1. Ex-LVMH North America chair: “We have an awful lot of brands out there that just shouldn’t be.” With the “exception of very recessionary years, luxury and premium brands have always outgrown on a yearly basis, the sort of more mass brands.” – Read More on Yahoo
2. From High-End Apparel to Mass Market T-Shirts, the Fashion Industry Struggles to Go Green. “It would take 13 years to drink the water that is used to make one pair of jeans and one T-shirt.” – Read More on Fortune
3. Why Luxury Brands Should Focus on Tier-2 and -3 Cities: Lower-tier cities in China are fueling luxury growth. Hot spots like Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong are already oversaturated markets, but smaller cities have an excess of demand. And despite the high-spending capacity of this consumer segment, luxury brands have been slow to seize the opportunity. – Read More on Jing
4. How $470 million worth of fake Nikes get into the US: The counterfeiting crew allegedly used slightly altered versions of actual company names to make their shipping paperwork look legit, and falsely claimed the shipments were made up of everyday household items like ventilation fans. – Read More on Quartz
5. Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow made the 2010s the decade of health and wellness misinformation: Celebrity wellness hype contributes to our “culture of untruth” by both inviting an erosion of critical thinking and promoting what is popular rather than what is true. – Read More on NBC
6. RETRO READ: The Rise – and Questionable Qualifications – of the Ever-Growing Pool of Wellness Gurus. Claims about how to heal illness through diet and alternative therapies are far from novel. What is new is the unprecedented speed and scale afforded by online transmission. Social media also enables individuals to monetize their following through advertorials, affiliate programs and e-commerce shops. – Read More on TFL
7. Some 40% of Americans made a purchase from direct-to-consumer brands in the last year. Notable categories for DTC purchasing over traditional retail included health and beauty products (35%), apparel (34%), and tech and gadgets (26%). – Read More on Retail Dive