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Property developers are set to build 8 million square metres of retail space in a sign of long-term confidence in the troubled but increasingly competitive market.

• Regulatory tightening on mainland Chinese developers means Hong Kong firms are pouncing on the opportunity to expand further into the mainland.
• Despite a property slump and subdued consumer sentiment in the mainland, a higher-than-usual volume of new retail space is set to launch this year.
• With most prime areas in major cities already built-up, growth will come from secondary neighbourhoods, smaller cities and formats for specific consumer types.

Earlier this month, Hongkong Land, the property developer behind the Landmark mall where Prada, Celine and other global brands operate stores, announced a bold new expansion plan beyond its namesake city.

It will devote $8 billion, its largest investment ever in a single project, to a luxury retail mixed-use scheme in Shanghai before building ten malls in six other cities across mainland China. Over the next five years, the firm intends to develop two new mall concepts with the company promising to merge premium retail with art while incorporating sustainability and nature-based features.

Unlike western markets where street-based shopping is common in major city centres, China is heavily mall-based. In 2022, 78 percent of first stores opened by foreign retailers in China were in shopping centres, according to CBRE’s latest China real estate market outlook. This means relationships with mall landlords can make or break a fashion brand’s business in some cities.

The real estate brokerage estimates that around 8 million square metres of new retail space will launch this year in China, an elevated number due to delays for around a third of last year’s retail pipeline from Covid-19 shutdowns.

Despite subdued consumer sentiment in some quarters and broader economic challenges including a property slump, many businesses are confident that the mainland Chinese consumer growth story remains intact for the long-term — especially those in the luxury sector where the repatriation of spending continues to reshape the industry. And while the pace of growth might have slowed for some brands, middle-class consumption is still set to rise.

Hongkong Land is not the only developer to dedicate large sums of money to the mainland. Tim Blackburn, chief executive of Swire Properties, said in March the firm would invest HK$50 billion ($6.4 billion) to grow its Taikoo Li and Taikoo Hui mall brands in tier-one and emerging tier-one cities, aiming to double the firm’s gross floor area in mainland China over the next decade.

“Taikoo Li Xi’an will be our next major landmark, alongside our new retail-led project in Sanya (in Hainan). We also remain focused on expanding our presence in the Greater Bay Area and we have been making encouraging progress in Guangzhou and Shenzhen,” he said.

In recent years, the mall developer mix in the mainland has changed in terms of character and origin. It was Hong Kong-based incumbents who helped initiate mall culture before many mainland players got in on the game. But since last year, mainland developers have been hit by regulatory tightening on debt levels, hampering their ability to start or even finish projects, enabling Hong Kong-based developers to pull further ahead. Some local firms are looking to offload parts of their mall business.

In May, Dalian Wanda Group was reportedly weighing the sale of as many as 29 of its shopping malls, even in affluent cities like Shanghai and the surrounding areas of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The firm was once seen as a high-quality name and operated 473 malls at the end of last year.

Still, some mainland firms are in expansion mode. State-backed China Resources Land’s MixC malls, which counted 66 locations last year with 10 more on the way in 2023, are influential outlets for international brands wherever they build. Regardless of recent challenges, the mall landscape tends to skew hyper-local in some cities and provinces, such as Nanjing where local developers Deji Group and Golden Eagle have built namesake shopping centres.

In the duty-free mecca of Hainan, it is state-backed China Duty Free which is the dominant player with two huge shopping centres in both Sanya and the provincial capital of Haikou, but since the island will lower tariffs province-wide by 2027, non-travel retail developers are making plans to set up shop there too.

As Hongkong Land expands its footprint in mainland China, it will go up against many decades-old competitors from its home market. In addition to Swire’s malls in cities like Chengdu, there is Sun Hung Kai, which was responsible for APM, IFC and ICC in both Beijing and Shanghai; Adrian Chi-Kong Cheng’s New World Development, which owns a collective of art-focused K11 malls; Xintiandi, which pioneered the idea of outdoor malls in mainland China; and Hang Lung, which owns the series of 66-branded malls including Plaza 66, a top draw in Shanghai for luxury spending.

In a market that has become far more competitive in recent years, Hong Kong developers increasingly find themselves pitted against developers from Asian countries too. Malaysia’s Kerry Properties and Singapore’s CapitaLand are two examples. The latter’s marquee project in China is the Raffles City in Chongqing, which opened its first phase in 2019, marking a significant upgrade for the city’s retail scene with 40 percent of its tenants new to the market.

Mall development is not without its challenges, even for those in expansion mode. A major Swire project in Shanghai, Taikoo Li Qiantan in Pudong, opened at the end of 2021 and struggled with its leasing while the city faced waves of lockdowns, although it did eventually reach 99 percent occupancy by the end of last year.

Hang Lung Group chairman Ronnie Chan said its luxury focus helped insulate it from the turmoil of the past year. At its Plaza 66 mall, over 120 luxury brands are housed under one roof including the Gucci and Valentino flagships. Despite being shut down for two months, it still welcomed new openings by De Beers, La Mer, and Bogner.

“During the pandemic, whenever there was a relaxation of quarantine rules, which came intermittently, shoppers rushed out to buy… As they had no way of knowing when the next opportunity would return, they only visited the best stores in town for the brands of their choice. Given our premier market position in almost every city where we have such malls, we probably benefited much more than others,” said Chan.

In aggregate, mall revenue from the 11 properties the firm operates dropped 3 percent last year but its most high-end malls fell just 1 percent, while its more affordably focused portfolio fell 4 percent.

CBRE predicts that overall vacancy rates in China will first peak then decline in 2023 falling eventually to around 7 percent by 2025, a similar level to 2021. Average shopping centre rents are expected to stabilise and increase slightly by 1 percent in 2024 and continue to grow in 2025. However, reflecting the growing scarcity of good locations, just 16 percent of new supply coming online between 2023 and 2025 will be located in the core business districts of the 18 major cities tracked by CBRE.

According to Chan, in all mainland Chinese cities outside Shanghai and Beijing, at most three stores of any luxury brand can currently be sustained.

“As the economy further grows, perhaps one day a fourth store can be opened in tier-1.5 cities such as Hangzhou and Chengdu,” he said. “And if there is more than one top-end mall, then shopping will disproportionately flow to the market leader. The gap between the top-ranking mall and the second is usually quite large. This is why we always strive to be the number one in each city we operate.”

Newer developers like Urban Revitalization Force, which is constructing half a dozen TX malls in the country, have taken a different approach by carving out a niche: youth culture. It opened TX Huaihai Youth Energy Center in Shanghai in 2019 and this month, opened The Box in Beijing. Each location is highly conceptualised.

Its Shanghai location included collaborations with fashion creative agency Seiya Nakamura 2.24 and TeamLab, the Japanese digital art studio, while its latest location in Beijing includes basketball courts and a heavy emphasis on music and lifestyle elements. The Box is also pet friendly, a rarity in China, but reflective of growing pet ownership among China’s Millennials and Gen-Z. The firm also put electronic nightclub Lantern and, Loose, a prominent local fashion multi-brand boutique, under the same roof.

Although youth unemployment has recently turned worryingly high in China, Dickson Szeto, the Hong Kong businessman behind Urban Revitalization Force, is undeterred.

“You have to give them a reason to buy,” he said. “If you just focus on cheap, it doesn’t work because being cheap or the cheapest is not a good attitude or direction. You have to design and structure something which is cool, very stylish and with lots of personality but the pricing is easy.”

Szeto is also making investing in local brands part of the TX brand. “I believe in homegrown designers, we are focused on building a new platform for [them] where we give them more support, on supply chain all the way to meeting consumers,” he said.

The environmental damage and waste created by throwaway fast fashion is ‘absolutely unacceptable,’ environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius told BoF.

Fashion’s age of under regulation is ending as the EU looks to stop throwaway fast fashion, European Union environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius said in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen on Tuesday.

“To be very honest, fashion is the only industry which has escaped any sort of regulation,” said Sinkevičius. “But the toll that it puts on natural resources is large … This linear model in which businesses now compete is, unfortunately, getting us nowhere.”

Sinkevičius’ very presence is a sign of the mounting regulatory pressure on the industry. He is one of a number of policymakers attending the sustainability-focused event for the first time this year.

Europe has been pressing particularly hard to step up oversight of the industry, publishing a sustainable textile strategy last year that laid out a policy roadmap designed to overhaul the way the industry designs, markets and disposes of products.

It’s a particular area of focus because textiles count among the bloc’s highest impact sectors in terms of environmental impact and consumption — an issue that’s been exacerbated by a steep increase in the amount of clothes the average European consumer buys and discards over the last 20 years.

“All these piles of waste, they don’t just disappear. They go somewhere, they pollute somewhere,” said Sinkevičius.

The goal of Europe’s policy moves is to do away with fast fashion, which means extending how long clothes are kept in circulation, he added. Over the coming months, policymakers are expected to provide further details on proposed design requirements to make clothes longer-lasting and more repairable, a likely ban on the destruction of unsold goods, requirements for brands to take back old clothes to facilitate more recycling and labelling rules intended to help consumers make better choices.

“We need to design clothes to serve us longer. And if we are tired of them, if we wear them once or twice and we don’t want to wear them again, there has to be a second life for them,” Sinkevičius said. Consumers also have a responsibility to shift their behaviour. “At the moment, with each of us wasting 12 kilos of clothes every year; that’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

Boutiques are bolstering pre-owned inventory surge at Farfetch.

Farfetch is seeing continual gains in conscious fashion.

The global e-tailer released the third edition of its conscious luxury trends report Wednesday, detailing how fashion — and beauty, too — are poised for growth. Farfetch defines conscious products as those that are independently vetted and either contain certified materials (organic, recycled, upcycled), are produced by certified production methods, are pre-owned, or come from a brand that scores well on ethical rating platform Good on You.

As it stands, Farfetch reported 1,400 sellers (across brands and boutiques) with more than 3,400 brands on the conscious luxury platform. Farfetch directly partners with 600 brands for its conscious offering.

“The data amassed reveals the promising commercial opportunity for brands and retailers who embrace sustainability as a strategic imperative,” Thomas Berry, senior director of Sustainable Business at Farfetch, said in the report’s forward. “This report highlights the many ways in which brands and retailers are capitalizing on sustainability, positioning themselves at the forefront of change.”

For one, Farfetch grew its boutique pre-owned volume by 27 percent, year-over-year, per the report. Some of the top boutiques by volume included Amore, Vitkac and Eraldo, among others.

Brand conscious product sales leaders span Balenciaga, Stella McCartney, Ganni, Ami Alexandre Mattiussi, Veja, Prada, Off-White, Axel Arigato, Gucci, Vivienne Westwood, Nanushka, Toteme, Balmain Paris, Burberry and Marine Serre. (Though on the uptick, only 14 percent of these brands’ assortments were deemed conscious products in 2022, up from 12 percent in 2021).

Customers, rightly so, are fueling demand. Though a Farfetch customer survey from April 2023 found 39 percent of customers remain “skeptical” of sustainability claims, the report showed 27 percent of Farfetch customers purchasing at least one conscious product in 2022, up from 16 percent in 2021.

Farfetch said its pre-owned category is attracting and retaining high-value consumers, with “authenticity” as the top driving concern. Nearly half (or 46 percent) of Farfetch customers participated in resale in 2022, compared to 22 percent in 2021. Customers spend an average of 63 percent more on Farfetch Second Life than customers who do not use the resale service.

Growth areas are vast and varied. Today, U.S. shoppers are leading in terms of the number of conscious products sold and pre-owned product sales on Farfetch. Farfetch data showed Brazil, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates to be “potentially attractive” markets based on growth potential.

Supply chain innovation was also highlighted in the report, including sizing technology like Farfetch-owned Wannas virtual try-on technology, Farfetch-backed resale solutions such as Luxclusif or Modes, and Farfetch partner consumer ratings platform Good on You.

“A lot of times, brands focus on sustainability initiatives in their direct operations, like ‘eco-friendly’ packaging and switching to renewable energy in their headquarters,” Good on You cofounder Sandra Capponi, said in the report.

“While a good place to start, it’s not where the impact really happens.

Managing their impacts across the supply chain is really where they should focus.”

The world number-one player will be the top men's seed at the Wimbledon tournament.

PARIS — Fresh off his win at the Queen’s Club tennis tournament, world number-one player Carlos Alcaraz has been named the latest house ambassador for Louis Vuitton.

The Spanish player will be the top men’s seed at the Wimbledon tournament, which kicks off on Monday and hopes to follow in the footsteps of his fellow countryman Rafael Nadal, who won at Queen’s in 2008 before going on to triumph at Wimbledon for the first time a few weeks later.

The 20-year-old has set records by becoming the youngest players to win tournaments on grass, clay and hard courts.

When he won his maiden Grand Slam at the U.S. Open in 2022, Alcaraz became the first man in history to top the tennis world rankings before the age of 20.

He has enthralled audiences with his explosive playing style, also claiming ATP 1000 titles in 2023 at Indian Wells and Madrid.

“For a player to achieve so much so young is unprecedented, but perhaps most exciting is at just 20 years old, the future remains very bright,” Vuitton said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Sharing the same spirit of endeavor and excellence dear to Louis Vuitton, the Murcia, Spain-born athlete continues to raise the bar in the world of tennis. Off the court, his unique charm and style have garnered him fans within and beyond the sphere of sport, all sure to follow him on this exciting new chapter with the maison,” the French luxury brand added.

Alcaraz is sponsored by Nike for clothing and shoes and Babolat for rackets. He also has endorsement deals with Rolex, Calvin Klein and BMW. At Vuitton, he joins a roster of brand ambassadors including J-Hope, Tahar Rahim and Jackson Wang, and campaign faces such as Lionel Messi.

“The truth is that I feel very proud. You could even say it’s a dream for me to now be a part of the Louis Vuitton family,” Alcaraz said of his new role.

In a rare setback, Alcaraz entered the recent French Open as number one in the ATP Rankings, but was defeated by Novak Djokovic in the semifinal.

After a short stint in second position, he became leader again after the Queen’s win.

Alcaraz is due to play next in the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic exhibition event at the Hurlingham Tennis Club in London on Friday.

The Puig-owned house is pursuing a strategy of brand elevation and feminization under the new Rabanne banner.

PARIS — Paco Rabanne is ready for its close-up, and global expansion on multiple fronts, having synced up its fashion and fragrance businesses.

Abbreviating its name to simply Rabanne, the Puig-owned fashion and fragrance house is launching makeup, kicking off a d-to-c intensification with a flagship boutique in New York City — and slowly applying its new visual identity to various product lines and retail spaces.

Disclosing a host of changes and initiatives exclusively to WWD, Puig beauty and fashion president José Manuel Albesa also reported strong business momentum at Paris-based Rabanne, which has been logging 40 percent growth in recent years — and is poised to soon cross the 1 billion euro revenue threshold.

And it’s all coming together in 2023, by all accounts a big year for Rabanne with a now-unified image between fashion and fragrance dubbed One Rabanne. Crystalizing this is the new logo for the entire brand, with typeface inspired by the brand’s 1968 hit perfume Calandre, a monogram that is being trickled into textile patterns, accessories and fragrances.

“The brand is having a moment that is incredible,” Albesa enthused.

It’ll reach a zenith during Paris Fashion Week in September, when Rabanne unveils its spring 2024 collection on the runway with expanded ranges of eveningwear, denim and knitwear — and the Avenue Montaigne flagship will bear the new lower-case Rabanne banner.

By that time, the playful new Rabanne makeup, with 90 stock keeping units housed in gleaming silver-colored tubes and compacts, will have landed on the brand’s e-commerce site and counters in Selfridges in the U.K. and Sephora in Europe, with Ulta in the U.S. coming on stream Oct. 1.

Albesa made clear the crucial contribution of designer Julien Dossena, who has revved up Rabanne’s fashion credibility, reworked and clarified the brand’s key aesthetic codes, and recently made important inroads with celebrities by adding more eveningwear.

For example, when Beyoncé stepped onto the stage at the Stade de France last month, she wore a gleaming, waist-cinched Rabanne gown assembled from round, mirror-effect plates.

Dossena arrived as creative director of the fashion house 10 years ago, and he’s been locked in to lead Rabanne’s next chapter.

Albesa would not comment directly on the French designer’s contract, but it is understood that it was recently renewed, which should squelch recurring speculation Dossena might soon defect to another fashion house.

“There is nothing to announce. Julien is here to stay,” Albesa said with a laugh and a big smile. “And he’s more excited than ever to explore new themes, and he’s more energetic than ever.”

“The brand has such an iconic and immediately recognizable legacy; it’s a unique and strong vision we carry on,” Dossena said. “We try our best to honor the values of the founder: freedom and empowerment.”

WWD broke the news on March 3 that Dossena would become the latest guest designer to realize a one-off haute couture collection for Jean Paul Gaultier, also owned by Puig.

The show is scheduled for July 5 during Paris Couture Week, and Albesa hinted that Dossena would blend Rabanne references with Gaultier’s vast and eclectic oeuvre, achieved over a career spanning 50 years.

Another high-profile project is in view: a holiday collaboration with Swedish fashion giant H&M. WWD also broke the news of that project on Feb. 22, though officials at both companies remain mum about the tie-up.

Dossena burst onto the fashion radar in 2006, when he won a prize at the International Festival of Fashion and Photography in Hyères. He went on to spend four years as a senior designer at Balenciaga, working under then-creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, who instilled in him an exacting, forward-looking approach to design.

Dossena joined Paco Rabanne, famed for its Space Age designs, in early 2013 under then-creative director Lydia Maurer, and in parallel launched his own label, Atto, which he put on hold to concentrate on Paco Rabanne when he was promoted to creative director later that year.

Albesa said the designer, then 30 years old, instantly won the approval of the fashion press, fond of his meticulous yet zesty designs with a futuristic sheen.

“Julien has this capacity to continue innovating,” Albesa said. “While remaining consistent and very loyal to the brand codes, he’s able to — every single time — bring something new, and how this is now being infused into accessories, into jewelry, into beauty, into makeup is incredible.”

Calling Dossena “instrumental in creating the house,” Albesa characterized him as “more than a fashion designer. He has a vision for the brand.”

Among the key codes of the brand that now appear across fashion, accessories and beauty products are metal mesh, silver and gold in combination, square chain links, and round and hole-punched metallic discs like the ones the founder hammered into “12 Unwearable Dresses” back in 1966, cementing Rabanne’s fame.

Albesa grabbed a clicker to show on a large monitor a rendering of a future Rabanne makeup stand. Incorporating marble amid the gleaming silver and gold. The unit includes large images of Rabanne jewelry, fashions and handbags, portraying the aesthetic complicity between all categories.

In dropping the Paco from the house name, Rabanne falls in line with a host of designer-founded brands consumers know by the family name, including Dior, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Mugler. Albesa noted that in losing Paco, Rabanne can focus further on its feminization.

About 10 years ago, the Rabanne team presented a chart outlining how all the facets of the brand’s fashion and fragrance branches could converge, and that’s been implemented little by little since.

“From today, all that is new is completely aligned — that means we are revamping our packaging and bottles in fragrances, our strategy of how to elevate the brand,” Albesa explained. “So it’s a huge turnaround that has been cooking for years and starts to see the light now. It’s a very important elevation — keeping the values of Rabanne, for sure.”

Dossena has been key to all that in creating an overarching brand ecosystem, including what products look like, the executive underlined.

“The chemistry comes from Julien, it was his vision,” Albesa said. “Each fragrance is going to take one code of the brand, and it’s going to promote it.”

Rabanne’s perfume business, which ranks among the top-five fragrance houses worldwide, has a number of bestselling men’s scent franchises. One Million is in the top four and Invictus in the top seven. A goal for Phantom, already among the 20 bestsellers, is to climb to the top 10 by 2025.

To start shifting the scales, with women’s fragrances taking on greater weight, there’s been a change of strategy.

“We decided to work on stand-alone feminines,” said Albesa, referring to Fame, with its own advertising and vision. “We are choosing a feminine hero by brand, who will be its image. We give the feminine fragrances the capacity to shine.”

The strategy is working, with Fame becoming the best launch in 2022 in the markets where it was introduced, according to NPD Group. Further, Puig has gained a number of market share points in women’s fragrances this year and Albesa believes that momentum should accelerate.

“Then comes the makeup, which is also another way of injecting this feminization of the brand that is more consistent with the fashion,” said Albesa, who believes the time is ripe for the color cosmetics, since Rabanne has so much momentum today. “This makeup is a way to show fashion and beauty together.”

Puig has been delving into the makeup category across its stable of brands with launches for Carolina Herrera, Dries Van Noten and Christian Louboutin, not to mention Charlotte Tilbury, which the group acquired in 2020.

Taking a differentiated approach has always been key, according to Albesa. Rabanne has done that with its fragrances, coming to the market with daring storytelling and juices.

“Paco Rabanne is the first fashion designer doing indie makeup,” Albesa said. “It’s a very collective approach — by the people for the people.”

Diane Kendal was chosen to be Rabanne’s global beauty creative director. Brand executives were attracted by her philosophy that “there’s no beauty — only beauties.” Standards are not imposed.

The color cosmetics range has four categories: One for foundations, with 30 references, is dubbed Nudes. Eyephoria, for eyes, comprises 29 units; Rouge Rabanne has 21 lipsticks, while Arts Factory, with 10 skus, includes artistry-inspired products.

The gender-free products with sustainable — vegan, cruelty-free and 98 percent natural — formulas, infused with skin care, have been developed with the help of a community of people.

“It’s very modern makeup. Textures are super important,” said Albesa, calling the easy-to-use color cosmetics “nomad” due to their carry-ability.

Shimmer Bomb, with spray-on glitters, comes in an aerosol can; pressed eye powders are encased in oh-so-Rabanne metallic compacts, while foundations come in squeezy shiny tubes.

“It’s very playful makeup, which you apply with your fingers,” Albesa said.

The ad campaign — with Rabanne-clad models taking the makeup from chain-link bags, a pocket or boot, then trying it on and posing — is playful as well. Stef Mitchell photographed the ad.

The makeup’s prelaunch will take place on Rabanne’s direct-to-consumer platform rabanne.com, starting Aug. 21, followed by Selfridges on Aug. 31; Sephora in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Portugal on Sept. 12, and Ulta at the start of October.

Prices will be in the accessible luxury range, from about $20 to $40.

Rabanne executives aim for the brand to rank among the top 10 in makeup — as well as top five in the eye segment — in doors where it is carried during launch. After, it should place among the top-15 color cosmetics brands globally by 2030.

Rabanne could ultimately stretch into other beauty categories, such as skin care.

For both Rabanne fashion and beauty, the stated purpose is to “galvanize young generations in order to forge a more inclusive and creative future.”

Albesa explained the purpose goes beyond product, to cultural relevance stretching into digital, music and communities. “We have planned for each of our brands to have a cultural aspect,” he said.

Spanish founder Paco Rabanne died last February at age 88, remembered for his futuristic vision and use of nonconventional materials.

The house went through a silent period to mourn his death, with Dossena paying homage at his fall 2023 show last March, parading some archival dresses for the finale.

(Dossena started dabbling in menswear starting with the spring 2020 season, but it was quickly phased out.)

Albesa declined to give revenue figures for the fashion house, but said year-to-date, fashion sales have been doubling.

Dossena’s designs are sold in about 300 wholesale doors. In addition to the Avenue Montaigne flagship, which opened at number 39 in 2021 and replaced a unit for Nina Ricci, also owned by Puig, there is a smaller Rabanne store on Rue Cambon.

Albesa noted the brand’s direct-to-consumer sales are tracking 80 percent ahead of last year.

The executive said he’s zeroing in on a lease for a Rabanne flagship in New York’s SoHo district that should open in the first half of 2024. After that, he has his sights set on London for the next location.

The Avenue Montaigne flagship is also slated to double in size next year.

Such developments should help counter the lingering industry perception that Barcelona-based Puig, while formidable with fragrances and beauty products, doesn’t have its heart in the fashion business.

Albesa argued that Puig is unique among Europe’s big luxury groups insofar as it operates brands, not separate fashion and beauty divisions, which can create an aesthetic gulf.

For example, when Belgian designer Van Noten launched fragrance and lipstick last year, he approached those categories just like he sets about creating his fashion, garden or home decor: with a clash of concepts and a riot of colors, prints and textures.

Albesa called it “a beautiful exercise of how the DNA of the fashion came into the beauty.”

Still, he acknowledged there is work to do in growing the d-to-c portion of Puig’s fashion houses’ sales via directly operated retail; in building lucrative accessories categories, and improving gross margins in apparel.

“We still need two, three years to fine-tune those three subjects,” he allowed. “We take it very seriously, though perhaps we work at a different speed. We don’t face the same pressure as other groups so we’ve been putting a lot of thought in what we do.”

Albesa noted that Rabanne has expanded the product range around its popular chainmail 1969 bag, including nano and micro versions, whose origins can be traced back to the steel aprons worn by French butchers back in the day.

“All of a sudden we see a lot of young consumers wanting to own a piece of Rabanne,” Albesa marveled.

Amazon subsidiary Zoox has begun testing its purpose-built, electric, autonomous robotaxis on public streets in Las Vegas, the company announced Tuesday.

Zoox says this marks the first time that an autonomous vehicle built without pedals or a steering wheel has operated on public roads in Nevada.

Zoox is starting small with a one-mile loop around the neighborhood where its Las Vegas facilities are located in the southwest region of the city, with plans to expand in the coming months.

The initial route will test Zoox’s robotaxi on several unprotected turns and multi-way stops, as well as its ability to navigate roads with cyclists, pedestrians and other cars, according to a blog post.

The robotaxis, which can transport four people at a time at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour, will be available to Zoox employees during workday hours.

Zoox did not specify how many vehicles it will have on the roads or during what hours of operation it will provide this initial robotaxi service.

But a company spokesperson did say there will be “multiple” Zoox vehicles testing.

The company said it has been driving on public roads in Vegas since June 16, 2023, and has been in the city for much longer. The company expanded operations to Las Vegas to test, validate and refine its technology in 2019 with an eye toward launching commercial operations there in the future. The company used a test fleet of Toyota Highlanders to map the area and gather data, while driving autonomously with safety drivers on board.

In 2020, Zoox opened an office and depot in Vegas to support its test fleet. The company is now expanding those operations and adding 190,000 square feet of warehouse and office space for its vehicles and its growing team in the region. The company’s workforce, which is spread between several locations in California, Nevada and Washington, has grown from 1,900 employees to 2,200 since the beginning of the year, the company confirmed. The bulk of new hires in Las Vegas are for its “mission readiness” team, which is focused on fleet maintenance and charging.

The Vegas launch follows Zoox’s deployment on public roads in Foster City, California, in February.

Zoox, which holds a driverless testing permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, is also transporting employees there.

The company has yet to open up its vehicles to the public.

Nevada is a much easier state in which to test AVs than California, which has a rigorous permitting process overseen by the California DMV. Nevada allows all automation levels to operate on public streets and its DMV doesn’t test or certify vehicles.

Zoox said in a tweet that it had been given authorization from Nevada’s DMV to operate its robotaxi autonomously. According to Nevada law, AV companies that want to develop and test vehicles in the state need to self-certify that vehicles meet the Nevada “minimal risk condition” to be able to stop if there is a malfunction in the system.

SEC has only approved funds based on the cryptocurrency’s futures, rejecting applications for ‘spot’ product

Speculation is mounting that BlackRock may be in sight of ending a decade-long embargo on spot bitcoin exchange traded products in the US.

Dozens of asset managers have applied to launch such a fund in the world’s largest investment market since the Winklevoss twins, the entrepreneurs and Olympic rowers, made the first filing in 2013, when bitcoin was trading at about $1,000.

However, the regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, has repeatedly rejected the applications, citing the risk of fraud and manipulation in the market for “spot” bitcoin, which takes place on unregulated exchanges. Instead, it has only been willing to approve ETFs based on bitcoin futures contracts, which are listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a regulated venue. It has even approved a two-times- leveraged futures ETF that launched on June 27.

Some believe BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, might succeed where others have failed.

Investors are even speculating on that outcome — the price of bitcoin has rallied 22 per cent since the filing on June 15 to a one-year high of $30,600 in expectation that a green light for BlackRock could unleash a wave of buying.

Likewise, the discount to net asset value of the $18.9bn Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the world’s largest crypto fund, has narrowed sharply to a nine-month low of 31.3 per cent.

Grayscale is suing the SEC for its refusal to allow it to convert GBTC into an ETF, a move that, if allowed, would presumably see the discount disappear.

Meanwhile, Invesco, WisdomTree, Bitwise and Valkyrie, which have all had applications for spot bitcoin ETF filings rejected, have now refiled in the hope that something may have changed.

“The BlackRock ETF is likely to be approved,” said Dave Weisberger, chief executive and co-founder of CoinRoutes, an algorithmic trading platform for the digital asset industry, whose pedigree in the ETF world stretches back to being one of the creators of Morgan Stanley’s Opals products — precursors of ETFs — in the 1990s.

Part of the optimism stems purely from the fact that this is BlackRock. According to Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, BlackRock has had 575 filings approved by the SEC, and only one rejection. He put the odds of approval on this occasion at 50-50.

BlackRock’s application is subtly different from those that have gone before, though, and those differences could potentially be enough to win approval.

The chief difference is that the Nasdaq exchange, where the iShares Bitcoin Trust would be listed, “is expecting to enter into a surveillance-sharing agreement with an operator of a United States-based spot trading platform for bitcoin”.

When the SEC rejected a bitcoin ETF filing by Bitwise last year it explicitly said that having a “comprehensive surveillance-sharing agreement with a regulated market of significant size” was one way for an applicant to meet its obligations to prevent fraud and manipulation in the underlying market for spot bitcoin.

This would enable information about trading, clearing and customer identification to be shared.

“If Nasdaq is able to enter into an agreement with an exchange such as Coinbase, that could theoretically clear a pathway towards approval since it would directly address the SEC’s main concern”, allowing regulators “to monitor for and pursue bad actors”, said Nate Geraci, president of the ETF Store, a financial adviser.

However, Bryan Armour, director of passive strategies research, North America, at Morningstar, felt BlackRock was only “edging closer to addressing [the SEC’s] concerns”.

While having a data-sharing and surveillance-sharing effort with a cryptocurrency exchange “is certainly better than having zero insight into the underlying market”, he argued that manipulation could still be occurring on other exchanges, which would influence the price of bitcoin.

While Coinbase, the proposed custodian for the fund, is widely expected to be the chosen exchange, Geraci suggested the recently launched EDX Markets exchange “could be the exact solution needed to get the SEC comfortable”, given it is modelled on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange and backed by Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities — if it can generate sufficient volume for the SEC to consider it as “significant size”.

Weisberger also highlighted BlackRock’s proposal to adopt a trust structure that is “virtually identical” to the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and the iShares Gold Trust (IAU) — which are known as ETFs but are technically exchange traded products — rather than the traditional ETF structure governed by the Investment Company Act of 1940.

BlackRock “has done it cleverly by structuring it the same way that GLD and IAU are structured. If it goes to court, the SEC is effectively arguing that there is some fundamental difference between gold, which is designated as a commodity, and bitcoin, which has been designated as a commodity,” said Weisberger, who noted that several of the groups refiling applications have also adopted a trust structure.

Indeed, between the relationship with Coinbase and proposed surveillance-sharing agreement, BlackRock has “pretty much undercut all the SEC’s arguments other than ‘meh, we don’t like bitcoin’, so I think they have a very reasonable chance,” Weisberger added.

Both BlackRock and the SEC declined to comment.

The SEC earlier this month sued Coinbase alleging it violated US securities law by failing to register as a broker, national securities exchange or clearing agency.

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer and general counsel said: “The SEC’s reliance on an enforcement-only approach in the absence of clear rules for the digital asset industry is hurting America’s economic competitiveness and companies like Coinbase that have a demonstrated commitment to compliance.

The solution is legislation that allows fair rules for the road to be developed transparently and applied equally, not litigation. In the meantime, we’ll continue to operate our business as usual,”

Armour was unconvinced by the trust structure argument, but retained an open mind.

“I don’t see any reason to believe that the SEC would change their thinking on this [but] it just seems too left field that BlackRock has to know something that we do not,” he said.

BlackRock’s 575-to-1 record is “the only reason why we would expect it to be approved”, he added. “There is a reputational risk that comes with the filing. You feel that they wouldn’t do this if there wasn’t a reason.”