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In March of last year, my colleague Marshall Schleifman wrote in this space about the meteoric rising cost of shipping ocean freight – one of the many negative outcomes of disruptions and imbalances in the global supply chain. As tracked by the Global Freightos Baltic Index (below), China/East Asia to North America West Coast container […]

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Since the 1980s, retailers have been investing in private brands – brands owned by and thus sold exclusively at a particular retailer. Once considered second-tier products offering cheaper versions of basic merchandise, today’s private brands sit side-by-side with national brands and are merchandized so customers may not realize they are store brands. In some cases, […]

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A recent exposé on fast-fashion retailer H&M alleges that the company’s environmental promise is undermined by greenwashing. H&M was using a scorecard system to inform customers about the environmental soundness of each product, but a report by Quartz claims that more than half of the scorecards portrayed products as being better for the environment than […]

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High inflation, soaring gas prices, rising interest rates, and a bear market correction in the stock market are among several factors that currently have consumers (and economists) on edge. These concerns are starting to manifest themselves in the economic data: retail spending posted a surprise 0.3% decline in May, and the University of Michigan’s consumer […]

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In prior issues of the Big Story, Consensus partners Billy Busko, Betsy White and Abigail Hitchcock discussed the emergence of the metaverse as a new channel for brands, with gaming as an on-ramp to a future digital world anchored in blockchain technology. It’s relatively easy to imagine how fashion and lifestyle brands will capitalize on the […]

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