Monday, Jan 18th
Last update10:18:25 PM GMT
We’re all the same boat
During the past months, I have closely followed the developments in the global fashion industry, the luxury sector, and the diamond and jewelry business. The bottom line is that they are all connected. Sales of high fashion, luxury products, such as branded leather bags and shoes, as well as the fine jewelry business, all have been severely affected by the Covid-19 health crisis.
In the USA, department stores such as JC Penney and Neiman Marcus – beacons of the American retail landscape - have filed for bankruptcy.
It’s all connected.
In Europe, Inditex, the world’s largest fashion retailer, reported its first quarterly loss since it was taken public in 2001. While Inditex said it would close some 1,200 stores, it also announced that it would invest €1 billion IT upgrade as well as the opening of 450 new stores. Inditex, which owns Zara, stated it intends to gain 25 percent of its total revenue through e-commerce sales by 2022.
When the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) was launched officially on January 1, 2003, it created for the first time in our industry’s history an ethical threshold that could be universally enforced.