Retail

Bloomberg Chinese actress Li Yuchun glides down the hallway of Cannes’ Hotel Martinez in a tuxedo-inspired Jean Paul Gaultier gown and blue-gray pixie haircut, with a pack of L’Oreal videographers trotting backward to stay out of the frame. After striking a few poses on the marble staircase, she heads for the red carpet. The footage is rushed to L’Oreal’s editing …

Bloomberg At Zara’s new flagship store in London, shoppers can swipe garments along a floor-to-ceiling mirror to see a hologram-style image of what they’d look like as part of a full outfit. Robot arms get garments into shoppers’ hands at online-order collection points. iPad-wielding assistants also help customers in the store order their sizes online, so they can pick them …

Bloomberg Ocado Group Plc soared to a record after Kroger Co. agreed to buy a stake in the UK online grocer, which is breaking into the US market with a landmark deal to license its home-delivery technology to the supermarket chain. Ocado’s first US licensing pact marks Kroger’s response to Amazon.com Inc.’s purchase of Whole Foods Market Inc., which extended …

Bloomberg Tencent Holdings Ltd. climbed after delivering record profit that topped analyst estimates, calming investors who’d braced for a big hit to margins. The stock jumped 3.7 percent in Hong Kong, conceding some of its earlier gains. China’s largest social media and gaming company posted a faster than expected 61 percent jump in net income last quarter as growth on …

Bloomberg Rovio Entertainment Oyj said its profitability improved in the first quarter after the Angry Birds game maker spent less on winning over users for its games and saw cost efficiencies in brand licensing. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation grew 43 percent to 14.6 million euros ($17.3 million). The earnings margin rose to 22.2 percent of sales, …

Bloomberg Walmart Inc. has ended a service where customers could ring up their own purchases, showing that old habits die hard even in the digital age. The retailer had offered its so-called “Mobile Scan & Go” technology in about 150 Walmart stores, after a successful rollout across its Sam’s Club warehouse chain. But while the service worked in Sam’s — …

Bloomberg The private equity owners of Belle International Holdings Ltd., the biggest women’s shoe retailer in China, are considering a spinoff of its sportswear distribution business, people with knowledge of the matter said. Hillhouse Capital and CDH Investments, which took Belle private in a $6.8 billion deal completed in July, are weighing a Hong Kong initial public offering of the …

Bloomberg Investors will get some big insight into big retail this week. Several of the largest consumer-facing companies report results for the first quarter — the three months immediately following the critical holiday season that sets the stage for the rest of the year. Walmart Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Macy’s Inc. are three of the major chains scheduled to …

Bloomberg After the giddy heights of January when its shares hit an all-time high, Tencent Holdings Ltd. has shed $78 billion in value as investors price in the costs of the Internet giant’s massive spending spree. Results on Wednesday are expected to show that rising costs and investments will hurt profitability at Asia’s biggest listed company. While Tencent has said …

Bloomberg Ferris Bueller may have missed his economics lesson on tariffs the day he cut class, but one of Washington’s biggest trade groups is making sure President Donald Trump and other policy makers don’t. The National Retail Federation (NRF) is starting an advertising campaign this week featuring actor and commentator Ben Stein, who’s reprising his role as the economics teacher …