News
Pluto, the TravelTech backed by Zurich Insurance, having been recently crowned as the #1 travel insurer on Trustpilot in the UK, have announced the launch of their mobile app.
The mobile app, which has just completed a beta trial with a limited customer group, is now available to all new and existing customers.
Customers with an active policy will now be able to:
- Easily check their cover and policy online and offline
- Make instant changes to their policy
- Submit claims in minutes when something’s gone wrong
- Speak to a human around the clock for support and assistance.
Pluto has closed over £830k in investment in 2019 alone, with over £660k coming from a recent crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs. This investment will be used to expand the London team, launch new travel services via their mobile app and to grow their customer base.
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Budgetary constraints and environmental awareness are accelerating consumer adoption of more sustainable practices, such as using rental services and shunning fast fashion, according to a new report.
It found that 22% of British consumers state they now make more considered purchases today compared to ten years ago, and nearly 10% are turning their backs on fast fashion.
A further 13% care more about the ethical side of fashion today than they used to, showing how much the sector has evolved in the last decade. Meanwhile, only 19% said that trendiness is a key decision-making factor when buying apparel.
Fashion brands are paying attention to the consumer mindset shift. In fact, 150 clothing brands such as Gucci, Nike, Prada, Burberry and Zara joined the G7 Fashion Pact this year, essentially committing to working together to achieve a series of science-based targets concerning global warming, preserving the oceans and restoring biodiversity.
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Zalando has looked at the shopping preferences of its customers in different markets to predict this year’s Cyber Week trends.
The German fashion e-tailer offers over 300,000 products from almost 2,000 international brands, and it has more than 26 million active customers across 17 markets.
In a display of its data-driven approach, the company has revealed the items that are most likely to land in customers’ Cyber Week shopping carts based on the year-round behaviour.
It said black sneakers will become a bestseller in Germany, while open-toe-sandals dominate in Denmark. It’s all about activewear in the Netherlands and Spain, with Dutch shoppers likely to stock up on black leggings.
Meanwhile, menswear outperforms womenswear in the Czech Republic, with branded underwear for men taking the lead as the most popular purchase. This compares with a wider trend of women’s categories shining brighter across all markets.
Colourful items are more likely to succeed in Poland and Ireland, where shoppers will be fuelling demand for multi-coloured items.
And finally, British consumers will be taking advantage of Cyber Week discounts to build their wardrobe with more premium items.
When it comes to how and when people to shop, it seems Italians are more likely to make their purchases on the go and Czech prefer to use their laptops. The Czech Republic also stands out for being the only market where sales peak during lunch hours.
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Growth in the UK women’s fragrance market is expected to accelerate in the last quarter of the year, with beauty consumers forecasted to spend nearly as much as they did for the whole rest of the year.
According to a new report, sales of women’s fragrances will reach more than £550 million for the first time in the period between October and December, as shoppers rush to the high street and online to find the best deals.
Sales of premium fragrance are up 4% on last Christmas and retailers are bracing for a strong festive period, said leading beauty retailer Escentual.com.
Britain’s favourite fragrance is Coco Mademoiselle. First launched in 2001, the oriental floral scent will make around £26.4 million this Christmas with about 390,720 bottles sold.
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Consumer appetite for bargains will drive an increase in spend at UK outlet centres and designer villages over the next five years, rivalling e-commerce for growth, according to a new report.
In fact, spend at outlet centres is expected to grow by 4.8% in 2019, significantly ahead of physical retail which will decline by 0.5%, and just slightly behind the 6.4% increase in non-food online sales.
According to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, spend at outlet locations will rise by £637m to reach £4.1bn in 2024, fuelled by a shift in occupier line-ups from traditional stores such as M&S and Gap to younger names like Dr Martens and Nike.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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