Bus. Of Fassh : Farfetch Signals Growing Ambitions in Resale The fashion platfor

Farfetch Signals Growing Ambitions in Resale
The fashion platform is launching a new pilot program, Second Life, that will allow customers to trade in their old designer handbags for Farfetch credit that can be spent on new merchandise.

LONDON, United Kingdom —Luxury e-commerce platform Farfetch Limited is testing the waters in the fast-growing resale market with the launch of a new pilot program. The service, dubbed Second Life, will allow customers to trade in their old designer handbags for Farfetch credit that can be spent on new merchandise.
The new initiative is part of broader plans at Farfetch — a marketplace that connects consumers with a global network of fashion boutiques and, increasingly, brands — to experiment with a range of new business models as the company seeks scale. Farfetch already offers a selection of vintage merchandise and is also examining opportunities in rental.
The company has made no secret of its ambitions in the resale market snapping up peer-to-peer sneaker and streetwear marketplace Stadium Goods in December for $250 million, just three months after going public. For Farfetch, the Stadium Goods deal opened up access to a new segment of opportunity at a time when e-commerce players are engaged in what The Business of Fashion and McKinsey’s The State of Fashion 2019 report describes as a “digital land grab.”
Farfetch is gaining on online luxury leader Yoox Net-a-Porter, which digitised the traditional wholesale model. It generated just over $600 million in revenue last year, though its shares are down around 16 percent since it went public in September.
The global market for secondhand apparel is expected to reach $51 billion by 2023.
The next horizon for platforms like Farfetch, as they push to stay ahead of the curve, is business model diversification. “Whether through acquisitions, investments or internal R&D, those players who diversify their ecosystem will strengthen their lead over those who remain pure players relying solely on retail margins,” says the State of Fashion 2019 report.
Farfetch’s latest foray into resale comes soon after a move by luxury department store Neiman Marcus, which, last month, took a minority stake in secondhand luxury site Fashionphile. Last year, the global market for secondhand apparel totalled $24 billion, according to resale site ThredUp. It is expected to reach $51 billion by 2023 and has already given birth to a number of successful luxury “re-commerce” players, including The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective.
“The pre-owned luxury market is growing rapidly,” said Giorgio Belloli, chief commercial and sustainability officer at Farfetch, who is spearheading the Second Life project. “It allows us to enter this market and test the demand of Farfetch customers for this kind of service.”

Luxury brands have largely stayed away from resale due to concerns over damage to full-price sales and brand dilution, but attitudes may be shifting. For luxury consumers, the stigma of the secondary market has dissipated in recent years.
For its new resale venture, Farfetch is teaming up with an alumnus of its tech incubator program to power the service. While the Second Life platform will be branded Farfetch, behind the scenes Hong Kong-based Upteam will evaluate each new handbag put up for sale on the platform, provide sellers with an offer price based on photos, and take on the responsibility of authentication and finding a buyer if the offer is accepted.
The initial launch of Second Life will be open to customers in the UK and other European markets. The service will accept handbags from 27 different brands, including Chanel, Dior and Gucci.

>>> Drunk Elephant eyed for USD 1bn takeover by Unilever - report 12 MAY 2019 Un

Drunk Elephant eyed for USD 1bn takeover by Unilever - report
12 MAY 2019
Unilever [LON:ULVR, NYSE:UN], the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group, is weighing a potential takeover bid for Houston, Texas-based beauty-products company Drunk Elephant, The Sunday Telegraph reported. The unsourced report said the offer under consideration is worth approximately USD 1bn.
Drunk Elephant founder Tiffany Masterson engaged Financo and Moelis to advise on a sale of the business in January, the report said.
Drunk Elephant made about USD 150m sales last year, the item reported.

>>> US Gapping up

Gapping up
In reaction to strong earnings/guidance:

  • CPRX +8.3%, PAM +3.5%

Other news:

  • CELG +1% (FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to POMALYST for the treatment of patients with HIV-positive Kaposi sarcoma)

Analyst comments:

  • RMTI +11.8% (initiated with a Buy at H.C. Wainwright; tgt $11)
  • WEN +0.7% (initiated with an Overweight at Piper Jaffray)

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance:

  • INSY -44.2% (also issues cautionary statement about ability to continue as a going concern), JMIA -6%

Select generic drug stocks showing weakness:

  • TEVA -8.8% (40 states have filed lawsuits against generic drug companies over alleged price fixing) ENDP -5.7%, MYL -3.2%, PRGO -1.5%, MNK -1.2%

Select financial related names showing weakness:

  • RBS -2.6%, CS -2.1%, ING -1.9%, DB -1.7%, SAN -1.5%, GS -1.4%

Select semiconductor stocks trading lower:

  • STM -2.8%, MU -2.7%, AMD -2.3%, NVDA -2.1%, AMAT -2.1%, QCOM -1.6%, INTC -1.6%

Select China related names showing early weakness:

  • MT -4.2%, BZUN -3.8%, YY -3.7%, WB -3.6%, MOMO -3.3%, HTHT -3.1%, BABA -2.4%, JD -1.7%, BA -1.4%

Other news:

  • VOD -5.9% (aims to cut dividend to pay for 5G investments)
  • UBER -4.1% (Cautious view at Barrons)

Analyst comments:

  • SHOP -3.4% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Guggenheim)
  • CHD -1.1% (downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Atlantic Equities)

>>> US Early premarket gappers

Gapping up:

  • CPRX +3.5%, GTE +2.8%, NKTR +2.6%, NCS +2%, CIEN +1.8%, GFI +1.1%, HDS +1%, RDS.A +0.9%, GPRO +0.8%, SWN +0.7%, EQNR +0.7%, BP +0.6%

Gapping down:

  • INSY -8.3%, TEVA -8.2%, VOD -5.9%, TKC -4.7%, BZUN -4.4%, TTM -4.4%, MT -4.3%, SHOP -4.1%, YY -3.9%, ENDP -3.5%, WB -3.3%, AEG -3.1%, MU -3%, STM -2.8%, HTHT -2.8%, CNHI -2.8%, CRH -2.7%, AMD -2.7%, RBS -2.4%, BABA -2.4%, NVDA -2.4%, SQ -2.3%, AAPL -2.3%, SBGL -2.2%, AMAT -2.2%, CS -2.1%, MOMO -2%, NOK -2%, AMZN -2%, NFLX -2%, SAN -1.9%, FB -1.9%, QCOM -1.8%, MSFT -1.8%, JD -1.7%, DB -1.7%, TSLA -1.7%, INTC -1.7%, BA -1.6%, ING -1.4%

FT : Beijing vows not to flinch, but tariffs likely to bite hard

Beijing vows not to flinch, but tariffs likely to bite hard
Trump threat to impose more taxes across the board could cut Chinese exports to US by a third if followed through

Over the past week economists have been dusting off forecasting models drawn up last year when US president Donald Trump first threatened to tax about half of all Chinese imports at 25 per cent.

Most analysts estimate that the latest tariffs, which were first scheduled to be imposed on January 1 but then delayed until last Friday, will have a significant impact on already slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy — if fully implemented in about three weeks and not superseded by a trade agreement later this month or next.

But Chinese officials and experts continue to project confidence that their political and economic system will weather an all-out trade war better than the US. After wrapping up a fruitless 11th round of formal trade talks in Washington last week, vice-premier Liu He vowed that neither his negotiating team nor the Chinese people would “flinch” in the face of higher US tariffs.

“I was just playing with my old model of trade-war impacts,” Bo Zhuang, chief China economist at TS Lombard, said. According to Mr Zhuang’s estimates, if implemented for a full year the latest tariffs would reduce China’s exports to the US by $75bn — and by $170bn if Mr Trump follows through on his threat to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Chinese imports. 

The latter figure would be equivalent to one-third of the value of Chinese exports to the US in 2017, which amounted to $505bn, and translate into a 0.9 per cent decline in China’s nominal GDP, according to Mr Zhuang’s estimates. 

Over the first quarter of this year, merchandise trade between China and the US fell by $25bn over the same period in 2018, with Chinese exports to the US down 9 per cent, or $45bn in absolute dollar terms, and US exports to China down 30 per cent, or $39bn in absolute dollar terms. 

“Owing to the sheer size of China’s economy and its declining reliance on exports, the immediate impact of the trade war on growth should be manageable,” Mr Zhuang predicts. As a percentage of GDP, China’s total exports fell from 35 per cent in 2006 to 18 per cent in 2017, with exports to the US now equivalent to just 4 per cent of GDP. 

Analysts at Moody’s project that if all Chinese exports to the US were taxed at 25 per cent for a full year, real GDP growth would slow by 1.2 percentage points to just over 5 per cent. 


As unwelcome as this would be for President Xi Jinping and Mr Liu, who has simultaneously been leading a campaign against risky financial practices that has inadvertently starved private sector companies of capital, Chinese analysts argue that the party controls levers that Mr Trump can only dream of. While the US president struggles to get his favourite candidates appointed to the Federal Reserve board, the Communist party has direct leverage over everything from the renminbi’s dollar exchange rate to central bank monetary policy. 

“China has its own ways to support exports, such as the exchange rate and tax rebates for exporters,” says Huang Weiping, an economics professor at Peking University. He notes that as trade frictions with the US intensified last summer, the carefully managed renminbi fell almost 8 per cent against the dollar — nullifying much of the impact of Mr Trump’s initial tariffs. 

On Monday the renminbi fell 0.5 per cent against the dollar to $6.87, and almost 1 per cent to $6.94 in offshore trading. Since Mr Trump first threatened to escalate the trade war on May 5, the renminbi has fallen 1.3 per cent against the dollar to a five-month low.

Chinese analysts say Mr Trump missed a golden opportunity to exert maximum pressure on China’s economy when he delayed implementing his tariff increase on January 1 — and then again on March 1. 

In mid-January, Mr Liu and Premier Li Keqiang were so worried about the private sector’s struggles that they made high-profile visits to the headquarters of each of China’s “big four” state banks, instructing them to lend more to small and medium-sized enterprises. 

The People’s Bank of China has similarly tried to help the private sector by allowing banks to reduce their reserve levels on condition the freed-up capital flows to SMEs. By mid-March much of the gloom had lifted and China’s parliament rubber-stamped tax cuts and other stimulus measures worth Rmb2tn ($291bn), helping to boost first-quarter GDP growth to a higher-than-forecast 6.4 per cent. 

“The fourth quarter was the bottom of the economic cycle,” said one analyst at a government-affiliated think-tank who asked not to be named. 

Other analysts agree. “China has enough monetary and fiscal firepower to stimulate its economy and achieve its 6 per cent growth target even in the face of this external pressure,” Arthur Kroeber of Gavekal Research wrote in a research note on Monday. Beijing’s strategy, he added, was “to play it cool and wait for an erosion of market and economic sentiment [in the US] to convince Trump that his political interests are best served by flipping back to dealmaker mode”. 

The party, by contrast, has little to worry about in the way of criticism at home given its iron grip on China’s domestic media and internet, but is also aware that sentiment remains fragile and could sink again as the trade war enters a new phase. As the government think-tank analyst said: “We have to report and get consent for interviews now.” 

(9to5) Latest 2019 iPhone molds leak once again show square camera bump coming t



As Apple readies its supply chain for the fall iPhone bonanza, we are getting leaks thick and fast. This latest image was uploaded to Twitter by Mark Gurman.
It reaffirms renders from Onleaks that all three flagship iPhones this year will feature the new square camera bump design, including the iPhone XR that will only have two cameras.

Molds are used by case manufacturers to test compatibility with upcoming cases, and are typically based on leaked schematics and dimensions coming out of the Apple/Foxconn factory. They may not show every crevice and indentation of a phone’s design, but width/height/thickness is usually accurate and they depict holes for things like speakers, cameras, buttons, and microphones, that accessory manufacturers need to ensure their cases do not cover important components.
The leaks for iPhone 11 have been somewhat controversial as the new camera bump is so large that it dominates the back of the device. In particular, the lenses inside the rounded-square are oddly arranged. They seem to follow a triangular layout, with the camera flash and microphone placed awkwardly above and below the spoke of the triangle. It’s a weird aesthetic for a module that is housed in a square.
At superficial glances, it seems cruder compared to the sleeker vertical dual-camera module used in iPhone X and iPhone XS. It is even more strange that the 2019 iPhone XR will seemingly also be getting a square notch even though it will only feature two cameras, not three.
Onleaks was first to share news of the square camera bump, posting accurate iPhone 11 renders as early as January.


Now, Apple is widely expected to announce substantial camera upgrades that may justify the strange design. For example, the third camera coming to iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Max is believed to be an ultra-wide lens made by Sony.
The explanation for the 2019 iPhone XR is less clear, although the consistent design does make up for a distinctive iPhone generational family. In a story last week, Bloomberg said the new camera will result in more detailed photos and Apple is purportedly working on a feature that will change the framing of a shot after a user has taken a picture, in cases where a person may have been accidentally chopped off.