Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
🇨🇳 Chinese e-tailer JD.com’s quarterly revenue beats market estimates. The Beijing-based retailer, selling everything from luxury fashion to electronics, reported sales of 356.7 billion yuan ($49.7 billion) for the quarter ended June, about 6 percent above projections. Net income declined to 6.2 billion yuan, though the fall by nearly half was better than expected. Analysts said the company benefitted from government-led consumer subsidies and the e-tailer’s recent entry into new arenas like meal delivery and q-commerce. The company also waged a months-long discounting battle against rivals Meituan and Alibaba Group. “This is a five-, 10-, even 20-year initiative,” CEO Sandy Xu (Xu Ran) told analysts. “Moving forward, we don’t believe the low-quality competition creates any value to the industry. So, we’ll focus on a more refined subsidy strategy tailored to different regions and user groups.” [Bloomberg]
🇮🇳 Indian fashion group Tmrw raises $49 million from US tech giant. The group, operating a portfolio of digital-first and other brands such as Bewakoof, Wrogn, The Indian Garage Co. and Nobero, has secured 437 crore rupees in external fundraising from the investment arm of the American tech firm ServiceNow Ventures. Tmrw’s CEO Prashanth Aluru said the investment “affirms the strength of Tmrw’s technology and AI capabilities and further expands the potential to blitz scale our next phase of profitable growth.” Launched in 2022, Tmrw is a unit of Aditya Birla Group, a Mumbai-based diversified conglomerate whose portfolio includes local joint ventures with international retailers like Reebok and Galeries Lafayette and domestic holdings like Pantaloons, Sabyasachi and The Collective. [Economic Times]
🇨🇱 Chile-based retail giant Falabella’s Q1 profit beats expectations. The group with over a hundred department stores across Colombia, Peru and Chile and other interests in Latin America including shopping malls, home retailers and supermarkets, has reported profit of 364.3 billion pesos ($380 million) in the quarter, ahead of the 208.6 billion pesos average analyst estimate. “The disciplined execution of our strategy has accelerated the recovery of profitability in key businesses,” said CEO Alejandro Gonzalez Dale. “In a still challenging environment, this performance reinforces our conviction that we are well positioned to continue strengthening our profitability in a sustained manner.” [Bloomberg]
🇰🇷 South Korea’s former first lady embroiled in ‘Dior bag scandal’ is arrested. Kim Keon-hee, the wife of former president Yoon Suk-yeol, has been arrested following accusations of graft that she denies. She will join her husband in jail as he faces trial following a failed attempt to impose martial law, a move which caused him to be ousted and brought the country into political disarray. Last year, Kim was accused of accepting the luxury handbag as a gift and investigators are also looking into allegations that she was involved in a historic stock manipulation scheme. [Reuters]
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🇨🇱 Chilean retail giant Cencosud posts quarterly earnings decline. The Santiago-based company, one of South America’s largest retailers which operates 48 department stores under the Paris banner and 35 shopping centres in Chile alone, reported profit of 86.5 billion Chilean pesos ($89 million) for the second quarter, down from 90.8 billion a year earlier. The “results were influenced by extraordinary effects and a context of global economic volatility and uncertainty,” said CEO Rodrigo Larrain Kaplan. “Consumption in each of the countries where we operate remains challenged. This environment has generated greater promotional and competitive aggressiveness.” [Bloomberg]
🇨🇳 Nike sues Clot founder Edison Chen after he signs with Adidas. The American activewear giant has reportedly filed a lawsuit in a California court against Chen, the actor and musician behind Hong Kong-based streetwear brand Clot, alleging that the Chen (and his local company called Juice Los Angeles LLC) owe HK$1 million (US$126,000) to Nike for breach of contract. Chen collaborated with Nike for around 20 years before switching to Adidas. [South China Morning Post, InsideRetail]
🇮🇳 Indian beauty and fashion retailer Nykaa’s parent profit surges. FSN E-Commerce Ventures, the Mumbai-based listed company that operates digital-first multi-brand retailer Nykaa, has reported consolidated net profit of 24.47 crore rupees ($2.8 million) for the quarter ended June 2025, up 79 percent year on year. The company founded by Falguni Nayar in 2012 demerged its online B2B unit, Superstore by Nykaa, into Nykaa E-Retail earlier this year. [Economic Times]
🇨🇳 Chinese beauty exports double on cross-border e-tailer AliExpress. The Alibaba Group-owned platform said overseas sales of Chinese beauty products doubled over the past year. More than 20 brands, including Ruyi, Judydoll, Flower Knows, Fonce and Joocyee, have been onboarded onto the platform’s “end-to-end export solution,” to reach top growth markets Europe, Mexico, Brazil and Japan. [KrAsia]
🇮🇳 India’s P.N. Gadgil Jewellers sees Q1 profit rise 96%. The listed Pune-based jewellery retailer, with more than 50 stores in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Goa and one in the US, reported consolidated net profit of 69.34 crore rupees ($7.9 million) during the quarter ended June 2025, up from 35.32 crore rupees a year earlier. “This has been a good quarter for us … [with] growth [coming] from retail expansion, increase in studded portion, and better cost discipline,” said chairman Saurabh Gadgil. [Economic Times]
🇬🇭 Ghana unveils ‘roadmap’ to revive textile industry by 2033. The West African nation has released a draft policy that outlines plans to attract $1.2 billion in new investments and generate 150,000 new jobs while revitalising the cotton farming sector across 50,000 hectares of land. The local textile manufacturing industry has been eroded by domestic challenges alongside intense competition from Asian manufacturers importing cheap goods. [Kohan Textile Journal]
🇮🇳 Gokaldas Exports chief calls 50% US tariff on India ‘an embargo.’ Siva Ganapathi, the MD of the Bengaluru-based apparel manufacturing giant, has described the doubling of US duties on India as “an embargo … not a tariff.” He went on to say, “We will lose business. … We will try to move to some European markets, reduce capacity. That’s the only way to counter it. It will require tremendous effort to find a solution to offset a 30 percent relative disadvantage [to other Asian countries’ tariff rates].”
🇦🇪 Dubai-branded residences like Armani and Bulgari sell at a 40% premium. Luxury brand residences in the emirate now fetch an average price of 3,800 dirhams per sq ft, which is 40 percent more than the 2,700 for non-branded properties, according to Morgan International Realty’s recent report for H1 2025. [Enterprise]
🇦🇲 Armenia subsidises textile export enterprises that don’t re-export. The government of the Caucasus region country said it will subsidise interest rates for loans procured by local enterprises for purchasing raw materials for 12 months, according to domestic media reports. [Fibre2Fashion]
