On September 29, M&S handed the beauty floor of 100 stores to Sephora. Two days later, reports put Boots on the edge of a sale of around 7 billion pounds to the family behind Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart. One is a bet on doors, the other on who owns the biggest set of them.
BeautyNACDS Total Store Expo closed on August 17. The clearest signal from the show is not a keynote, it is the Product Showcase ballot, where retail buyers picked No7's Future Renew Serum for beauty.
After years of gimmicky AR mirrors, AI-powered virtual try-on is reaching the accuracy threshold where it actually reduces returns. The early data is encouraging.
Three years into the post-pandemic correction, returns remain the single biggest hidden cost in direct-to-consumer P&Ls. We look at what's actually working to bring them down.
APR 28 · E-commerce
APR 22 · E-commerce
MAR 30 · E-commerce
StoresTarget beat on comps and traffic and the stock rose. Walmart raised its outlook and fell about 9%. Both quarters carried a large IEEPA tariff refund, and what each company did with it explains most of the gap.
The first nearshoring rush was about announcements. The second wave, now underway, is about getting the contracts, the labor, and the ports to actually line up.
APR 15 · Supply Chain
APR 14 · Supply Chain
MAR 22 · Supply Chain
PaymentsThe post-2024 regulatory tightening on buy-now-pay-later thinned the field. We map where the surviving players added retail value and where they just added friction.
APR 30 · Payments
APR 2 · Payments
FEB 19 · Payments
SustainabilityWith the first full CSRD reports landing in early 2026, retailers had to put numbers next to commitments. The first lesson: scope 3 is still mostly an estimate, and everyone knows it.
APR 11 · Sustainability
MAR 28 · Sustainability
MAR 12 · Sustainability
| Dates | Event | Where | Desk |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 13–15, 2026 | Shoptalk Fall 2026 | Chicago, USA | On the calendar |
| November 9–12, 2026 | Web Summit 2026 - Retail track | Lisbon, Portugal | On the calendar |
| January 10–12, 2027 | NRF 2027: Retail's Big Show | New York, USA | On the calendar |
| January 26–28, 2027 | Cosmoprof North America Miami 2027 | Miami Beach, USA | Reporter assigned |
| July 13–15, 2027 | Cosmoprof North America 2027 | Las Vegas, USA | Reporter assigned |
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