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Mulberry plans to cut 25 per cent of its worldwide workforce, the vast majority of which work in the UK. The high-end fashion brand, which is best known for its leather goods, employs 1,400 people, including 1,140 in the UK. The company would start reopening its UK stores from June 15. However, social distancing measures and reduced tourist and footfall levels are expected to affect its income.
Mulberry was founded in Somerset in 1971, where its two factories are still in production. The brand had been able to re-open stores in China and South Korea and, more recently, some stores in Europe and Canada.
It has 120 stores in 25 countries, but also ships to 190 countries around the world. Although digital sales of the brand have been good, it could not fully offset the fall in demand caused by store closures. Mulberry is one of the leading fashion brands that switched production from luxury goods to making medical equipment. Last month it had set its handbag factory in Somerset to making 8,000 gowns for NHS workers in Bristol
In response to a recent tweet by CrossFit, Adidas AG-owned Reebok has decided to end its partnership with the brand.
In response to a tweet by research firm Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that classified racism and discrimination as public health issue, Glassman, who is also the chief executive of CrossFit, had posted on Saturday, "It's FLOYD-19".
Glassman later apologised for a tweet that equated the police killing of a black man in the United States to the COVID-19 pandemic, after it drew widespread criticism.
The tweet related to the police killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in the US state of Minneapolis on May 25 and was seen as insensitive.
Macy’s Inc has raised a total of $4.5 billion in funds, including $3.15 billion in new borrowings against its real estate assets, as the department store chain tries to navigate through the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The funding gives the retailer sufficient flexibility and liquidity to steer the business for the foreseeable future.
The company would be able to purchase new inventory as stores reopen and repay upcoming debts in fiscal 2020 and 2021.
Like other retailers, Macy’s has been severely impacted from store closures due to the coronavirus health crisis that forced governments to announce lockdowns to curb the spread of the infection.
The funds from the offering and existing cash will be used to repay outstanding borrowings under an existing $1.5 billion unsecured credit agreement. The retailer said it has amended the $1.5 billion credit agreement to reduce the available credit commitment and modify the agreement’s covenants.
Italian luxury company Gucci has reduced its environmental impact year-over-year by 21 percent. As part of its 10-year Culture of Purpose strategy, spanning 2015 to 2025, the company plans to reduce its total environmental impact by 40 percent within its direct operations and across the entire supply chain. It has also pledged to reduce by 50 percent its greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
The company has extended sustainable processes and manufacturing efficiencies, such as the Gucci Scrap-less for leather, a program that runs in association with eight tanneries to significantly reduce the quantity of leather that is treated during the manufacturing process, leading to energy, water and chemical use savings, and Gucci-Up, a circular economy initiative focused on the upcycling of waste leather and textiles generated during the production process.
Gucci has switched to green energy, reaching 83 percent renewable energy for its stores, offices, warehouses and factories, with a 100 percent target by the end of 2020.
Tanzania plans to more than double its cotton production in the next five years as farmers increase cultivation, encouraged by higher prices for the fiber. The government’s goal is to boost its cotton production to 1 million metric tonne by 2025.
The country’s output for the 2020-21 season is expected to increase to 400,000 metric tonne from 348,882 tonne in 2019-20.
Cotton is Tanzania’s fourth-biggest cash crop after cashews, tobacco and coffee, and fetched the East African nation $68.4 million of export earnings in 2018. Output in Tanzania peaked in the 2005-06 season at about 370,000 tonne before falling to just under 133,000 tonne in 2016-17.
Berlin plans to move its most important fashion trade shows – Seek, Premium and the environmentally conscious Neonyt – to Frankfurt. The event will be called Unveiling The Unexpected: Summer 2021. It will involve five different fashion platforms, three trade fairs and two conferences. Around 2,000 designers are expected to take part.
The conferences run by Premium about sustainability and technology will also move to Frankfurt. Frankfurt is generally better known as being Germany’s financial capital and home of the European Central Bank. Messe Frankfurt is the world’s largest trade fair organizer.
Though plans on how to reopen schools in the US in fall remain in flux, American Eagle Outfitters CEO Jay Schottenstein is optimistic about demand for back-to-school merchandise. Similarly, its back-to-school merchandise offers Old Navy an opportunity to serve families as its parent company Gap Inc begins to reopen stores across the US.
Old Navy currently operates more than 2,100 stores as mini fulfillment hubs through ship-from-store and more than 500 stores as curbside pickup locations. Additionally, the retailer has welcomed tens of thousands of its employees back to work and expects to have the vast majority of its North American stores opened by the end of June.
Meanwhile, Gap continues to look at merchandising opportunities, though the heritage brand will not step away far from its roots: modern American classics. The brand introduced its first teen denim collection during the pandemic.
According to the UK-based data analytics company, GlobalData, COVID-19 will wipe off $297 billion revenue from the global apparel market in 2020. The US will account for 42 per cent of total loss. Asia-Pacific (APAC) markets, including China, India and South Korea, will raise their position in the ranks of top 10 global apparel markets by 2023 with China surpassing the US as the largest apparel market in the world.
Apparel sales in the APAC markets will take some time to rebound amid dampened consumer confidence, slump in tourism, threat of an impending global recession and high unemployment rates. However, lost sales will be compensated by ‘revenge buying’ as witnessed in China recently where some brands saw their store sales return to 80-100 per cent of pre-COVID-19 trading levels.
Kazi Iftekhar Hossain, President, Bangladesh Garment Buying House Association (BGBA) has urged the textile and apparel industry to explore the huge opportunity that rising demand for functional items like masks, personal protective equipment, hospital bed sheets and isolation fabric, offers them. Speaking at a recent press conference Hossain said, this will also benefit the backward linkage industries in the country. Bangladesh can easily grab this opportunity as the market size of these items is worth billions of dollars and the country has already set-up garment factories.
The country also employs around four lakh employees in 826 apparel buying houses. However, these buying houses have to bear the cost of their increasing rents and staff salaries.
Recent data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology indictes, decline in revenues and profits of China's garment industry narrowed down during the first four months of this year. From January to April, the decline in combined operating revenues of major garment enterprises narrowed by 4.99 percentage points to 18.47 percent year-on-year from the first quarter.
Similarly, the decline in profits narrowed 8.73 percentage points to 34.77 per cent from the same period in the previous year. The decline in output narrowed 8.93 percentage points to 11.36 per cent while the exports of clothing and accessories declined by 22.3 percent year-on-year.
