Geneva Days announced for August in a new format as lockdown measures are eased

As countries around the world are easing their lockdowns, albeit gradually and with great caution, retailers are looking at their options of preparing their shops and retail spaces with social distancing very much in the heart of their planning before receiving the public. One retailer said customers need to book an appointment in advance before allowed to go to its store; although sanitising agents will be provided, customers are expected to have face coverings.

But for trade events, the ability to gather the largest possible number of business people within a limited time period has always been the measure of success.  So organisers need to figure out how to maintain social distancing while still able to do a successful event.

Perhaps the answer is to have it held in various venues.


Just announced is the Geneva Days event for the luxury watch industry which will take place from August 26 to 29 (held with the official support of the city and the state of Geneva) bringing together retailers and press members for four days but there will not be a traditional exhibition in a single location.


Instead, presentations will take place in city centre hotels, boutiques and watchmaking workshops of the participating brands.


“The operation is intended to be decentralised, agile, collegial, convivial and inexpensive in its organisation to make the event as efficient and attractive as possible. All the brands will be spread across easily accessible locations within defined area of downtown Geneva. A central reception desk will provide orientation and guidance for retailers and media to optimise in the smoothest possible way their appointments with the founding brands throughout the four-day event,” the organiser explains to WatchPro.


Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin, who was an early driver of the project, told WatchPro that it is important for the Swiss watch industry to come together and light a fire under the Swiss watch industry after the difficulties of the Coronavirus pandemic.
“The decentralized format of this unique watch brands ‘gathering will allow us to be safe. Also, we have put together strict hygiene rules for all participants and visitors. No risks will be taken. Grouping the entire Swiss watch industry in a single location, Geneva, is a major and unique opportunity to rekindle the flame of the watchmaking sector that has been slowed down the last weeks,” he says.


A website has been launched at gva-watch-days.com, and will provide information as well as profiles of participating brands and a map on where activities will take place.


So far Bulgari, Breitling, De Bethune, Gerald Genta, Girard-Perregaux, H. Moser & Cie, MB&F, Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk, HYT, Maurice Lacroix and Louis Moinet have confirmed their participation, and a spokesperson for the event says that many other brands and houses have expressed an interest in taking part.


With just three months until the event, and with much concern about Covid-19-proof hygiene and security measures for the global airline and hospitality industries, it will be an interesting test of peoples’ appetite for traveling by land or air to Geneva, and gathering in large numbers.


It is worth noting that Switzerland now has fewer than 20 new Covid-19 cases per day and there have been just 25 deaths in the past week despite lockdown measures having been significantly reduced and Swiss are returning to pleasures like shopping and eating out.  Assuming the virus continues to weaken its grip, Geneva Days will host media and retailer dinners as well as a festive evening.
For brands, retailers and media, Geneva Days will be an opportunity for executives to take stock of life in a post-Covid-19 world.

Remote working doesn’t need to affect innovation, new research reveals

Employees that work from home are unlikely to be less innovative, according to new research by the University of Cologne and the Leibniz University Hannover.

The study, conducted by professors Marina Schröder and Bernd Irlenbusch, found that video conferencing among team members can compensate possibly negative effects on innovation when employees work remote from each other.

Remote working can combine the best of both worlds – an increase in productivity as most employees have less distractions and high level of usefulness as video conferencing allows employees communicate as if they’re in the office.

“Previous research has shown that creative performance is significantly lower when there is no face-to-face communication, however, the current lockdown has fostered the adoption of new technologies to conduct collaborative tasks when team members work from home. Video conferencing can mitigate the gap in creative performance,” says Professor Irlenbusch. 

The study compared face-to-face communication, video conferencing and communicating over chat to see how remote working will affect creative performance. The results speak to the question of how organisations should design their communication during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings revealed that communicating over “chat” significantly reduced the usefulness of innovative ideas as well as the share of extremely innovative ideas often resulting in product breakthroughs. In these respects, face-to-face communication and video conferencing showed no differences.

“Innovation is rarely an individual task, it often needs team collaboration, which can be effected greatly by the current circumstances of everyone working remotely. Organisations need to enable their employees to communicate with the right media to get the best out of them,” says Professor Irlenbusch. 

Read about the paper by clicking on this link:  ‘Innovationand communication media in virtual teams – An experimental study.’

Gucci to join Milan Digital Fashion Week in July; announcing two catwalk shows per year.

During lockdowns in cities around the world, non-essential retail outlets, fashion shops, department stores, boutiques and chain stores have to be closed, and public shows and events have to be cancelled or postponed to curtail the spread of Covid-19.

Consumers stuck at home are more concerned about meeting their basic necessities and essentials and do not necessarily want to look for new fashion items to buy.  Where will they go show off that new purchase when all public venues, restaurants, bars and clubs are closed.  Although many have been proficient with on-line purchasing and can still share their news on social media, not all companies are geared up for online sales.

Now many European fashion houses are starting to think and reflect on the way they sell, from staging catwalk shows to participating in major trade fairs.  Not to mention the endless cycle of producing new ranges every few weeks to compete on the crowded and competitive retail market.  Some big names have openly declared that the current catwalk schedule of showing fashion cannot be sustained (such as Gucci and Armani), others are thinking about the impact of over-production on the environment while staying relevant in the new-normal.

The big news this week in the fashion world, apart from the fact that many countries have announced the gradual reopening of non-essential shops and retail outlets following the lockdown easing, is that Gucci would in the future only do two shows a year, not the 5 currently stipulated in the runway show calendar, while calling for a reformulation of the fashion calendar. 


After revealing on Instagram of the two-show plan instead of five, Alessandro Michele, creative director of Gucci, revealed from his studio in Rome, addressing some 20 international editors via the Converse software in a virtual conference on Monday, May 25, that his next collection will be called “Epilogue” and will be shown during Milan Digital Fashion Week on July 17 – in a digital format.

During the lockdown in Italy, Michele of Gucci said he had spent his time at home reflecting on the way the fashion calendar works before the pandemic. His thoughts led him to believe that multiple types of collections in the present calendar: pre-fall, capsule or cruise, should not be maintained and each sector should in the future carry different names. Hence the new title – Epilogue for his July digital event, predicting multi-disciplinary shows spanning elements of theatre, catwalk shows and digital technology.  Not surprisingly coming from a designer who has showed in a series of iconic venues in his five years at Gucci, staging epic and artistic shows in such diverse locations as Westminster Abbey; an ancient Roman cemetery in Arles; or a Greek temple in Sicily.

As reported in Fashion Network, Carlo Capasa, president of the Camera della Moda, Italy’s  governing body of the runway season, said: “I think Alessandro’s spirit contributes immensely to our community. He has indicated he will do something in our first digital season in July, which is great. However, this a moment where nobody is sure exactly what will happen next. So, here at the Camera, our rule is to try to give and create the best opportunity for designers to express themselves."

However Capasa added he still expects to have four Fashion Weeks per year in the future, keeping to the existing calendar.

Talking to Fashion Network, he said: “I continue to believe we should have separate menswear and women’s weeks twice a year, as they are different industries. Generally speaking, I think that this is the best way to keep the proper balance for these two divisions. They are two different industries, with different buyers, retailers, manufacturers. That’s true even if some specific brands may want to be different and stage co-ed shows, which is fine for them,” explained Capasa to FashionNetwork.com.

Due to the Covid-19, Capasa took the executive decision in April to cancel this June’s menswear season, partly replacing it with Milan Digital Fashion Week, which will take place from July 14 to 17.

While giving multiple reason to support maintaining the status quo of the traditional Fashion Weeks seasons, he did think markdowns were having a very negative effect on fashion, a point raised by many designers.   

“Yes, stores were anticipating the season too much. There were too many markdowns. Look at what happened to Neiman Marcus. We need to reestablish the idea that our product has a value. Maybe, yes, there was too much overproduction in fast fashion. And, in our high quality world, we have unfortunately followed fast fashion too much,” he told FashionNetwork.  
Besides Gucci, Zegna has also reported that it will present a “phygital” show in in Milan in July. Capasa expects there to be “probably between 30 and 40 brands” participating in the summer season. Looking ahead, he expects September to be a mix of physical and digital presentations in varying lengths and formats.

Milan Digital Fashion Week will take place 14-17 July, covering Spring/Summer 2021 men’s collections and Spring/Summer 2021 men’s and women’s pre-collections, along with a platform designed to give access to showrooms. The digital offerings will include photo and video content, backstage interviews, as well as webinars and live streaming of keynote speeches.

The French Federation of Haute Couture and Fashion also announced an online presentation of spring/summer 2021 during Paris Fashion Week men’s, to take place prior to Milan, from 9-13 July, during which fashion houses will be showing their collections via film and video.

Hygiene Austria sets up face mask production in English seaport for UK market

Just one month after two Austrian companies – Lenzing and Palmers  - joined forces to form  Hygiene Austria** specifically to produce protective face masks for usage in its own country and distribution to Europe, the company has now announced the setting up of a similar production site in Grimsby, United Kingdom, to supply the urgent needs of the British market.  Grimsby is a large coastal English seaport and administrative centre in North East Lincolnshire, on the South Bank of the Humber Estuary, close to where it reaches the North Sea.

A company spokesman said that since production had started in May in Austria, millions of euros worth of orders had been placed.  The product range includes mouth-nose safety masks, FFP2-masks as well as coloured face masks for children.

According to Tino Wieser, member of the Board of Palmers, the demand in the UK for protective masks is massively driven by the consequent handling of Covid-19.  He said "The supply chain is complex and serving the UK market from Austria is costly.” The managers therefore decided to implement the same approach as in Vienna. “We will pull up our sleeves, start organizing machinery and a well working raw material supply chain and commence producing face masks locally as soon as possible”, Wieser adds.

The Lenzing plant in Grimsby, UK.

UK’s newly appointed International Trade Minister Ranil Jayawardena, said: “Sourcing PPE for our frontline workers is a key priority for our government. Alongside our efforts in international procurement, it is excellent that we have been able to assist companies from overseas to invest in Britain too, leading to domestic production of vital supplies.”

As a production site, the Lenzing facilities in Grimsby were deemed the best option, according to Phil Munson, Operations Director at the Lenzing Grimsby plant.  He said: “We are eager to play a leading role to ensure the primary health care to the UK population as a key supplier teaming up with our National Health Service (NHS). Moreover, we can count on highly experienced service and maintenance personnel here in Grimsby.” He also highlighted that just like in Austria, new jobs will be created in Grimsby as well, in production, order processing, key accounting, supply chain management and logistics.  Masks for both medical personnel as well as regular citizens will be produced at this plant.

With the set-up of Wiener Neudorf in Austria serving as a blue print for the production in Grimsby, the gained experience will allow an even faster and smoother production in the UK.

At the site in Grimsby first production machines are being installed so production can start between end of May / beginning of June with a monthly capacity of 10 million pieces. Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) based law firm Reed Smith provided legal counsel on the incorporation of the subsidiary.

**
Hygiene Austria LP GmbH was established on April 24th 2020 by Lenzing AG and Palmers Textil AG as a hygiene competence center with the goal of fast and independent production of hygiene items at Palmers’ former production site in Wiener Neudorf, close to Vienna. The company, in which Lenzing AG holds 50.1% and Palmers Textil AG 49.9%, manufactures the so-called mouth-nose-safety masks (MNS)/ surgical masks of class EN14683 with a monthly capacity of 12 million pieces – to be increased to 25 million pieces soon.

Urgent retail solutions to help protect employees and customers in response to Covid-19

As retailers and businesses continue to navigate forward in this unprecedented pandemic situation, they are facing a multitude of changes that need to happen rapidly involving staff, inventory, customers and operations for now and when they reopen.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Sensormatic Solutions, owned by Johnson Controls in Switzerland, has launched new offerings to help retailers protect employees and customers, by providing Real-Time Occupancy, thermal imaging and physical barrier solutions to help create a safer environment that will protect employees, customers and assets in brick-and-mortar store operations and warehouses.

“As retailers face their new reality as a result of COVID-19, we [Sensormatic Solutions] believe that the industry needs to begin to restore consumer confidence, and that starts with helping to ensure the store is a safe environment,” said Bjoern Petersen, president, Sensormatic Solutions. “Never before has there been a greater need for retailers to be equipped with the right technology along with real-time insights to make business critical decisions.”

Sensormatic Solutions offers the following technology and solutions to retailers:
Real-Time Occupancy and Social Distancing – The ShopperTrak Real-Time Occupancy solution assists retailers with understanding shopper density within a store for compliance with social distancing guidelines or ordinances, and to meet maximum limits. It helps optimize cleaning schedules for common facilities or high-touch areas, such as self-checkouts, and provides prompt up-to-the-minute understanding of staffing needs for efficient fulfillment of buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) or curbside pickup orders.

Thermal Imaging to Screen for Elevated Body Temperature – These solutions quickly provide thermal and colour images of individuals or crowds entering the store. If the camera detects elevated temperatures above defined thresholds, a notification will be sent to store or warehouse managers in order to help maintain proper health and safety measures.

Physical Barrier Partition and Containment – Sensormatic Solutions provides CoronaGuardTM partition and containment solutions in areas requiring person-on-person interaction, such as point-of-sale, pharmacy counters and customer service windows, in collaboration with Polymershapes. The lightweight, see-through, and impact-resistant acrylic sheets and ready-to-install “sneeze guard” systems form a barrier to help protect retailers’ most valuable assets: employees and customers.

Consumer Mobility Insights for Retail Recovery Planning – Sensormatic Solutions leverages consumer mobility data to help retailers plan their store reopening and recovery strategies, in partnership with Unacast and complementary to ShopperTrak’s in-store Market Intelligence traffic benchmarking. Unacast’s opt-in, location-based data provides insights to when and where retail will recover by understanding consumer mobility patterns and people’s comfort with public spaces. As a value-add, a Social Distancing Scoreboard layers statistics related to new reported cases with changes in mobility and non-essential store visits, and provides daily community grades (A to F) to help retailers evaluate reopening individual store locations across their enterprise.

For more information and the full portfolio of current Sensormatic Solutions products and offerings in response to COVID-19, you can visit Sensormatic.com.  Additional solutions are expected to be launched in the coming weeks as well.

London tailors make scrubs for National Health Service frontline workers.

While UK frontline medical and hospital workers continue to face a shortage of  Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), businesses have been stepping in to provide a helping hand during the Covid-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown.

Therefore it is heart-warming to learn that London bespoke suit makers Henry Herbert have put on hold their usual traditional suit-making to turn their hand to creating much needed scrubs for frontline workers.

Based in Bloomsbury, the traditional tailors are creating the royal blue NHS-approved scrubs which are being sent out on a daily basis to the front line heroes saving lives.  


The team of two tailors have received a huge amount of requests directly from NHS doctors who have resorted to source their own scrubs as the hospitals are unable to keep up with the demand.  The tailors use NHS-approved 100% cotton to create tops and bottoms in small, medium and large, made from their workshops in Bloomsbury.

Henry Herbert tailors have funded the project themselves and also have a go-fund-me page on which they have raised close to £1,000 so far which is used to buy the materials.  To donate, one can click on the go-fund-me page.

"As a small business the life line we’ve been given from the government has been invaluable and we wanted to be able to in turn help the country and show our appreciation to the NHS by donating scrubs to as many people as we can," says Charlie Baker-Collingwood, Founder of Henry Herbert.
They are making an average of 25 scrubs a day and are working 6 days a week.  Last week, their first, they were able to deliver 150 sets of scrubs.
Anyone frontline workers wishing to place an order can go to the Henry Herbert website for details.

Arise the virtual tailor

There is no doubt that the Covid-19 outbreak has caused massive disruption to the global economy, and will continue to pose unprecedented challenges to bricks and mortar retailers.  One emerging trend during the lockdown is the continued importance of online trading.  Those retailers that have been able to offer online services while following safety protocol have been able to gain business from consumers who prefer to purchase online.
Now with many countries looking to easing the lockdown, how the new normal for apparel retailers will play out remains to be seen.   One thing is for sure, it wouldn’t be business as usual and those retailers who are able to continue to trade will be looking at ways that will help enhance the experiences of their online customers whom, understandably, may still find it difficult to physically visit shops yet lack the confidence with online garment fitting and sizing.

Now one Swiss retail technology company, meepl, has launched the next generation of smartphone-enabled Virtual Dressing Rooms solutions for specific use on e-commerce sites. This innovative new digital experience will transform the shopping journey for online shoppers, providing a customer-centric solution to the problems of garment sizing and fit, along with preventing unnecessary order returns - a big issue for retail businesses.

While product fit is a continuous concern for online clothing shoppers, consumers may find it difficult to envisage whether a certain style is suitable for their physique.
These barriers are also causing non-environmental, unsustainable shopping behaviours in the form of ordering multiple sizes with the intent of returning one or more items.

The meepl Virtual Dressing Room solution allows customers to virtually try-on clothes using a 3D body avatar. The technology behind meepl uses an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine to simulate 3D garment models - in real-time - on to 3D body avatars to give a realistic representation of gender, fit, size and shape.

Users of meepl will use the technology to view products, simulated on their own virtual body (or 'meepl') and directly find their ideal size for each item. With just two pictures, taken from a smartphone app, online shoppers can create a personalised meepl in seconds. From the pictures, meepl calculates a comprehensive list of body measurements, enabling your meepl to be as accurate as if you were measured by a professional tailor.

In the coming months, meepl’s VDR technology will be further enhanced with the implementation of a Body Scanning solution and Size Recommendation tool. These developments will give online shoppers an even more personalised shopping experience, and will help to increase satisfaction rates and bring further value to the customer.

Ferdinand Metzler, CEO of meepl said:
“Retail businesses are increasingly focused on developing and improving the online shopping experience for customers. Technology has developed exponentially over the last few years and the realms of what is now possible are exciting for both retailers and shoppers. Online retail businesses that explore Virtual Dressing Room solutions will better assist customers to experience the look, style and fit of garments on their own personalised 3D version of their body. The addition of this experience to the online shopping journey will help to tackle the need for unnecessary returns, and improve the purchase success rates.”
Meepl will be participating in the Sportswear Pro 2020 event now rescheduled to take place in Madrid 6 - 8 October.

FESPA 2020 events postponed to October 2020

FESPA has announced that its flagship event, Global Print Expo, will return to IFEMA – Feria de Madrid from 6 – 8 October 2020, along with its co-located events, European Sign Expo and Sportswear Pro. The three exhibitions, which were originally scheduled to take place from 24 – 27 March, had to be postponed due to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak in mainland Europe.

FESPA CEO Neil Felton says: “Despite the ongoing impact that the coronavirus is having on the speciality print sector, we’ve been overwhelmed by the strong demand from our global community for a FESPA platform in 2020. Therefore, we are extremely pleased to confirm that our shows will be going ahead on these re-scheduled dates and we’re very grateful to IFEMA team, who have been fully supportive of our decision under the extraordinary circumstances.”

He continues: “Throughout this difficult time, we remain in close dialogue and consultation with our exhibitors to establish how FESPA is able to best support their 2020 product launches, engage with existing customers and nurture new prospects in the speciality print sector to fuel their future growth. We remain confident in the unique value of FESPA Global Print Expo for our specific stakeholder community.”

Design Shanghai 2020 fair moved to 26 – 29 November

In response to the Chinese government’s latest advice and restrictions on events during the COVID-19 outbreak, Design Shanghai has made the decision to reschedule the 2020 event to November 26 - 29, 2020.

The venue - Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Centre - will remain the same; specific arrangements and details of our programmes and initiatives will be released in the coming weeks.
The event was originally slated to take place in March, then changed to May, and now to late autumn.

While its mandate is to showcase the best design brands and galleries from across the globe, Design Shanghai is known as Asia’s leading international design event that provides a unique platform to network, exchange and establish long-term business relations with Asia’s top architects, interior designers, property developers, retailers, collectors and private buyers.

Design Shanghai aims to explore how eastern and western design philosophies can work together synergistically across the six design sections: Contemporary, Classic & Luxury, Collectibles, Kitchen & Bathroom, Workplace and New Materials & Applications. The event also features bespoke installations, an inspirational design forum and exciting networking events.

'WE WILL WORK FOR FOOD' campaign initiated by Brave Boutique

Brave Boutique online retailer and gallery run by Scott Hendrie are running a Crowd funding campaign to support Food Banks and UK artists during the pandemic lockdown in the UK.
Brave Boutique represents a community of British and British-based artists and designers that create mostly one of a kind, limited edition and bespoke pieces with a more unusual twist.

This artwork here is found on Brave Boutique, and has been created by artist Gary Hogben who is part of their community of artists who are raising money for Foodbank, their artistic retreat and UK artists with Crowdfunder “We will work for food”.

Click HERE for the foodbank site.