Retail

Bloomberg Australian household spending jumped in November as the southeastern state of Victoria was released from lockdown and consumers took advantage of discounts during annual Black Friday sales. Retail sales advanced 7.1% from a month earlier, compared with the 7% gain forecast by economists and the 7% reported in late December as the preliminary figure, data from the Australian Bureau …

Bloomberg Marks & Spencer (M&S) Group warned that sales will suffer from the UK’s new lockdown and as Brexit complicates doing business in countries such as Ireland. Fiscal third quarter like-for-like sales fell by 7.6%, as weaker clothing and homewares revenue offset a stronger performance in food. The company said products exported to countries such as Ireland are facing red …

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc has shuttered Prime Pantry, a grocery and household essentials delivery service that was one of the retailer’s early forays into selling food online. The program closed last week, an Amazon spokeswoman said, and thousands of products previously available under the Prime Pantry banner were folded into the company’s main retail site. Launched in 2014, Prime Pantry featured …

Bloomberg Shopify Inc said it shut down e-commerce stores affiliated with President Donald Trump in response to the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters. “We have terminated stores affiliated with President Trump,” a company spokeswoman said by email. “Shopify does not tolerate actions that incite violence.” The shutdown affects the Trump Organization’s official store, TrumpStore.com, and a campaign …

Bloomberg A top executive at Louis Vuitton and one of Bernard Arnault’s sons are set to take over management of Tiffany & Co after the biggest acquisition in the luxury industry by LVMH. Anthony Ledru will be chief executive officer, with Alexandre Arnault being responsible for products and communications inside the brand, the company said, confirming a Bloomberg report they …

Bloomberg Nykaa E-Retail Pvt is planning an initial public offering as soon as this year that could value the Indian online cosmetic retailer at a minimum $3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The startup founded by Falguni Nayar, a former investment banker, is working with advisers to prepare for the share sale in Mumbai, the people said. …

Bloomberg Prada SpA returned to profit in the second half of 2020 amid a recovery in Asia, joining other luxury brands in bouncing back from the worst of a pandemic-induced slump. Earnings before interest and taxes will turn positive in the last six months of last year after a deficit in the first half, the Italian fashion company said. Prada …

Bloomberg Next Plc is learning to live with lockdowns. Chief Executive Officer Simon Wolfson said the worsening pandemic and the UK’s new Covid-related restrictions won’t ruin the whole year as the clothing chain is better prepared now than during previous closures. “This is traditionally the quietest time of year, so I don’t expect the impact to be as big as …

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s retail environment showed further signs of improvement in November, although the recovery may have been short-lived as the city was hit with a fresh wave of virus infections and imposed new restrictions late in the month. The provisional value of total retail sales in November 2020 was HK$28.7 billion ($3.7 billion), down by 4% compared with the …

Bloomberg The holiday blessing that Tiffany & Co shareholders gave to sell the storied jeweller to LVMH pushes the contentious transaction closer to the finish line, giving billionaire Bernard Arnault the long-sought pathway to expand his global collection of luxury brands. Tiffany will be dropped from the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index now that the deal has been approved, S&P …