What Fashion Retail Professionals Need to Know Today

Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion professionals working in retail, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or perform better in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.

BoF Careers distills business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for retail professionals today:

1. The Holiday Shopping Season Meets Inflation’s Buzzsaw

A US National Retail Federation survey in September found large numbers of shoppers already looking for gifts in the belief that, with inflation running rampant, the bargains and promotions wouldn’t get any better as Christmas approaches. [However,] many retailers are stuck with a glut of unsold merchandise ordered in more optimistic times. The early, Black Friday-level discounts are more likely a sign of even bigger markdowns to come, rather than a one-time offer.

Retailers, too, are juicing sales now in the belief that times are only going to get worse. Unlike consumers, they have plenty of data to support this thesis. […] Surveys show consumers are less and less likely to splurge on holiday gifts: Adobe, which analyses credit card transactions to track consumer spending online, predicts US holiday season e-commerce sales will rise a paltry 2.5 percent year on year (the pre-pandemic norm was year-on-year growth in the mid-teens). Apparel in particular is due for a rough season, with projected sales falling nearly 7 percent from 2021.

Related Jobs:

Store Manager, Claudie Pierlot — Berlin, Germany

Department Manager, Prada Group — New York, United States

Assistant Store Manager, Tory Burch — Rosemont, United States

2. How to Plan Your Retail Footprint

Up-and-coming brands often opt for small stores in trendy neighbourhoods instead of flagships on the busiest streets. Many brands look for their physical spaces to serve as many functions as possible, from building brand awareness to serving as a mini-warehouse for e-commerce orders. Generating sales still matters, but it’s no longer the only factor in a store’s success.

Brands are also opening fewer stores as they expand, compared with the pre-internet rise of chains like Gap, which at its peak operated thousands of stores worldwide. Vuori, a rapidly growing activewear brand that last year secured $400 million in funding from SoftBank, has a plan to reach 100 locations by 2026 (it’s about a quarter of the way there).

Related Jobs:

Store Manager, Sandro — Copenhagen, Denmark

Private Client Associate, Galvan — New York, United States

Store Operations Coordinator, Burberry — Singapore

3. How In-Store Services Help DTC Brands Win at Brick-and-Mortar

A growing number of direct-to-consumer brands [see] in-person services as the next big market to disrupt. Eyewear brand Warby Parker helped usher in this new wave of retail when it introduced eye exams in its physical stores in 2013 (it now offers this service in over 100 locations). Facegym started with facial massages and is on pace to generate roughly half its sales from skin care products this year. Feit, which sells hand-sewn shoes, is one of a number of brands offering in-store repair services.

The up front cost of opening a store is high. But customers who visit one of these start-ups’ stores for a facial treatment or an eye exam tend to spend more on products as well, making these establishments more reliable money makers than purely online retail.

Related Jobs:

Head of Retail Operations, Manolo Blahnik — London, United Kingdom

Sales Assistant, Maje — Wertheim, Germany

Store Stylist, Kirna Zabête — New York, United States

4. How to Break Into Wholesale

Despite multi-brand retailers’ troubles over the last decade, wholesale is still the goal for many emerging brands once they reach a certain size. Retailers can put a label in front of new customers and help with the difficult work of marketing and logistics. It can boost an emerging brand’s reputation when shoppers see its creations displayed alongside well-known names.

But buyers are also inundated with pitches. Having industry connections and a good sense of a retailer’s target customer still counts for a lot. Small brands also need to prove they have the cash flow and production capacity to fulfil a store’s orders. And most importantly, they must have designs that are going to appeal to shoppers when stocked with dozens of other brands in a department store or e-commerce site.

Related Jobs:

Concessions Manager, Christian Louboutin — London, United Kingdom

Business Manager, Maison Margiela — New York, United States

Director Local Business Optimisation, Bloomingdale’s — Short Hills, United States

5. Luxury’s Big Resale Experiment Is Just Getting Started

Balenciaga’s new [resale] programme is an interesting and early test case that represents one of the boldest moves yet into the market by a storied luxury brand, embedding resale into the customer journey on the brand’s website. The label has partnered with Reflaunts, a white-label tech platform that provides brands with the architecture to run their own resale programmes and plugs them into dozens of marketplaces globally.

That takes care of a number of potential pain points: Balenciaga retains control of pricing, presentation and authentication, without having to handle the transactions itself; logistics costs are baked into an item’s price and will vary depending on where the seller and buyer are located; targeting multiple marketplaces maximises the chances of a swift sale; and the challenge of customer acquisition becomes an opportunity for retention.

Related Jobs:

Personal Shopping and Client Relations Manager, Mytheresa — Munich, Germany

Client Specialist, Danielle Frankel Studio — New York, United States

Director, Customer Growth, Neiman Marcus — Dallas, United States

6. What It Takes to Crack a New Market In Beauty

Sephora is returning to the UK. The [online] roll out will start this week, with the transition of Feelunique’s site to Sephora UK, at sephora.co.uk, on Oct 17. A Sephora store will open in London in March 2023 at a yet-to-be-disclosed location. [However], to compete with about 2,200 Boots locations and department stores like Harrods, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, Sephora needs to open more than one outpost.

The UK’s department store fleet has best-in-class product assortments, experiences, services and more, while Boots is omnipresent in the country and has a larger beauty assortment than is standard at American stores. (Select stores even sell Chanel and Dior). There’s also SpaceNK, which sits at the high end of beauty retail in the UK with around 70 doors. With a category as sensory as beauty is, it will be difficult for Sephora to make a splash in the market with just one retail location when it’s so heavily outnumbered by its competitors.

Related Jobs:

Boutique and Spa Manager, Dr. Barbara Sturm — Düsseldorf, Germany

Retail Concept Designer, Tommy Hilfiger — Amsterdam, Netherlands

Head of Client Relations and Experience, Fforme — New York, United States

7. Secondhand Luxury: Opportunity or Threat?

The market for secondhand luxury goods is booming: used luxury sales grew 65 percent from 2017 to 2021, more than five times faster than new luxury sales over the same period, according to Bain & Co. And, the consultancy expects secondhand luxury sales to increase at around 15 percent annually over the next five years, double the rate of the primary market.

Opinion is still split on whether secondhand luxury appeals to core luxury consumers, cannibalising primary market sales, or attracts new aspirants ripe for recruitment. […] Thus far, the fear that purchasing secondhand luxury items will drive customers away from purchasing first-hand items seems unfounded. According to a recent survey by Boston Consulting Group, 71 percent of buyers of pre-owned items tended to buy products and brands they could not afford new. This suggests that secondhand products widen the market for high-end brands and can serve as potential gateways for first-time buyers.

Related Jobs:

Couture Sales Consultant, Phillipa Lepley — London, United Kingdom

Retail and E-Commerce Intern, Dice Kayek — Paris, France

Merchandise Coordinator, Tiffany & Co. — Sydney, Australia

8. Fast Fashion’s Race Into Resale Has Yet to Shift Its Core Business Model

In [October], two of fashion’s biggest players joined the [resale movement]. Shein launched an in-app marketplace in the US, allowing shoppers to re-sell the spoils of hauls broadcast on TikTok when they’re done with them. Meanwhile, Zara will launch its own resale marketplace in [November], while also offering repair and donation services.

But for resale to really deliver on buzzy promises to offset fashion’s impact, the current crop of pilot programs must give rise to strategies that disrupt, not just complement existing business models. Until then, high-profile new launches risk coming across as little more than performative marketing.

Related Jobs:

Stockroom Assistant, ME+EM — London, United Kingdom

Business Analyst Omnichannel, PVH — Amsterdam, Netherlands

Assistant Store Manager, Moose Knuckles — Somerset, United States