that the difference in pay was not the result of direct discrimination, or due to the “conscious or subconscious influence of gender in setting pay” but stated that the company’s aim to cut costs and boost profits could not be used to justify unequal pay.

Under equal pay law, work of equal value must be paid equally unless an employer can show that the difference in pay is explained by a reason that is not sex discrimination.

Last year Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, effectively declared bankruptcy after being hit by a crippling bill of up to £760 million from an equal pay claim.

Those pay discrepancies were likely present in other local authorities, according to GMB, the union that represented workers in Birmingham, potentially deepening an ongoing funding crisis in local government.

By Jack Ryan

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How Retail Store Employees Should Upskill Today

The nature of working in retail is changing at pace as the purpose of stores continues to evolve. BoF Careers examines how in-store employees can hone and develop their skill sets for success in retail or its adjacent industries, sharing expertise from retail leaders and fashion executives who began their careers on the shop floor.

When you think of cosmetics line Too Faced — a brand with a product lineup that includes tongue-in-cheek, provocatively named Better Than Sex mascara and Hangover Replenishing primer — it may not feel like a natural fit for bridal beauty.

But lately, Too Faced has been benefiting from a first-mover advantage in the space; its quick capitalisation on Gen-Z consumers entering the marriage market has helped it recruit a fresh crop of customers.

“We saw what was happening on social media when Sofia Richie [Grainge] got married [in April 2023],” said Tara Simon, global brand president. “That’s the first time we all thought, wow, there’s something really big here,” she said.

So when the summer wedding season rolled around this year, the Estée Lauder-owned brand released a limited-edition bridal gift in collaboration with cult accessories brand Lele Sadoughi, created dedicated landing pages on its website for different bridal looks, and pinned a highlights reel to its Instagram loaded with wedding tips. Their customer was clearly interested: Too Faced’s wedding-led emails had an open rate 62 percent higher than standard emails, while the dedicated “wedding looks” page on its site has 46 percent more views than other trend pages.

It was a prescient thought: As Gen-Z gets older, they’re getting engaged and entering the bridal market. For brands, there’s ample opportunity to cater to a beauty-obsessed generation that’s more open to cosmetic procedures and has long been concerned about anti-ageing as they approach one of the most photographed occasions of their lives.

However, the Gen-Z bride is one of contradictions. According to beauticians, she likely favours a more natural look for her big day, and will want any products she uses to help her look like her best self, not someone else. But she’s also likely to be meticulously planning moments for Instagram and TikTok, and may want extra beauty touches to enhance them.

Brands need to ensure their core offering has products brides will want to turn to on their big day, but also consider what they can create to appeal to those looking for a special touch for the guests – or their followers.

Dress the Wedding

Modern brides have long looked to Pinterest and Instagram for bridal inspiration, but the TikTok age is ushering in a different sort of wedding influencer. That inclides creators like Dana Bezanis Basta, who shared every detail of her 2024 wedding prep on the app — Basta’s posts include her citrus-themed bridal shower, teeth whitening, Botox treatments and visits to a “scalp spa” as well as her many, many outfits.

The celebrity nuptials from brides like Grainge and “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper have also helped create a cottage industry of videographers and producers designed to help couples get perfect content. Saskia Wright, a London-based makeup artist, said many weddings she works at now have a dedicated “wedding content creator” who shoots entirely on an iPhone to craft Instagram and TikTok-ready content, in addition to a standard wedding photographer.

The rising popularity of wedding content has pushed brands to get creative in finding ways to capitalise on someone’s big day. Fragrance brand Jo Malone London “scented” the weddings of Grainge and model Olivia Culpo, creating valuable shout-outs in the brides’ Vogue write-ups and social posts. One of the brand’s most in-store popular services is the complimentary 45-minute “Scent Your Wedding” session; Chris Wyatt, the company’s global vice president of education, said it’s gaining popularity with younger brides. Gen-Z customers usually want to document the experience and have a clear idea of their wedding “story,” he said.

“They really want to make it a personalised experience,” he said. In the wedding sessions, brides sample a range of scents before picking one – or more – for their big day. Wyatt said many brides often opt to purchase candles and perfumes as table pieces or gifts for their guests and bridal parties, as well as hand and body lotions for their honeymoon.

Super Natural

Makeup artists and hair stylists who work with Gen-Z brides see clear differences in their product preferences from their Millennial counterparts. Wright said younger brides usually favour a more natural look, often requesting that lighter products are used.

“Older generations ask for their freckles to be covered, but the younger generations ask to have them drawn on,” she said.

Other requests dovetail with wider Gen-Z preferences towards a “clean look” — heavy eyeshadow, strip lashes and contour products are less popular. However, Wright finds her younger brides to be very educated about the kinds of products and techniques she offers, and expects to see buzzy brands like Saie, Rare Beauty and Kosas in her kit, indicating potential for youth-focussed brands to play in the wedding space.

But Too Faced’s Simon said they identified they didn’t need new products to win over Gen-Z brides. Instead, it was more about putting existing items in shoppable edits and creating limited-edition offerings like its Wedding Day Set, which includes a hair bow, a waterproof mascara and a setting spray — an item Wright said all her Gen-Z clients asked for.

Wright said her brides are usually looking to create very specific kinds of photos and videos from their big day, with one particularly popular shot being the bride looking at their finished look using a compact mirror.

Already, she sees a golden opportunity there.

“No one really offers a pretty enough makeup compact for that shot,” said Wright.

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