Business Case

Does Covid19 finally make us realise that luxury is #superficial?

Conscious Jewelry Trend Report 2020

Lab-grown Diamond Report 2020

Jewelry Online Sales Report 2020

[Indian wedding : A festival of colors ](https://thread-continent-192.notion.site/Indian-wedding-A-festival-of-colors-bad515311cdf401cbf232ce67ac74111)

[Memoji ](https://thread-continent-192.notion.site/Memoji-61ccedefdf1f464f9d781daabdad926e)

[IOT Fashion ](https://thread-continent-192.notion.site/IOT-Fashion-8d63dfd754444000ab856d9ffd344417)

An open letter to l'Oreal

The future of physical retail

H&M’s Green Machine: A recycling solution?

Luxury & Brexit

Les nouvelles offensives sur le marchés de l'occasion

How App Clips could help fashion brands

Trends

Products < Experiences

The Science Of Why You Should Spend Your Money On Experiences, Not Things

China’s Unstoppable 2020 Luxury Market

The luxury goods market in mainland China saw a significant boost in consumer spending in 2020. Our report examines the four factors that powered this increased growth rate and that will continue to offer opportunities for China’s luxury brands.

Mainland China’s luxury goods market will likely achieve 48% growth in 2020, reaching nearly RMB 346 billion. A decrease in global travel in the wake of the early Covid-19 lockdowns prompted Chinese consumers to turn to national sources for their luxury purchases, sending the domestic market climbing. This increase helped to double China’s overall share of the global luxury market in 2020, to 20%, but the growth in mainland China could not compensate for the consumption of Chinese products lost overseas. We anticipate this year’s growth to continue, putting the country on track to claim the biggest share of the market by 2025.

Soins naturels pour la peau

L'essor du marché de soins naturels pour la peau. Aujourd'hui à 38.2B$ mais est estimé à 50B$ d'ici 5 à 6 ans.

The promise of gaming

Luxury brands have been exploring the potential of gaming as a means to connect with younger audiences. In December, Balenciaga made a bold move with the launch of its AW21 collection within a video game, Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow. Users were invited to explore the game’s various zones at their own pace and discover creative director Demna Gvasalia’s new designs in a real-world environment.

Other luxury initiatives have included an avatar version of Donatella Versace at virtual festival Complexland, where attendees could buy a new Versace Trigreca sneaker, and an immersive game Collina Land, by American fashion brand Collina Strada, aired as part of GucciFest. Meanwhile, eco-friendly sweats brand Pangaia created a virtual gamified experience on top of a glacier to promote the launch of its new down alternative, Flwrdwn.

“The audience size, engagement, rate of innovation and production quality you see in gaming today rivals many traditional sports and entertainment,” says Naz Aletaha, head of global esports partnerships and business development at Riot Games. In December 2019, her company teamed up with Louis Vuitton for skins for avatars as well as a Louis Vuitton x League of Legends capsule collection, the first-ever collaboration between a gaming firm and luxury house.

More collaborations are likely. “Brands want to be where their audiences are,” says Aletaha. “For decades, brands have affiliated with film, television and music to do just that — to be part of the culture and the conversation, and to connect with audiences through their passions.”

The year 2021 will likely see even more integrations and a focus on shared experiences such as virtual trade shows, exclusive in-game drops and virtual try-on hauls. “Brands are understanding that it’s not only about getting in front of the largest number of eyes but tailoring campaigns to the audience that is most receptive and valuable for their message,” says Gina Chung Lee, vice president of marketing and creative at Gen.G, a gaming organisation that recently hired designer Heron Preston as executive brand advisor.

Luxury marketing are arriving on games

Louis Vuitton is such a good example of that. From our standpoint, we want to do more than just insert a logo here and just run a video ad there. I think that’s all very nice, as long as it’s reinforcing a broader campaign. I always call it advertising by adding value. I think that’s what really goes to win the hearts and minds of this audience. No one likes to be advertised at.

I think our audience when they see that a brand is making their sport, making their ecosystem better today than it was yesterday, that’s a huge win for everybody and that’s where you see the awareness, and the affinity.

For us, the partnership has to be a win, win, win. It has to be a win for the partner for us, but most importantly for our respective audiences because, again, that’s the only point of doing it. With Louis Vuitton, what started as a conversion centered around them becoming our official trophy case partner, really grew and evolved to become this very multifaceted partnership that spanned our sport, our game itself, our music, and what Louis Vuitton does best — which is an apparel line, a capsule collection that you saw launched in their stores.

Art & 3D

L’essor des outils de créations et d’œuvres artistiques en 3D.

Fashion gets political

Beyond the pandemic, cultural and political change dominated the agenda of 2020 from the long-term impacts of Black Lives Matter protests, a divisive US presidential election and a looming Brexit. But for many fashion brands, a neutral stance has not been an option.

A move to encourage working with Black-owned businesses gathered momentum. The 15 Percent Pledge called on US retailers to match their representation of Black business owners to the Black population of America. Clothing with political slogans made a comeback as “a new generation of culturally woke US citizens” prepared to vote, notes Lyst’s data editor Morgane Le Caer.

Consumers are increasingly shopping with companies whose values align with theirs, says Havas Group’s Sinnock. The signs are that it is good for business: brands that consumers perceive as making a positive impact grow at twice the rate of other brands, according to 2020 data from Kantar. But brands also need to be wary of using purpose as a gimmick and should tread cautiously, Sinnock advises.

Short-form and shoppable videos

TikTok reached out to fashion and luxury in 2020 with some success. The video-sharing platform champions short-form videos of 15 to 30 seconds, appealing to younger consumers. Burberry, Dior and Ralph Lauren all sponsored their own ‘challenges’ on TikTok. JW Anderson and Gucci benefited from the power of organic virality thanks to the #HarryStylesCardigan, which accumulated more than 45 million views, and #GucciModelChallenge. The #FurlaDance challenge by Furla resulted in half a billion views. Success is driven by “the openness of Gen Z and millennials, a commitment to real and unfiltered storytelling and the convergence of high and low culture”, says Kristina Karassoulis, TikTok's luxury brand partnerships lead for Europe.

Social media has also given a voice to underserved communities in fashion, such as plus-size advocates and sustainability activists. “TikTok has become a democratised tool, both for users and brands to create content but also to become part of an ongoing dialogue and discussion, says Brian Mandler, co-founder of The Network Effect, a digital agency focused on short-form content. “What we’ve learned very quickly is that instead of just liking and engaging with posts, people who are active on these platforms really have a voice.”

Short-form video applications help marketers engage with younger audiences not accessible through traditional media outlets and social networks. It’s also a new way of thinking about video, moving away from the repetitiveness of traditional film-based advertising. Mandler says the new emphasis is on fast-moving original branded content that helps to promote conversations, improve information gathering and lift the likelihood of purchase.

In the West, expect greater convergence of social video and commerce in 2021, catching up with a trend already well established in China and the Asia-Pacific region. “That’s really going to take off in the US in 2021,” says Forrester’s Pattisall. He notes that Amazon and Facebook have already made significant strides in live shopping, adding commerce functionalities to their sites. “For fashion, it’s going to be really important to connect the dots between content creation, engagement and the ability to purchase directly,” adds Mandler.

Cass Russell, fashion brand partnerships lead for Europe at TikTok, says to keep an eye on TikTok's partnership with Shopify, which is scheduled to debut in early 2021 in Europe and the UK after launching in the US in October. The goal, she says, is to help brands connect with, and be discovered by, the TikTok community.

Carbon emission

Fashion’s carbon emissions are hurting our planet. According to an analysis by @McKinsey, “...2.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions in 2018, about 4 percent of the global total.”

Neurodiversity

Copenhagen-based Marker works with her agents at The Society and Elite to plan recuperation breaks between jobs, practice yoga to increase her ability to cope, and avoid triggers such as long-haul flights with lots of layovers or unknown places. Many neurodivergent people have to work without these considerations, facing discrimination in the workplace through exclusive unsympathetic management and ignorant colleagues. In a 2018 survey of 600 neurodivergent people in the UK by the Westminster AchieveAbility Commission, 52 per cent said they had faced discrimination during recruitment processes. Another report found that 84 per cent of neurodivergent employees were constantly stressed, compared to 49 per cent of their neurotypical peers.

Textil innovations

There are no quick solutions to fashion's #microfiber pollution problem. Instead of using synthetics fibers, we need a shift towards renewable, #biobased textiles that are made from the environment, for the environment.

Through #biobased materials, we can create a future where products are created with minimal waste and can biodegrade in the environment that they came from.

Advertising shift to the digital

The shift of advertising from physical to digital, a process already in progress pre-pandemic, has sped up. Advertising in printed newspapers and magazines saw the steepest declines this year, followed by outdoor billboards, radio and TV, according to a report from the World Advertising Research Center (WARC). That said, global marketing budgets for digital advertising also fell for the first time since WARC started tracking spend in 2012. The International Advertising Bureau found that 60 per cent of major companies pulled back on ad spend this year.

3d printing

The market value is made up of the existing $3 trillion global fashion industry, including the $6 billion virtual fitting room market, $16 billion 3D-printing market and $40 billion eco-fibre market, as well as the secondhand sector, including resale and clothing alterations.

Recycling

On remarque la croissance des produits recyclés à base de déchets comme MisfitMarket avec la nourriture ou encore GumShoe qui crée des chaussures à base de chewing-gum.

Sustainability

The potential value of fashion’s circular economy could be as much as $5 trillion, according to a new report by a group of high-profile industry and academic specialists.

The concept of a circular fashion industry is a fast-growing movement to reuse and recycle all materials, eliminating waste and pollution and regenerating the environment in a “circular model”. This rethink of the fundamentals of how the industry operates is gaining traction among sustainable fashion brands.

Now the potential market size has been estimated in the Circular Fashion Report, compiled by a group of industry and academics including PwC, sustainable consultancy Anthesis, Rödl & Partner law firm, Startupbootcamp, ESSEC Business School, Wageningen University & Research and circular fashion blockchain provider Lablaco.

The fashion industry is facing heavy pressure to reduce carbon emissions and waste, not least from a new generation of consumers who demand more environmental accountability. This has given added impetus to the argument for circularity.

MicroCommunity

In an ultra-tough market, a strong connection with customers has become essential for survival. Customer-led businesses that have built strong digital engagement with their audiences hold all the cards. “There has been a big psychological shift,” says Mark Sinnock, Havas group chief strategy officer for Europe. The result, he explains, is an increased use of incentives, loyalty and advocacy. “Brands are building up engagement strategies to access individuals and incentivise them to shop with them over longer periods of time as opposed to a specific moment.”

Also look to apps like THE LIST. Originally launched 2018 but updated last month with a powerful new marketing-scraping algorithm, it releases in-demand products from luxury brands in small quantities, and specific times, for a limited period. Prices, which always start low (allowing any early birds to catch a worm) fluctuate according to real-time demand, cultivating a fabulously seductive sense of fairness. Booming in popularity, it also exposes how increasing numbers of brand-promiscous consumers chase individual items, not brands or collections – a key mindset shift, capable of revealing lucrative in-app micro-communities.

Recovery plan for the luxury industry

Covid-19 caused an unprecedented fall in luxury market size

Global luxury market contracted to 1 trillion€ in 2020, down by 20-22% from 2019 and personal luxury goods market contracted for the first time since 2009 falling by 23% vs 2019. (217bn €)

Asia became the biggest market mainly driven by China with +45% growth thanks to local rebounded consumption while all other regions struggled especially in Europe (-36%) due to lack of tourism.

Online sales share doubled reaching 23% vs 12% (2019) and expected to be a leading channel by 2025

Operating profit declined by 60% in 2020 vs 2019 (avg margin 12% vs 21%) and expected to recover 50% of profit loss of 2020 in 2021 but still below 2019 levels.

Recovery expected over the next three years and by 2025 luxury market to be reshaped by 4 main drivers : Chinese becoming dominating nationality with 45% of global purchase / China becoming biggest luxury market/ Online sales / Gen Y & Z

The Future of Luxury: Bouncing Back from Covid-19

Join the plant-based revolution

Food tech company Eat Just — creator of popular vegan egg alternative Just Egg — opened a pop-up culinary innovation hub in Shanghai, dedicated to plant-based foods. In their Future Food Studio visitors could sign up for cooking classes taught by top chefs who used Eat Just’s latest edible innovations. The faux-egg maker is also building a USD 120 million plant-protein facility in Singapore.

Food, fashionbeauty productstableware and packaging. The plant-based revolution is hitting industries everywhere. 2021 means last chance to jump on the train to a Plant-ed future.

💡 How can you partake in the plant-based revolution and help consumers adopt more ethical/planet-friendly lifestyles?

Transforming the secondhand fashion market with a plug-in

Reflaunt is a technology company that brings “Resell as a Service” to fashion brands and multi-brand retailers. With the company’s tech solution, fashion retailers can allow their own customers to resell or recycle their past purchases in a click, directly on their ecommerce platform.

The solution works by implementing a ‘smart button’ plug-in on the retailer’s ecommerce platform or on a standalone website, creating a digital wardrobe for each user and compiling all of their past purchases. By clicking on the smart button for a specific item, the user creates a new listing in a few clicks and Reflaunt sources most of the product information from the brand.

Reflaunt’s technology then automatically pushes the listing on a global network of secondhand marketplaces including Rebelle, VideDressing, MyPrivateDressing, Miinto, Hardly Ever Worn It, Luxury Closet, Afound, eBay, and StyleTribute. Once the item is successfully sold, the user can choose to be rewarded in cash or in store credits with the retailer.

Transforming the secondhand fashion market with a plug-in

A renewed interest in sports marketing

With the Tokyo Olympics scheduled for July 2021, real-life sports stars will be a big focus of the year ahead. The streetwear boom and rising demand for wellness-themed products have encouraged luxury brands to deepen their commercial relationships with sports stars. Back in January, Louis Vuitton announced a multi-year partnership with the NBA including an annual capsule collection of apparel and accessories designed by Virgil Abloh, artistic director of menswear.

The deal marked Louis Vuitton’s first partnership with a major North American sports league and followed LVMH sister brand Loewe’s new Autumn/Winter 2020 campaign featuring Megan Rapinoe, World Cup-winning co-captain of the US women’s national football team. Footballer Hector Bellerin also walked Louis Vuitton's men's fashion show in the summer.

Even beauty brands are getting in on the trend. In October, Glossier featured members of the WNBA in its Body Hero campaign. “As a community-centric brand, we're always looking to build new and meaningful relationships with people that inspire us,” says Ali Weiss, senior vice president of marketing at Glossier. It's a continuation of the company’s focus on selling on “aspirational realness”.

Deals with individual sports stars are costly. For the biggest names, luxury brands are competing with well-funded sportswear giants like Nike, says John Collard, chief executive of Sports Impact, a consultancy. But unlike conventional marketing channels, these deals can help brands widen their reach to consumers who buy into the most accessible product categories, such as perfumes and accessories, that drive most luxury house profits.

The sports influence on fashion continues to grow. The NPD Group forecasts that sports shoes will be confirmed as the largest footwear category in the US this year, beating out “fashion” footwear, which includes shoes, boots, sandals and slippers. Collard of Sports Impact thinks 2021 will be a big year for fashion and sport: “I see the relationship between fashion, beauty and sports evolving even more quickly in 2021, as brands realise the potential to reach core target groups with endorsement from sporting influencers who really do influence.”

Fashion week becomes entertainment

Fashion weeks are undergoing seismic change. Marketers believe their future is less about selling to an industry audience and more about exploiting an interactive marketing opportunity.

The pace of innovation has been thrilling. In September, Burberry became the first luxury fashion brand to partner with Twitch, enabling viewers of its Spring/Summer 2021 show to interact in chat rooms. In the same month, Prada hosted a virtual show that encouraged audience participation, asking in advance for questions for co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons. In November, Gucci staged a virtual fashion film festival, dubbed GucciFest, that premiered its new collection: the brand committed to seasonless events back in May.

“In the past, there was a sense in the industry that digital was not luxury, but it is now an ingrained customer behaviour, and it is a way for brands to connect with audiences and express creativity,” says Rod Manley, chief marketing officer at Burberry. He adds that digital and show streaming have been a part of Burberry’s DNA for over a decade, but new platforms like Twitch offered “an interactive experience” for guests to connect with both Burberry and each other.

Burberry’s event clocked 118 million views across all platforms. GucciFest generated nearly 25 per cent more media impact value (measuring the total impact of media placements on online channels, inclusive of paid, owned and earned mentions) than the brand’s previous SS20 show.

Particular focus on China has also paid off. Prada staged screenings of its virtual show in Shanghai, as well as live streams on its Weibo and Douyin accounts, which engaged more than 48 million users, according to the company. A dedicated hashtag #PradaSS21 on Weibo generated one-day views of 170 million. On the day of its show, Burberry was featured on Alibaba’s Super Brand Day on Tmall, which led to a record-high daily transaction volume. Burberry estimates put its total customer reach on that day in the tens of millions.

AI: Dynamic influencer marketing

Dynamic campaigns — the term for micro-targeted ads at scale — are becoming a key tool in a marketer’s arsenal. Deepfakes have the potential to help brands reach customers with highly targeted and personalised messaging. For influencers and celebrities, deepfakes help them to easily broaden their reach by agreeing to front a fashion ad campaign and model clothes without even turning up for a photo shoot. Millions of different deepfake ads can instantly run across platforms like Facebook, while up to 100 different influencer ads targeted at various audiences could run, says Simon Lejeune, a growth marketing consultant.

It’s not a giant leap in a world where digital identities such as gaming avatars are already overlapping with real-life identities, while CGI models are mixing with real-life influencers. Imagine a new kind of deal, where an influencer provides a brand with a sample of 15 minutes of audio content and a few video shots. Using deepfake technology, a brand can transform that content into thousands of hyper-targeted ads. “Influencers might start licensing their faces and voices to brands,” says Lejeune. “A computer can take their faces and voices and reproduce them in 16 different languages or poses, and select the most persuasive one.”

Over the past year, brands have pivoted towards acquiring licensing and usage rights to influencer-produced content and using the content as ads from their brand channels, rather than paying influencers to post on their own feeds, says Emily Hall, campaign director at marketing agency Goat, which has offices in London, New York and Singapore. By acquiring usage rights, brands can decide on captions that better match their tone of voice or produce different cuts and edits of the content to post on whichever social media they consider most effective, with metrics available. “It gives brands an element of control,” says Hall.

Organic influencer content typically costs 5 per cent more, but acquiring usage rights could cost 20 to 30 per cent more than the original fee. “It’s still very good value for money,” says Hall. “The influencers are still creating content and doing the heavy lifting for the brands.”

Dynamic voiceover and deepfake videos offer huge potential for marketers in many sectors. A 2019 malaria awareness ad featuring David Beckham speaking nine languages showed how deepfakes can broaden the reach of a public message, receiving 400 million impressions globally within two months.

Deepfakes can also support influencers and content creators who are asked to create more live content but may not be exceptional performers in all media, says Dhillon. Hall agrees: “You’re taking away that risk of a human element, while still retaining a human touch.”

Hyper-personalised advertising

Chinese tech companies are further along in using deepfakes in marketing. In a July 2020 white paper about its plans for AI, Chinese tech giant Tencent emphasises that deepfakes are “not just about ‘faking’ and ‘deceiving’, but a highly creative and groundbreaking technology”. The company urged regulators to avoid clamping down on this nascent tech trend. For fashion, Tencent cited how deepfakes can show outfits on a broader variety of models with different skin tones, heights and weights. When consumers see products as extensions of themselves, they are willing to buy more, pay a higher price and advocate to friends, Harvard Business Review found.

Deepfakes can provide a route to “very quick understanding” for customers viewing new collections from a brand, says Matthew Drinkwater, head of the Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA) at London College of Fashion. He first started running deepfake experiments in 2019, when Microsoft sponsored a project that enabled his team to insert consumers in ads. “This isn’t about fit. It’s about giving you a first impression of how something might look.”

This month, Gucci has partnered with software firm Niantic to release a new collaboration with The North Face in a game of Pokémon Go. “Imagine if Gucci could take it one step further and send its top 50 clients personalised videos of themselves wearing the new collection,” Shvets of Reface AI says. In 2020, Reface AI enabled users to virtually try on Gucci clothes as part of a trial with Kering, resulting in one million swaps in a single day.

Retailers can also hyper-personalise service using a deepfaked assistant to help with online enquiries who is a customer’s exact demographic and speaks their language. Rather than talk to a faceless bot, shoppers could talk to a “real” face, which could enhance trust, says Drinkwater. “All of the indications are that if you’re able to personalise content, consumers are more likely to engage, so there’s a real practical application for the industry to start using this more widely.”

Some form of regulation is likely, notes marketer Lejeune. Potential discretion could include labels clarifying that deepfakes are not real people, he says. Dhillon adds that blockchain has potential as a future means of tracking authenticity.

Consumer data protection is another hot subject. Supporters of deepfakes say that the success of existing face-swap apps shows that consumers are comfortable with sharing their data. In 2019, AI photo editor FaceApp, which enables users to change their facial expressions, looks and age, was a viral hit. In 2020, Sway, an AI-powered app that enables users to visualise themselves dancing, became the third most downloaded app in the US during Super Bowl weekend.

The ethical implications of deepfakes have yet to be fully explored, suggests FIA’s Drinkwater. But he is convinced deepfakes are here to stay. “The technologies that surround artificial intelligence and machine learning are already critical to how brands can manage different aspects of their business, from their supply chain to marketing and communications. [Adoption] is not so much a pivot but a deepening commitment to technology and deep learning.”

Democratize Luxury & Harness Prestige Prosumers

For the luxury brands, seducing a new generation of consumers ****without tarnishing the shine, exclusivity will be key amid the sector’s slimmer pickings of 2021 – making it prime time to focus on building out fandoms.

Prosumers (consumers that are also creators) and a seductive sense of democracy will form the crux of success here, especially via competitor communities where fans can make a personal mark: the aforementioned ADA is a prime example – a gamified online space where users can create look-books in game, shareable on social media (while sampling digital looks inaccessible to their wallets IRL), while Drest let users play at being a pro stylist or creative director via a painstakingly recreated virtual array of luxury goods from 200+ brands. At a time with so much of life having been interrupted, the desire to see but also be seen has never been more critical.

As the market for digital fashion matures (check out just-birthed The Dematerialised – a blockchain-backed platform allowing fans to acquire digital garments they can carry into numerous other digital spaces) the gameplay, and opportunities, will multiply exponentially.

Top 2021 Beauty Trends

Beauty Will Make a Quick Comeback, But the Market Will Have Changed

Resources

https://www.voguebusiness.com/companies/how-fashion-got-2020-marketing-right-politics-tiktok-gaming-fashion-weeks?utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.company&utm_campaign=postfity&utm_content=postfity6454d

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiebaron/2021/01/04/from-silver-bullets-to-strategic-overhauls-9-retail-trends-tactics--innovations-for-success-in-2021-/?sh=7a927637d3bd&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT1RNNE5UTmxOV001TVRVMCIsInQiOiJwMk83SENOeDBcLzdZYWFpVW4zVUduUmRjQUZZeDUzVHVrR0RxNXhaRVRxV3JCU04xR0EwK0srVFBuTFFHamlCdDdXSmVZang3ZDJSVFJtck50VHcxSzBHSURLd1BFK1RIblNMRWRHdVgzTFY5WEtLakQzS3diaEZ3TEFYNXBxZHMifQ%3D%3D