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Revamping Richemont's Wardrobe

27.01.10

By Alessandro Pasetti and Jamie Miyazaki

The extravagance goods industry still looks broadly cheap, assuming Asian need will help it regain the multiples it sported back in the halcyon days of 2001-2007, and this suggests it’s dated for a strategic move by cash-rich Compagnie Financiere Richemont .

What about insomuch as minority stakes in fashion houses Polo Ralph Lauren Corp . and Salvatore Ferragamo as feasible alternatives to the names that have already cropped up on the rumor list?

So far, Richemont has been cited as looking at Germany’s Rodenstock or Italy’s Prada S.p.A., and even a tie up with France’s LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, but this jabbering has elicited denials or a no-comment response from the Swiss-South African conglomerate.

Abscond-on acquisitions to beef up Richemont’s underweight presence in dress would certainly help it to diversify from its core, and more cyclical, ‘urgently luxury’ business of watches and jewelry.

And it isn’t stubby of capital to play with. As at September 2009, it had a net cash fix of EUR902 million that could be put to work, and there are plenty of privately owned enjoyment apparel brands with $1 billion-plus in proceeds that could be used to bulk up the company’s ‘soft gratification’ presence.

Source: Wall Street Journal (blog)

What's in store

31.01.10

It�s exactly a simple satchel, made from a sort of butcher paper, with three small words written in a curvy, sans serif font: Rarely brown bag. Medium brown bag. Big brown bag.

It�s the most iconic shopping bag in the narrative of American retail. And there is no doubt, when passing one on the street, that it came from Bloomingdale�s.

In its 138th year of responsibility and steeped in history, the department store is finally opportunity doors abroad, starting with the global shopping ripsnorting Dubai. Today, two Bloomingdale�s locations open at Dubai Mall – a three-drub, 146,000-square-foot fashion and accessories store and a 54,000-generous-foot housewares store – anchoring the still-different retail centre. Other department stores already operating in the mall count France�s Galeries Lafayette, and the UK�s Debenhams and Marks & Spencer.

Bloomingdale�s will be run by the Dubai-based retail leviathan Al Tayer Group, falling under the remit of Shireen el Khatib, the

Source: National

The scent of Aphrodite

17.01.10

Jennifer Lopez’s Phosphoresce fragrance, credited with igniting the mania for celebrity scents, made sales benefit $100 million in 2002; Chanel’s legendary No5 is still among the first-rate-sellers in department stores the world over 89 years after it was launched and Francois Coty, known as the first eau-de-Cologne manufacturer, in 1904 recognised that an attractive bottle was indispensable to a perfume’s success. High points in the history of a multi-billion dollar effort that now sees around 1,000 new aromas produced every year. Yet bona fide fragrance history was made in 2003 when a team of archaeologists discovered a bouquet lab in Cyprus dating from 4,000 years ago. One of the 14 divers fragrances unearthed at the Pyrgos site is believed to have been against by Aphrodite, it has now been recreated and is available to buy.

A group of Italian archaeologists led by Dr Maria Rosaria Belgiorno first uncovered the eau-de-Cologne factory site in 1993. Evidence from the area shows the location also produced copper, wine, medicines, cosmetics, textiles and olive oil for native use and even for export. “They organised work to make products to export, to m in a group, a co-operative,” confirmed Belgiorno. It was the scale of the plat and the presence of enormous 500-litre oil storage jars that definitely indicated this was the centre of a prosperous export business; an industrial Bronze Age complex.

Source: Cyprus Mail