Category Archives: retail
How ‘Dupe’ Culture Took Over Online Fashion
TikTok has sped up fashion cycles — and helped push inexpensive knockoffs onto the market in record time
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/dupe-culture-fast-fashion-tiktok-1234591964/ (Rolling Stone/paywall)
Inside TikTok’s Controversial Dupe Culture (Byrdie)
The case against dupe culture (QJ)
Nike debuts robot-powered system to extend life of sneakers
Nike has revealed a robot-augmented system in its Nike Town London store designed to clean and repair shoes with the goal of extending their lifecycle.
‘Bot Initiated Longevity Lab’ (BILL) is part of the retailer’s latest efforts in steering towards a circular future, with the robot’s primary purpose set out to be helping Nike reduce its impact on the planet.
https://fashionunited.uk/news/business/nike-debuts-robot-powered-system-to-extend-life-of-sneakers/2022091365124
A robust and standardized framework for reuse measurement is needed. Here’s why
Only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling, with an effective recycling rate of approximately 2% globally. Reusable packaging, designed to be used several times, is necessary to reduce total virgin material consumption, emissions and waste generation by keeping resources in circulation.
Measurement and reporting is a significant barrier to scaling reuse models of consumption. There are currently no standardized and tested metrics to track progress on reuse, which is critical for companies to fully understand the economic, consumer and environmental benefits of reusable business models. Organizations still tend to operate in siloes, using different reuse metrics and calculation methodologies. Standardization of reuse metrics across industry, government and standard-setting institutions will accelerate the systemic shift toward reuse models.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/plastic-waste-reuse-measurement?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social_scheduler&utm_term=SDIM2022&utm_content=26/09/2022+00:00
The Metaphysical War For The Metaverse We’re Already Losing
Virtual worlds should be as much of an expression of the people designing and living in them as possible. With the creator tools we already have and semi-open platforms like Roblox or Minecraft we can build pretty much anything within them. You could argue that even Minecraft obeys a little too much to the laws of the physical world but it wasn’t built as a metaverse platform so you can forgive it a little.
https://medium.com/@theo/the-metaphysical-war-for-the-metaverse-were-already-losing-ba576339a3e2
Diesel Sets a World Record
What kept it from seeming like just a stunt was the fact that beneath the blowups, Mr. Martens is not just full of hot air. He’s doing things with denim — the fabric of democracy — that are genuinely transformative and coded for currency.
https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/style/diesel-fendi-milan-fashion-week.amp.html
Chief Metaverse Officers Are Getting Million-Dollar Paydays. So What Do They Do All Day?
Pressure to keep up with tech trends has spawned new C-suite titles for decades. The 1980s saw the rise of the chief information officer, who understood the inner workings of IT and how it applied to broader business strategy. Later, chief technology officers emerged as big-picture thinkers who could evaluate developing technologies and how they might be used in the long term. More recently, chief digital officers have sought to modernize outdated business practices so companies don’t get “Amazoned,” or steamrolled by a nimbler, more tech-savvy rival.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-22/what-is-a-chief-metaverse-officer-and-do-you-need-one
How fast fashion can cut its staggering environmental impact
‘Fast fashion’ is so called partly because the fashion industry now releases new lines every week, when historically this happened four times a year. Today, fashion brands produce almost twice the amount of clothing that they did in 2000, most of it made in China and other middle-income countries such as Turkey, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Worldwide, 300 million people are employed by the industry.
But incredibly, more than 50 billion garments are discarded within a year of being made, according to a report from an expert workshop convened by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), published in May.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02914-2?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=nature&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1663357413
The real cost of fast fashion
Buying cheap clothing has never been easier. But is there a greater price to pay?
https://theweek.com/feature/briefing/1016752/the-real-cost-of-fast-fashion
Analyzing Trends with Tim Stock 