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While other apparel retailers are gradually recovering, Zara's parent company is quickly surpassing its pre-Covid sales figures. This week Inditex, which owns the fast fashion brand as well as Pull&Bear and Massimo Dutti, reported a 7% increase in sales compared to the same period in 2019.
The home decor category saw a major boom during the pandemic, but has gone through ebbs and flows in recent months. To sustain their growth, young furniture startups are looking for more ways to keep their new and existing customers coming back for their future furniture needs.
Workwear has long been dominated by big players, such as Dickies, Carhartt and Duluth. While other apparel categories have been taken over by digitally-native brands, workwear had remained stagnant until now. A new crop of DTC startups want to change that.
As customers get more comfortable shopping in person, retailers are grappling with balancing brick and mortar and online sales. While online sales growth slows, retailers are still looking to make investments in their e-commerce business, in order to make their online sales division more profitable and fast-growing in the years to come.
The weekly "drop" is quickly becoming a major release tactic among direct-to-consumer food brands. Take for instance, Last Crumb, a luxury cookie brand that launched in May and has a growing lottery-like waitlist of eager customers. The weekly release method, long used by streetwear and sneaker brands, is being applied to the food space.
As brands grapple with their physical retail strategy, some are finding opportunity in looking outside the traditional retail hubs. Fashion brand Faherty, for example, has embraced resort and vacation destinations for its new stores. This strategy is a departure from the company's previous store expansion approach, which focused on coastal cities.
In its S-1 filing with the SEC, DTC footwear brand Allbirds unveiled its goal for a sustainable public equity offering,” or an “SPO." The document also unveiled major operating losses and a lack of profitability for the well-funded company.
For years, creators and influencers have relied on ad-based revenue and sponsorship deals to earn an income on social platform, such as Instagram and YouTube. This has resulted in a select few influencers becoming sought-after, while many micro-influencers struggle to monetize their content without big brand deals. Now, new live streaming resale platform Galaxy wants to attract these creators with a revenue-sharing model.
The future of co-working spaces, which were first popularized by WeWork and others, was unclear during lockdowns. Now, these concepts are taking on a new life by opening up locations in retail spaces, such as existing shopping centers, restaurants and bars.
Warby Parker is the latest direct-to-consumer company planning to go public. The eyewear brand, which was founded in 2010 and currently has 145 stores, is preparing for a direct listing on the NYSE. The debut will come after years of major revenue growth coupled with operating losses.
Specialized toy retailers have struggled to regain their market share over the past decade. This has led companies like Toys 'R' Us and Disney to seek out branded partnerships with existing retailers, including department stores like Macy's and big box stores like Target. This holiday season, the shop-in-shops concept is proving to be a go-to strategy for retailers.
The pandemic helped bring resale into the mainstream, with several platforms benefiting from the trend of young consumers buying and selling goods. One company that's experienced an influx in users, both young and outside the Gen Z demographic, is StockX. While the platform began as a go-to for rare, hard-to-find sneakers, StockX is working to diversify its partnerships and offerings to cater to a global audience.
For decades, lottery ticket sales were restricted to authorized brick and mortar sellers, mainly made up of convenience stores and gas stations. But in recent years, the effort to digitize U.S. lotteries has been brewing thanks to platforms like Jackpocket and Lotto.com.
This week, Target's Circle Rewards reached 100 million members, a major milestone since launching in the fall of 2019. Now, Target is looking to further grow the free opt-in program by updating its e-commerce capabilities.
After years of pushing its online segment, most recently with the introduction of the Amazon Prime-esque Walmart+, Walmart is seeing major e-commerce gains. In its quarterly earnings report, the retailer said it's projected to hit $75 billion in e-commerce sales in 2021.
In 2020, Amazon Logistics delivered 4.2 billion parcel shipments, up from 1.9 billion in 2019. It now makes up, by volume, 21% of the parcel shipments in the U.S., behind the USPS (38%) and UPS (24%) but ahead of FedEx for the first time (16%).
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