News
Vinted, an online marketplace for second-hand clothes, has surfed a sustainable fashion wave to become Lithuania's first technology startup to reach "unicorn" status with a valuation of over $1 billion (£774.6 million).
U.S.-based venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with participation from existing backers such as Sprints Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Accel and Burda Principal Investments.
The company, created in 2008 as one founder wanted to give away surplus clothes after moving to a new house, is growing rapidly as the fashion industry comes under growing scrutiny for fuelling a throwaway culture.
In a sign of the times, Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and one of the most powerful voices in fashion, told Reuters the industry needed to pursue more sustainability and that fashionistas should care for their clothes and pass them on.
Vinted said nearly €1.3 billion worth of reused clothing would change hands on its platform this year.
To read more, click here.
Leavy.co, the innovative travel community and marketplace, has raised $14m in seed funding and launched its lifestyle app, designed to help millennial locals travel for less.
Prime Ventures has led what is considered the largest ever seed funding round in travel tech worldwide, with participation from angel investor Dominique Vidal, partner at Index Ventures, who has worked with some of the US and Europe’s biggest consumer internet companies.
The startup’s proprietary technology – network orchestration combined with a revenue maximiser system – is key to boosting the millennials’ lifestyle and travel buying power and new mobility choices.
Leavy.co’s community network has reached +65 000 millennials, of whom 60% are women. Since it was started, 21 months ago, the company has grown +30% month-over-month and has +100 employees across 6 markets. With offices in Paris, Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Rome, and Lisbon, they plan to open in the US by the end of this year.
To read more, click here.
In a move that shouldn't really come as a surprise given the direction the company has been going in, Sports Direct on Monday announced that it would rebrand itself as Frasers Group.
The retail giant owns House of Fraser and is forging ahead with its plan to create a mini chain of high-end Frasers department stores and the company seems to think that the name change of the entire business will boost its overall image.
The name change isn't a done deal yet, as it will be voted on by shareholders in mid-December. But given the control that Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley has via his ownership of the largest chunk of the firm’s shares, it's a move that’s unlikely to be vetoed.
The name change will also be a sign that Ashley's plan for the Frasers chain is coming closer to fruition and the first Frasers store is expected to launch next year.
To read more, click here.
Online sales in Britain rose 6.2% year-on-year last month, with fashion playing its part in the rise, even if many sales were driven by markdowns. That's according to the latest IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index, which tracks the online sales performance of over 200 retailers.
On the plus side, the 6.2% rise was a slightly more positive result than the rolling averages for the last three, six and 12 months (+5%, +4.5%, and +5.1% respectively). But the increase was well below some of the much more impressive rises that we’ve become used to from the online channel in previous years.
There were pockets of strength, however. For instance, pureplay online retailers saw sales growth three times that of their multichannel rivals with a 12.4% increase compared to 4.3% for the multichannel players.
And sales through smartphones continued to progress with a stunning increase of 50.8% year on year in October. The overall rise in m-commerce was 15.2% and highlighted a divide in growth between that rapid smartphones acceleration and tablets, which declined 8.6%.
Though still behind the five-year average of +10%, October’s results were better than the numbers for the rest of 2019, even though it was also the lowest growth for online sales in October ever.
To read more, click here.
Some 42 million shoppers from the UK and abroad are expected to visit London’s West End, including Bond, Oxford and Regent Street, over the eight-week Christmas trading period.
And after a tough year of retailer failures and low consumer confidence, brands will be happy to hear that the area will get a multi-billion pound boost during the festive season, according to New West End Company. After reviewing spending patterns from the year to date, the business organisation said spending across London’s retail heartland will match last year’s spend of £2.5 billion.
The signs are optimistic: international sales across the West End have increased by 12% in the year to date, providing some support that favourable exchange rates for shoppers from the US, China and the Middle East will help insulate the district from what is expected to be a challenging Christmas period.
A number of West End only experiences, including John Lewis’ Winter Carnival and Hamleys’ Santa’s Grotto, plus the new digital lighting scheme on Oxford Street, are expected to draw large crowds.
To read more, click here.
The Manchester-based company announced on Thursday it has launched its first Term Loan B (TLB) debt, raising £510m with a seven-year maturity. Additionally, it received a five-year £150m revolving credit facility, which is fully underwritten by Barclays, HSBC, Citi and Santander.
The group, which is behind several beauty brands, a leading cosmetics e-tail site and proprietary e-commerce platform, described the deals as a “major step forward”.
The Hut Group has grown sales from £80m in 2010 to £916m in 2018 and “well in excess” of £1 billion this year. Two-thirds of revenues are generated outside the UK, particularly in Europe, Asia and the US. Driving this staggering growth is the firm’s unique business model, underpinned by its vertically integrated, technology-first consumer brand portfolio and a range of technology services.
The new funds will be used to further improve the different parts of the model. On the one hand is the portfolio of own brands, which currently generates more than 50% of sales. These include Myprotein and seven prestige beauty brands: Espa, Christophe Robin, Ameliorate, Grow Gorgeous, Mio Skincare, Illamasqua and Eyeko.
On the other hand is Ingenuity, an e-commerce and operating platform that rivals Salesforce, Magento and Shopify. Ingenuity is an ambitious service offering an end-to-end ecommerce solution across hosting, content creation, translation, more than 50 payment options, over 100 courier options, affiliate marketing networks, brand events, and manufacturing and distribution centres.
To read more, click here.
Kylie Jenner has agreed to sell a 51% stake in her lucrative beauty business to Coty for $600 million as part of a long-term strategic partnership to further develop the firm into a global powerhouse brand.
Under the terms of the deal, Kylie Jenner will continue to lead all creative efforts in terms of product and communications initiatives and work together with Coty to set and lead the strategic direction of her brands, focusing on global expansion and entry into new beauty categories.
Meanwhile, Coty will leverage its capabilities in R&D, manufacturing, distribution, commercial and go-to-market expertise to drive growth at the beauty business. It will also act as a licensee for skincare, fragrances, and nail products.
Jenner, who is widely regarded as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, said the partnership will allow her beauty brands to reach even more fans around the world.
To read more, click here.
Shop Direct has announced a partnership with the University of Liverpool to develop tech and data talent.
The British fashion group said it will develop a joint programme of activity for students across STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) other business-related subjects such as marketing and finance.
With three e-commerce sites and annual sales of £2 billion, Shop Direct is the UK’s largest pureplay digital retailer.
Leading initiatives have included the creation of a customer closeness team, which deals directly with customer queries to identify improvement opportunities. In the year ended 30 June, this innovation helped increase first contact resolution rate to 70% from 49%.
To read more, click here.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Inc on Monday said sales for its annual Singles’ Day shopping blitz hit 158.31 billion yuan ($22.63 billion) in its first nine hours, up 25% from 126.72 billion yuan at the same point last year.
Alibaba netted sales worth $30 billion on its platforms on Singles’ Day last year, dwarfing the $7.9 billion U.S. online sales for Cyber Monday. Yet the 27% sales growth was the lowest in the event’s 10-year history, spurring a search for fresh ideas.
Sales hit $1 billion in the first minute and eight seconds and reached 84 billion yuan in the first hour, up 22% from last year’s early haul of 69 billion yuan.
Singles’ Day was among the top trending topics on China’s Twitter-like Weibo microblogging platform on Monday morning, with users discussing what they spent their money on.
Alibaba has said it expects over 500 million users to participate in the shopping festival this year, about 100 million more than last year.
To read more, click here.
International gift shoppers are set to buy from the UK as they do their Christmas shopping this year while British consumers will be heading to M&S, Boots, Nike and Adidas.
Those are some of the conclusions of a new survey of 5,000 people across EMEA and APAC by Rakuten Marketing, which said that UK brands seem to be very popular among shoppers abroad. In fact, as many as 45% of international respondents said they’d make a purchase from the UK this Christmas season.
Rakuten said that two-thirds of shoppers generally plan to consider buying gifts from overseas this time. And UK brands topped the popularity list for those who plan to shop across borders, especially those from Germany (60%), Singapore (49%) and Australia (44%).
Discounts are key for a large number of shoppers, but the attitude to money-off deals seems to vary widely around the world. For instance, Rakuten said that 41% of Britons say they’re not led by discounts or sales when holiday shopping, while an even bigger 43% of Germans agree and 31% of those in France. But in China, an almost-universal 98% said they’re led by discounts and sales. The numbers in Singapore (92%) are almost as high.
The researchers also said that under-pressure UK retailers looking to maximise their opportunities this season need to specifically target foreign foreign shoppers.
To read more, click here.