Daily EDition January 5, 2017 1

Fashion. Beauty. Business.

On OffenseAlibaba has sued two alleged sellers of counterfeit watches on its Taobao platform.

Page 10

Faster, FasterThere’s a battle in beauty services between on-demand apps and singularly focused salons.

Page 8

London LadsDesigners strive to adapt to the changes at London Fashion Week Men’s.

Page 6

Continued on page 11phot

ogra

ph b

y C

J g

unth

er/e

pa/r

eX/S

hutt

erst

ock

Of the total, 6,200 are management positions. “That is a significant portion of our executive population — 17 per-cent. It’s a huge cut,” Terry J. Lundgren, Macy’s chairman and chief executive

officer, told WWD.The remaining 3,900 employees to

be let go are in the stores’ organization, though no customer-facing jobs are being cut, according to Macy’s executives.

The company currently has 158,000 employees.

Shares of Macy’s fell more than 10 percent to $32 in after-hours trading following the release of the news, which

also outlined the timing of the previously announced store closings.

The job cuts and other changes are a sign of the immense pressure traditional

Swinging The Ax

Macy’s Inc. will lay off more than 10,000 workers, roughly 7 percent of its workforce, this spring in a massive streamlining of a magnitude not seen at America’s largest department store chain since the Great Recession.

By DaviD Moin

Men’s Fashion WeeksMen’s Paris FW

Daily

Printed DailyDISTRIBUTED IN EACH CITY

ISSUE: January 20CLOSE: 01/16 · MATERIALS: 01/17

ISSUE: January 13CLOSE: 01/09 · MATERIALS: 01/10

Men’s Milan FW Daily

Men’s NYFW Daily

ISSUE: February 1CLOSE: 01/26 · MATERIALS: 01/27

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT PAMELA FIRESTONE, ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AT 212 256 8103 OR PFIRESTONE@WWD.COM

January 5, 2017 3

Macy’s Triggers Sweeping Streamlining Amid Traffic Declines in Stores ● Central management is being reduced by 17 percent.

● Dolce & Gabbana Under Fire Regarding Melania Trump-Related Instagram Post

● Pharrell Williams Adds Handbag Campaign to Chanel Duties

● Political Agenda Holds Opportunities and Concerns for Fashion Industry

● Revlon Restructures Following Elizabeth Arden Acquisition

Top 5TrenDingOn WWD.COM

nEWSMAKERSThis Week’s Most Talked About names In Our Industry

Jack Ma

Amy Smilovic

Khalid Al Qasimi

Manny Gutierrez

How to Use WWD’s E-viewer

SleepNo More

SleepNo More

Tumi’s JeromeGriffith Gains Support As Lands’ End CEO

2. Double-tap to zoom in on a page.

1. Tap the headline to launch the text-reader

version of an article.

3. To print this issue, hover over the bottom right of your browser window and

click on the ellipsis symbol “…”. Choose the Print option

from the menu.

4. Like the e-viewer format for WWD’s Digital Daily?

Let us know. E-mail ddfeedback@wwd.com with

questions or comments.

SleepNo More

SleepNo More

Tumi’s JeromeGriffith Gains Support As Lands’ End CEO

SleepNo More

SleepNo More

Tumi’s JeromeGriffith Gains Support As Lands’ End CEO

● The first augmented shopping app powered by Google’s Tango was shown at CES 2017.

By Kari HaManaKa

LAS VEGAS — A steady stream of applause erupted with every reveal rolled out during Asus’ presentation Wednes-day, a day ahead of the official start of the CES 2017 show.

Asus chairman Jonney Shih took the wraps off the ZenFone AR, a new aug-mented reality smartphone. The device is powered by Google’s Tango software plat-form, which essentially allows computers to “see” so that a smartphone or a tablet can be enabled with augmented reality functionality.

The capability can have implications for gaming or online shopping. The latter is where the new Dressing Room by Gap app comes into play. The app was demoed before the Asus crowd and lets shoppers use a virtual mannequin that can be queued up on their mobile device to try on and compare different sizes, allowing a shopper to see how a fabric may drape on the body or the differences

in fit between sizes.“It’s become really clear to me what we

need to do to win,” said Gap global presi-dent Jeff Kirwan to the audience, pointing out that strategy is a three-pronged focus on product, quality and fit.

Avametric is the company’s whose fash-ion software creates the 3-D images that show how garments fit on the body. The company in March nabbed $10.5 million in Series A funding.

The Gap app, expected to be released

by the end of the month, will come pre-loaded on ZenFone AR. It’s just one of many launches to be rolled out during CES 2017’s four-day run.

Thousands are expected to descend and gather throughout the Las Vegas Strip over the coming days for the global technology trade show, which is in its 50th year. Last year’s show drew 177,393 attendees to see the latest technologies across some 2.47 million square feet of exhibit space.

● The retailers is seeking some financial breathing room as it looks to sell more assets.

By vicKi M. Young

Sears Holdings Corp. is working again with ESL Investments, this time for access to a $500 million secured loan facility.

The borrowers are certain subsidiaries of Sears, and the lenders under the loan facility are entities affiliated with ESL. Sears said the terms of the loan facility were approved by its board’s subcom-mittee on related party transactions. Outside advice also was obtained from Centerview Partners and the law firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges.

The new loan facility matures in July 2020. Sears said $321 million has been funded, and up to an additional $179 million may be drawn by the borrowers in the future.

Sears said the loan facility was secured

by mortgages on 46 real properties owned by the company’s subsidiaries. Should the retailer seek to borrow the additional $179 million available, access to the funding will be secured by mort-gages on additional properties owned by Sears’ subsidiaries. The loan agreement provides for interest at a rate of 8 percent a year and is guaranteed by the company.

Sears also said the new loan will give it time to market assets from its real estate portfolio, with the proceeds used primar-ily to “repay outstanding indebtedness.”

Jason M. Hollar, Sears’ chief financial officer, said, “This loan facility will provide Sears Holdings with additional financial flexibility and support our operations as we meet all of our financial obligations.”

Sears’ chairman Edward S. Lampert is also the chairman of ESL, a hedge fund. Lampert’s ESL bailed Kmart Holdings Corp. out of bankruptcy in 2003, which then merged with Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 2005 in an $11 billion deal to form Sears Holdings.

Last week Sears went to ESL for standby letters of credit in an initial amount of up to $200 million. The same facility gives the retailer access for up to an additional $300 million in standby letters of credit.

Sears on Jan. 6 will close another 30 stores, mostly Kmart locations. By the close of the fiscal year at the end of January, it will have shuttered or be in the process of closing more than 200 stores. Sears will likely begin its new fiscal year in February with less than 1,500 stores. When the company was newly formed following the 2005 merger, it operated more than 3,500 stores combined.

Over the years Lampert has used his financial wizardry to spin off assets, such as Lands’ End, and monetize Sears’ real estate, such as selling 235 Sears and Kmart locations to form real estate invest-ment trust Seritage Growth Properties.

The company is still in the process of trying to find a buyer for its Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard brands, as well as its Sears Home Services business.

business

Dressing Room by Gap App Revealed

business

Sears Again Taps ESL for $500M Facility

Avametric’s software creates 3-D images showing how any item of clothing will fit on a user’s body.

gap

pho

togr

aph

by K

endr

a g

rate

rri; L

undg

ren

by a

my

Sus

sman

; Ma

by V

iann

ey L

e C

aer/

reX

/Shu

tter

stoc

k; a

l Qas

imi b

y S

milo

vic

by g

eorg

e C

hins

ee; g

utie

rrez

by

Laur

en/W

Wd

/reX

/Shu

tter

stoc

k

4 January 5, 2017

TibiThe idea of a seasonless, “confident” wardrobe is what drives Amy Smilovic at Tibi. “It’s really for a working girl,” she explained. “I hate to say it’s based on anything, because each season we really base it on what we want to wear and what we’re feeling.”

Lucky for her customers, Smilovic’s feel-ings translated very well into a desirable and wearable collection. This season, she channeled the Eighties in a refined way. Drop-shoulder coats in heritage plaids, cropped T-shirts with removable shoul-der pads, long-sleeve dresses that could transition flawlessly from work to play — one style in a great hammered silk blend leopard, as well as unexpected combina-tions of colors — are all elements of Tibi’s year-round concept.“Everything is seasonless and it really is by accident,” she said. “We didn’t set out to create a lighter-weight collection or any-thing like that. I think that we’re just finding that we are very attracted to things that we can wear creatively throughout the year and not have to change our whole wardrobe when the weather changes.” — M.A.

noon by noorWith the introduction of draping ren-dered in soft and fluid silhouettes, Noon by Noor’s lineup took a new feminine turn for pre-fall. It was most evident in the collection’s cool, asymmetric silk skirts and a white silk trench, all of it conveying effortless chic.

Designers and cousins Shaikha Noor Al Khalifa and Shaikha Haya Al Khalifa contin-ued to touch upon themes of transparency seen in the label’s recent spring collection, but the duo also looked to arctic landscapes this season, which they translated into their looks via fractured ice prints, sparkling

embellishments and speckled cashmere knits in tones of blue. The collection also included a few inventive takes on evenin-gwear, as in a navy strapless beaded corset layered over a sheer tulle T-shirt. — Kristi Garced

pringle of ScotlandThought Pringle of Scotland was known for its luxurious takes on classic Scottish knitwear? It is. But over the course of the brand’s 200-year history, it made a splash in arenas outside high-end fashion. “A lot of people you come across say, ‘I know it — it’s the golfing brand,’” said Pringle creative director Fran Stringer, noting that one of her priorities as she marks her first year at the brand is to better communicate the house’s modern identity, particularly in America, where it’s making a push begin-ning with pre-fall. (Pringle, famous for its twinsets and argyle on the links, no longer has a golf line.)

Stringer showed the collection in New York at the Mercer Hotel, hosting a small lunch for American editors to better acquaint them with her and her lineup. She very much focused on bringing the archive — rich with Fair Isles and paisleys, its original twinsets and argyle — into today’s world. She pushed cozy classics forward, reinterpreting the twinset as a cardigan and skirt or oversized poncho and skirt meant to be worn with trainers. Fair Isle sweaters became big statement pieces in subtle patchwork constructions, while the traditional argyle was shown on asymmetric cardigans. New textures came in big Lurex knits, lined in cashmere — Stringer noted that the Pringle customer loves a soft hand. A cashmere lining allowed her to explore more novelty yarns without losing the soft-ness. The collection offered a lot to cuddle up in while maintaining a style-conscious profile. — Jessica Iredale

Pringle of ScotlandNoon by Noor

Tibi tibi

pho

togr

aph

by g

eorg

e C

hins

ee

pre-Fall2017

January 5, 2017 5

Trina TurkTrina Turk took a wear-now approach to pre-fall — or transition, as she prefers to call the season. “It’s such a tricky time, we want it to look like fall, but it’s actually delivered in July,” she explained. Fashionwise, she focused on an olive green base with pops of color accent-ing the looks. A great military jacket went over a feminine floral print dress, pajama pants paired with striped Ts and embroidered bomber jackets, and pleated dresses featured built-in neck-laces, while for the boys, Turk continued to offer jumpsuits. “It’s all about things that could transition into true fall,” she said, “and take a summery kind of light-hearted approach to the whole thing.” — Mayte Allende

CarvenAhead of announcing its new creative director, Carven stayed the course with a less girly, more arty spin on the urban Parisian wardrobe. Many items winked to men's fashion, such as asymmetric shirtdresses in panels of diagonally striped cotton. Outerwear options included a minimalist tailored coat with a pleated waist and a cute bomber jacket in a Prince of Wales check with cream knitted sleeves that emulated sheepskin.

The line’s more feminine side sur-faced in a black dress with spaghetti straps and a wavy décolleté inspired by Ettore Sottsass’ iconic Fragola Mirror design; a floaty black flower-print dress in a pretty Argaman iris motif, and a fitted black top in technical jersey with undulating peplums. The collection’s statement shade — fuchsia – played out on Eighties-tinged cocktail dresses with black lace accents. Boyish flats finished off the looks. — Katya Foreman

reem AcraReem Acra has been spending a lot of time in Dubai, where she's shooting "Fashion Star" for Dubai One TV, a "Proj-ect Runway"-like spinoff that features Acra as a judge and mentor to 12 aspiring designers. The city's opulence might've influenced her latest pre-fall collection, which showcased a few evening looks alongside a growing ready-to-wear cat-egory, rendered with gold metallic lace and brocades, sparkling beaded embroi-deries and bright pops of color.

With 2017 marking the brand's 20th anniversary, Acra is focused on broad-ening her base to encompass more than just bridal and red-carpet clients. She poured the same dose of glamour into her separates-heavy lineup, which juxtaposed the overtly sexy — a sculptural black leather bustier with a flirty peplum, for example, or lace-trimmed miniskirts — with softer romantic pieces, such as high-neck guipure lace bell-sleeve tops. She also introduced a few sleek pants sil-houettes, cutting them with front-slits or open ruffles to allow movement. Evening gowns featured rich embellishments, such as transparent mesh bodices covered in floral-embroidered sequins and appli-qués. — K.G.

pre-Fall2017

Reem Acra

Carven

Trina Turk trin

a tu

rk p

hoto

grap

h by

geo

rge

Chi

nsee

6 January 5, 2017

● The calendar is coming under increased pressure, from sweeping changes in the industry to the more popular Pitti and Paris.

By SaMantHa conti

LONDON — In flux.That’s one way to describe the London

men’s calendar, which has seen most of the big-name brands depart, the parties and special events dwindle, and the lineup of coed shows — and see-now-buy-now collections — swell.

Designers and labels that have chosen to stay are going with the flow, using the showcase to promote their businesses and support the city that gave them their start. Others have moved on to Pitti Uomo or Paris — or are contemplating such a switch.

No one knows the fate of the recently re-branded London Fashion Week Men’s, which runs from Friday through Monday, although organizers are keeping an open mind. They argue that the January show-case, which coincides with a post-holiday period of diet and detox, is traditionally quieter than June and there’s always been a churn of designers in and out of the London calendar.

The city is also coming under increasing pressure from Pitti Uomo, the Florentine trade show with its more convenient timing, big budgets, large hospitality packages for international buyers and commercial buzz.

Paul Smith is showing his PS by Paul Smith collection at Pitti for the first time, while fellow British brand Johnstons of Elgin has chosen Pitti to unveil its first luxury lifestyle collection by creative director Alan Scott. Pringle of Scotland has recently swapped London men’s for Pitti, too.

The Italian and French competition — and the overarching changes in the indus-try — will inevitably recast the shape of the London men’s show weeks, although it’s unclear how long it’s going to take.

Dylan Jones, London Fashion Week Men’s chairman, British GQ editor and a non-executive director of the British Fash-ion Council, is the first to admit that the week is in a state of flux.

He believes there’s going to have to be “some sort of consolidation” with the women’s shows “because there is so much going on, so much activity, and so much disruption, that things need to be stream-lined. There is a sense that the fashion world is becoming a little unwieldy.”

Jones is quick to add, though, that the London men’s fashion weeks were meant to offer the city’s designers a platform and a springboard to business. “What they do with it is up to them,” he said, referring to designers’ choices to stage coed or see-now-buy-now shows during January or February, during the women’s collections.

He said it may take two or three sea-sons for everything to settle down, “but regardless of what anyone thinks of our schedule — bizarrely and encouragingly — we have more press and more buyers than ever before.”

According to the BFC, more than 38 countries will be represented at the fash-ion week in terms of press and buyers, nearly 20 percent more than last year.

Chinese buyer attendance has

increased 175 percent season-on-season, and nearly quadrupled year-over-year. U.K. buyer attendance has increased 20 percent season-on-season and 4 percent year-over-year.

Vivienne Westwood is staging her first coed show in London on Monday, while the rapper Tinie Tempah is launching his collection, WWW, or What We Wear, on Saturday. Hussein Chalayan is also showing his men’s collection on the official sched-ule for the first time, with a presentation set for Sunday.

Some 12 labels — including YMC, Case-ly-Hayford, Sibling, Christopher Raeburn and Belstaff — are showing men’s and women’s together. Six are offering see-now-buy-now collections, among them Barbour International, Edward Crutchley, Chester Barrie and Maharishi.

Despite the departure of big names such as Coach, Alexander McQueen, Tom Ford and Burberry (the latter shows two coed collections in London, in February and September), designers, showrooms and retailers alike say they’re looking forward to a robust season.

“The schedule is thinner; however, I have many more requests from buyers to come to our shows this time, despite the fact that there is always less footfall in Jan-uary than June,” said Nana Suzuki, of the eponymous sales agency, whose brands include Cottweiler and Xander Zhou.

Suzuki added that there is “larger pressure on the brands that are showing in London in January to prove” they can be a draw for buyers, many of whom tradition-ally write their London orders at Pitti or in Paris. Indeed, some men’s wear buyers admit they can “see” London by visiting the Paris showrooms, where the British brands are selling.

Jimmy Collins, cofounder of the con-temporary label YMC, was one of the first

brands to take part in London Collections: Men, when it launched nearly five years ago. Although he’s hosting a coed presen-tation in Covent Garden this season, he’s mulling a move to Paris in June, with an eye to hosting a presentation or party.

He said while the big retailers always come to his shows and presentations in London, “my real business is with the independent stores, and they never come. They’re too busy: Some go to Pitti, and others buy in Paris. They don’t write orders in London — or after London — so commercially London is not working for us. And it’s a lot of love, time, money, sweat and blood — so it needs to work.”

The designers who have chosen to stay in London are making the showcase work for them.

“I’m old enough to remember when we didn’t have a London men’s fashion week, and the difference now is quite incredible,” said Raeburn, who will be showing men’s and women’s together on Sunday. “London offers an amazing opportunity to show the collection to press and buyers ahead of the sales periods in Paris and Milan.”

Raeburn said it’s up to the brands to generate business and commercial rela-tionships. He recently expanded his studio, hired three new managers and is hoping for double-digit growth this year thanks to clients in Japan and a bigger wholesale base in the U.K., outside of London.

Patrick Grant, who’s juggling three men’s wear businesses, would agree. He’ll be showing his E. Tautz line during the week and said it doesn’t matter whether or not the big brands take part in LFWM. “I don’t think anyone is worried about it, and the big brands are not what make the London shows interesting.”

Grant said he has more sales appoint-ments than ever booked during the Lon-don show week, although the majority of

the E. Tautz orders will be written in Paris. He said spring was a commercial success, with the season’s business more than dou-ble that of last year due to Japanese stores and renewed interest from Europe and Scandinavia.

While he’s pleased with the business, Grant said he doesn’t want to ramp it up too quickly. He said the strategy is about “adding one guy at a time. And then maybe in 10 years’ time, we can have a really good business.”

Emerging designer Daniel Fletcher, who last season staged an anti-Brexit protest as part of his off-schedule presentation, said he’s proud to be part of London.

“There’s a lot going on in the sportswear industry in London, and I still have a lot to say. I think my collections have developed to be slightly more mature, tailored and luxurious. I feel like I can show on the schedule, and that I’m bringing something new to what’s happening,” said Fletcher.

Bruce Pask, men’s fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman, and a faithful front-row fixture the London men’s showcase began, said the city is a fountain of inspiration.

He believes London’s “historically leading role in men’s wear makes it a ‘must’ on the show circuit. I have always found it inspirational as well as directional, vital, really, for my work at Goodman’s and our variety of luxury men’s wear offerings. In addition to the fashion shows and presentations both big and small, I am always scouting new brands, factories and anything that may be of interest.”

Pask said the city “strikes a great and unique balance between traditional men’s wear and advanced design,” fostering careers and collections by labels such as Craig Green and the Mayfair tailor Thom Sweeney, a line which is now exclusive to the store.

business

Still Relevant? Designers Ponder Future at London Men’s Week

Patrick Grant in his studio.

gra

nt p

hoto

grap

h by

Fra

ncis

co g

omez

de

Vill

aboa

January 5, 2017 7

● Here are a few designers on the rise who will present their collections during London Fashion Week Men’s.

By LoreLei MarfiL

London is known for its streetwear scene, composed of a mash-up of subcul-tures including hip-hop, skateboarding and surfing. The popularity of the urban market has grown recently with obscure labels becoming more mainstream and newer brands launching. Here are a few designers on the rise who are getting set to present their collections during London Fashion Week Men’s.

A-Cold-WallSamuel Ross named his label A-Cold-

Wall as a nod to Britain’s melting pot culture. “The inspiration behind the name came from the familiarity of environ-ments,” the designer said. “Multiple class systems interact, with the people overlap-ping and integrating.”

Calling London a “mishmash of high/low property piled on top of each other” with its “distant relationships of work-ing class and upper middle class areas,” these influences appear in A-Cold-Wall’s deconstructed workwear that includes oversize scarves used as a utility holster — a bestseller.

The 25-year-old Ross — who launched his label in 2015 — was born and raised in South West London and studied graphic design and contemporary Illustration at DeMontfort University in Leicester.

Before delving into fashion, he worked on graphic and product design at Impe-rial Design GB and Story Worldwide and dabbled in homewares, commercial build-outs and advertising campaigns. He also worked as a street artist and on obscure

art films before taking the role of Virgil Abloh’s design assistant. He worked with Abloh for three-and-a-half years, taking on various projects at Off-White, Hood By Air, A.P.C. Kanye collection and Stussy before launching his label.

“Brutalist, raw and contrasted” is how Ross describes the aesthetic. Its target customer is “not necessarily a man, it’s more an individual who’s in tune with layered ideas and has an appreciation for design. They are individuals who pick up on the subtle references and color choices.”

Ross said future plans for the brand, which will showcase its range on Friday at 8 p.m., include footwear and homeware objects with a focus on sonic installations. Earlier this year, the designer unveiled a furniture and apparel installation as a part of CIFF Raven at Copenhagen Fashion Week. “The goal is to create a world people can slip into in the form of garments, but also live within through other facets and daily interactions.”

For his next collection, he’ll be intro-ducing new pieces for women while experimenting with fabrics such as silk, nylon and lace.

Prices range from 20 pounds, or $25, for socks to 1,400 pounds, or $1,757, for outer-wear. The brand is stocked at Barneys New York, Harvey Nichols and Machine-A.

QasimiSociopolitical topics have always been

important to Khalid Al Qasimi and it shows in his ath-leisure collection Qasimi. The line, which mixes Middle Eastern dressing with a pared-back military aes-thetic, is influenced by everything from art and architecture to political issues.

As a result, the line that he will present at 12:30 p.m. on Monday at Somerset House will focus on current events. “I think this year more than any other,

those are conversations we all need to be having,” he said. “So part of the narrative of the collection will be about the rise of protests and riots.”

Born in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and raised in the U.K. Qasimi, is the son of Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Moham-med Al Qasimi. He studied Hispanic Studies and French literature at University College London then architecture at the Architectural Association and then studied women’s wear at Central Saint Martins. The Emirati designer started his women’s range in 2008 before launching his men’s offering in 2010.

Qasimi said the construction of the garment is paramount to him. “Everything has a purpose and function,” he said. “I try to steer away from decoration. Silhouettes are fluid, oversized and languid fresh.”

These looks appeal to a wide range of men, he believes, who are “looking for a beautifully designed piece of clothing that is all about cut, construction and fabric.”

Prices range from 125 pounds, or $156, for a shirt to 1,200 pounds, or $1,507, for outerwear. The label is sold in Bluebird, Harvey Nichols and Farfetch.com.

The designer doesn’t think there’s such a thing as the “typical” Qasimi man “purely because customers are so a-typical. But from the research we’ve done, they are educated, well-informed on all sorts of issues,” he said.

While men’s will be the focus at Pitti Uomo, Qasimi said he is also strategizing expansions of his women’s range, looking at possible accessories collaborations as well as homewares.

Blood BrotherTo “express togetherness,” Nicholas Biela

and James Waller — who launched their company in 2011 — named their label Blood Brother. “The name represents the notion of one person relying on another to be able

to achieve their ambitions,” said Biela.Born in the same hospital in Sutton,

Biela grew up in Canterbury while Waller was raised in South West London. The duo met while studying at the London College of Fashion — Biela studied men’s wear while Waller studied business. Biela worked for brands in the past including Jean Pierre Braganza and Martin Ander-son, while Waller worked at Diesel and J.Lindeberg.

“Blood Brother aims to engage men who enjoy fashion with some substance,” said Biela. “Our customer is knowledge-able about quality and interested in prod-ucts that are independent, while wanting clothing that suits living in an increasingly hybrid lifestyle, work/play, night/day. Smart casualwear and relaxed formalwear help keep our contradictions accessible.”

Biela said that they seek to offer a mod-ern take on men’s wear. “Key pieces from spring 2017 were our tailored looks using vintage patterns,” said Biela. “Bringing them up to date we felt really energized.”

For the fall collection, titled “Thames,” the duo will be experimenting with prints. “We used old survey maps and mixed with newer digital maps — most notably Google maps,” Biela said. “Our take on London locations relative to the river are brought to life with plentiful embroidery embellishments added to key shapes.” For example, tailored pieces in exploded corduroy and waxed cotton have straps and utilitarian pockets that blend into an aesthetic that is distinctly Blood Brother.

The price range is from 45 pounds, or $56, for a T-shirt to 1,450 pounds, or $1,831, for a shearling jacket. It is sold at Harvey Nichols, Harrods and Breuninger.

Future projects for the label, which will be presented at 10:30 a.m. on Monday at the BFC Presentation Space, include col-laborating with Guinness on a range that will be stocked exclusively at Harrods.

men’s

New Faces of Streetwear From London

Qasimi Blood Brother A-Cold-Wall

ones to Watch

phot

ogra

phs

by F

ranc

isco

gom

ez d

e V

illab

oa

8 January 5, 2017

● It’s Drybar versus Glamsquad in the space right now, which is seeing an uptick in both retail “bars” and in-home offerings.

By racHeL Strugatz

NEW YORK — Forget full service salons. Any beauty service provider today is likely to want to do one of two things: Open a “bar” or go the concierge route with an on-demand mobile app.

Consumers today are go-go-go, and long swaths of time once dedicated to all-day pampering are far and few between. Women want to make a pit stop at their local Drybar for a blowout before heading into the office, get a 15-minute laser and light facial at Skin Laundry during lunch or, on their way home, get their roots done in 45 minutes flat at new root touch-up salon Madison Reed in the Flatiron District here.

Beauty “bars” dedicated to singu-lar-focused services — including makeup applications, facials, laser facials, chemical peels, root touch-ups, eyelash extension application and blowdrys — are popping up all over major cities. This year is primed for an even greater proliferation of these brick-and-mortar beauty outposts as they trickle into other key markets. Chicago has two Blowtique locations, and Canadian facial bar Skoah, while predominantly West Coast based, now has three doors in Boston.

Whether the draw is speed (Madison Reed’s root touch-ups can replace often lengthy visits to a traditional salon), accessibility (facial bar Heyday’s two shops here want to deliver a spa service for $90), or both (seven-month-old facial bar Silver Mirror on the Upper East Side bills itself as “fast and affordable”), one thing is clear: consumers want these services when they want them.

And in some cases, where they want it. This is where another fast-growing sector of the beauty service space — mobile apps facilitating on-demand offerings à la Glamsquad — comes into play.

The beauty services industry is seeing an uptick in both on-demand and “bars” and which one is better primed for success — from market share to consumer mind-set — is being debated by financial experts and venture capitalists.

“My gut says speed beauty is more com-pelling as a business model,” said Kirsten Green, founder of venture capital firm Forerunner Ventures that counts Warby Parker, Hotel Tonight, Dollar Shave Club, Glossier, Outdoor Voices and Draper James among its investments.

She noted that while both “speed bars” at brick-and-mortar shops and in-home services are likely viable in certain markets, concierge entities, including Glamsquad, could really only work “in dense markets where platforms are able to aggregate demand and [give] service providers a consistent stream of work.”

An upside for bars and speed services is that they can exist in more markets. It stands to be a healthy business and she believes it’s an equally compelling model for consumers.

For Green, Drybar has demonstrated that building a routine with a customer is possible, and while skin treatments might not occur as often as a blowout, one time a week for a laser and light facial, for instance, is not unlikely. Success for facial bars in particular hinges on three things, she explained, and if a company can nail positioning, price and convenience, she believes fast facials could be strong sellers,

with room for add-on services.“When the service location is conve-

nient and the offering is optimized for experience, the out-of-house offering, I think, stands to be more compelling. It certainly offers a stronger place to build a brand and experience from, as well as upsell,” she added.

Madison Reed is the latest to join the fast-growing beauty bar space. Founder and chief executive officer Amy Errett is taking her e-commerce brand of at-home, prestige hair color and bringing it to life with the Madison Reed Color Bar, which officially opens Jan. 12.

Located on 19th Street in the Flatiron District here, clients can get root touch-ups for $45, available in extended early morn-ing and late evening time slots (8 a.m. to 8 p.m.) to accommodate working women. The salon will offer Madi, a color-matching technology that the company rolled out on its site this fall. Through a selfie upload, Madi gives recommendations on current or future color. Madison Reed Color Bar will see a grand opening next month.

BeautyRx Peel Bar, which specializes in two-minute peels, was one of the earlier adopters on the express beauty scene is. Founded by Dr. Neal Schultz, the con-cept opened its first space in fall 2014 at Butterfly Beauty. Since then, Schultz has introduced his Peel Bar via pop-ups in six Saks Fifth Avenue doors nationwide and in May, a permanent Peel Bar launched in five Blushington locations.

For $55, clients can receive one of Schul-tz’s 40 percent strength Glycolic peels for less than a quarter of the price of the same procedure performed in his Upper East Side office. Clients are in and out in 15 minutes flat. Additional doors for 2017 are in the works, according to Stuart Schultz, president of BeautyRx by Dr. Schultz.

Heyday exclusively performs facials in its Flatiron and TriBeCa locations, but is not focused on the “express” aspect of beauty, said Michael Pollak, Heyday cofounder and chief brand officer.

“We’re trying to make professional skin care more accessible, and for a long time it’s been tucked away in luxury spas,” Pollak noted.

Beyond accessibility, efficiency also comes into play. A traditional spa typically has two or three dedicated facial areas, while Heyday has eight stations in its Flat-iron location and seven in its TriBeCa one.

Unable to disclose the next location, Pollak said more doors will open in 2017 in New York.

Even though Heyday, Madison Reed, BeautyRx Peel Bar and others are reliant on a brick-and-mortar business model to scale,

they do share characteristics with some mobile-first, concierge players, including Zeel Massage, The Ritualist, Glamsquad, Vênsette and most recently, Colour.

These mobile booking services for hair, makeup, massages, facials and nails hit the scene about five years ago and continue to be a fast-growing category in the emerging on-demand space. Glamsquad is considered the current market leader, and has raised $24 million to build an app and network of stylists that lets users book blowouts and get their makeup and nails done in their homes.

The environments where the services are performed are different — Heyday is a retail operation and The Ritualist’s facials take place in-home — but the services are similar, if not the exactly the same. Both brick-and-mortar and concierge businesses are highly specialized, with the exception of Glamsquad, the broadest when it comes to the services it offers. Its menu includes hairstyling, makeup applications, mani-cures and nail art and soon, face masks.

Pricing, for the most part, is competitive — and this includes comparing beauty bars to concierge, in-home prices as well as comparing both new models to traditional salon rates. For instance, there is just an $8.25 difference between a Drybar blowout and receiving the same service in one’s home via Glamsquad. The former charges $45 for the service, and including a 20 per-cent tip, comes out to $54, and the latter charges $50 for a blowout, and including a 20 percent tip and tax, comes out to $62.25. Higher priced concierge option Vênsette offers in-home blowouts for $100, as well as a VIP blowout option for $150. The same service in a traditional salon is priced similarly, where blowouts often start at about $40 to $45 and can go up to over $100 if performed by a senior stylist.

A 60-minute, Swedish in-home message with Zeel costs $130, and including an 18 percent tip and tax, comes out to $159.25. Comparatively, Exhale Spa charges $140 to $155 for its 60-minute massages and Bliss $160 for its Blissage 75 full-body massage. If you compare cost per minute, this means that an hour at Bliss costs $128, only two dollars less than what Zeel commands for its in-home service.

Heyday is a bit different. The facial bar was created expressly as a more accessi-ble option, with facials costing about 40 percent less than many New York spas that charge $150 or more for an hour service, and increasingly, well over the $250 to $300 mark. And while Heyday’s 50-minute facial for $95 is definitely a draw, it still costs 40 percent more than Mario Bades-cu’s classic, $65 European facial.

Overall, beyond the obvious “where” the

services are happening, there are parallels in services and pricing for the two business models — but when factors like unit eco-nomics and overhead costs come into play, the stakes change.

Beauty bars have top dollar real estate to contend with versus travel time for indepen-dent contractors that could greatly reduce the efficiency of a concierge operation, but from a consumer perspective, none of this matters. It’s likely that beauty bars and concierge services have overlap in client bases. A consumer can go to Drybar when it’s convenient for her, but also opt to have someone come to her home via Glamsquad if that fits better with her schedule.

Which model has the advantage and clearer road to profitability is yet to be determined, but Rebecca Kaden, a general partner at venture capital and private equity firm Maveron, believes the on-de-mand model poses challenges because it’s such a low margin industry.

≈≈ Kaden told WWD last fall. She thinks it’s too early to determine if making a profit on an in-house blowout will prove to be a sustainable business model.

Ilya Seglin, managing director at Thread-stone Advisors, had a counter argument. With a retail space, there is pressure to fill the salon at all times to justify rent. Even if it’s a slow time or day, there is no overhead cost for a concierge service.

He believes both “in-store” and in-home services have a place in the market and that neither has an edge — yet.

It just boils down to a different customer acquisition strategy, Seglin maintained. One uses retail to lure and hook custom-ers and the other must acquire customers online, but the same consumer wants both at different times.

“Ten percent of Blushington’s business is actually in-home services. They do effec-tively what Glamsquad does…and I think what’s going to happen over time is there’s going to be some consolidations and these services will come under one umbrella,” Seglin said.

Similar to how Warby Parker and Bonobos were born online but had to adapt and venture into brick-and-mor-tar — retail or wholesale — to grow their businesses to scale, beauty services will have to do the same.

To win in this space, he thinks a start-up needs an app for consumers to go and book an in-home service or appointment in a physical environment.

“Those businesses will evolve, whether they do it organically or merge with busi-nesses that do what they don’t do. If we look two, three, four years out, they will have to provide full services,” Seglin said.

beauty

Beauty Services War: ‘Bars’ Versus On-Demand

Online hair color brand Madison Reed opened a

touch-up salon in New York.

phot

ogra

ph b

y a

lber

t Che

ung

phot

ogra

phy

LLC

January 5, 2017 9

● The naturally derived product is a play to engage Millennials in a lagging prestige skin-care market.

By eLLen tHoMaS

Kiehl’s is placing its bets in antiaging — just don’t call it that.

This week the brand is rolling out its latest innovation, the Pure Vitality Skin Renewing Cream. For the L’Oréal-owned Kiehl’s, the cream is its most ambitious launch in terms of research and develop-ment and global reach in recent history. It is also a grab at the discerning Millennial consumer who has turned its nose up at traditional wrinkle creams and line cor-rectors that employ antiaging jargon.

“The number-one goal with skin care these days is not so much reversing the signs of aging but addressing a more healthy, radiant look,” said Cheryl Vitali, general manager of Kiehl’s Worldwide. “[With Pure Vitality] we don’t talk about lines and wrinkles.”

Entering more than 1,800 doors in 62 countries, industry sources estimate the cream could generate up to $40 million in global retail sales — including $10 million in the U.S. market — this year.

Instead of focusing on wrinkle-reduction, Pure Vitality is a cream that aims to address the face with a holistic view of improving the overall look and feel of skin. Kiehl’s is marketing the product as 99.6 percent-nat-urally derived, with main ingredients — manuka honey and red ginseng root — that sound more like grocery list items than science experiments. Perhaps most impor-tantly to selfie-loving Millennials, Pure Vitality claims to impart a healthy glow.

Health is a key buzzword for Kiehl’s as it forges ahead in a slow-growing prestige skin-care market.

“We know that antiaging is still a hot

topic, a hot market opportunity,” said Chris Salgardo, U.S. president at Kiehl’s. “But consumers aren’t focused on wrinkles or obsessing over the fact that they’re aging. There’s more of a focus on ‘How do I get my skin to look its best?’ [and] ‘How do I obtain healthy skin?’”

For Millennials, a healthy look is con-nected to lifestyle and eating habits, and

it all feeds back into the naturals trend, which according to Vitali is not going away anytime soon.

To that end, ensuring 99.6 percent natu-rality was of key importance in developing Pure Vitality.

“We’re seeing great growth in natural products — not only in the U.S,” Vitali said. “Our numbers are 8 percent growth

in natural skin care versus a flat market.” Vitali’s view is global. Within the Kiehl’s assortment, there are a few other natural products, including the Miracle Recovery Concentrate, which she noted is the best-seller in Europe.

The ingredient story — manuka honey and red ginseng root — is key to the Pure Vitality launch. Said Geoffrey Genesky, head of the Kiehl’s skin-care laboratory, the manuka honey contains antioxidants that fight against environmental aggres-sors and stimulates collagen to strengthen the skin barrier, while the red ginseng root increases hydration and encour-ages cell turnover to prevent dull skin. Genesky also noted that the cream was developed to have a more appealing tex-ture than other natural products on the market, designed to draw in consumers, who are not accustomed to purchasing natural skin care from a big brand.

But more importantly, these ingredients have backstories — the manuka honey is sourced from New Zealand and the red ginseng root comes from South Korea. A generation that values transparency, Mil-lennials want to know what their skin care ate for dinner.

“We see within the natural trend [that] it’s not enough just to be natural,” Vitali said. “[Consumers] want to know what the ingredients are, they want to research them and feel comfortable about that.”

Vitali is bullish that the prestige skin-care market can recover from its sluggish sales growth as of late. She referred to 2016 as an “adjustment period,” but “I think we’re a ready for a new [upward] trend.”

“What I think is next in skin care is more of that immediate gratification,” Vitali said. “Whether that’s hybrid skin care, people not wanting to wait eight weeks for results, [or] wanting to see something right away, [skin-care benefits in the future will be more like] something that happens with makeup.”

beauty

Kiehl’s Introduces Pure Vitality Cream

● Customs officials called its scope “exceptional and unprecedented.”

By Jennifer WeiL

PARIS – A major counterfeit cosmetics operation located in the region of Paris is being dismantled, according to customs officials here on Wednesday.

The investigators said they had for weeks been tracking a laboratory in the country’s Seine-et-Marne region that was illegally manufacturing knockoffs of face- and body-care products sold in the phar-macy channel. The lab was also simulta-neously producing its own private-label cosmetics destined for export.

“This is an exceptional and unprec-edented case, not only because it is a laboratory with a dual activity, but also because of the location on national soil of the cosmetics products’ production,” the Douanes et Droits Indirects, a branch of France’s customs activity, said in a statement.

While inspecting the lab, customs offi-cials came upon a large stock of counter-feit products and proof there was another company located in the same department

specialized in storage and shipping. In a second site, the officials seized about 45,000 counterfeit products, an equiva-lent number of units of cosmetics packag-ing — such as tubes, jars and bottles — as well as empty outer packaging that was destined to hold the fake cosmetics items.

A few days later, further investigation unveiled yet another stocking facility situated in the Calvados region of France that held 17,000 counterfeit cosmetics products and 50,000 units of empty packaging.

Managers of the manufacturing and stocking facilities have been questioned by investigators, and subsequent legal steps will be taken by French customs’ judiciary service, the Douanes et Droits Indirects said.

A crackdown of counterfeit items continues in France’s luxury-goods sector, too. For instance, as reported, this past fall police said they had found a counterfeiting ring in the outskirts of Paris that was selling fake watches bear-ing three LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned brand names. They were worth 1.5 million euros, or $1.6 million at current exchange.

In 2015, French customs intercepted 7.7 billion counterfeit items overall, it said.

beauty

Counterfeit Cosmetics Operation Dismantled Near Paris

The illegal products knocked of pharmacy brands.

Kiehl’s Pure Vitality Skin Renewing Cream

Kieh

l’s p

hoto

grap

h by

geo

rge

Chi

nsee

10 January 5, 2017

● Figures published in the next few weeks will be closely scrutinized for signs that the industry is turning the corner.

By JoeLLe DiDericH

PARIS — Will 2017 herald a turnaround for the beleaguered watch sector?

Figures published in the next few weeks will be closely scrutinized for signs that the industry is turning the corner after a year weighed down by overstocking, weak oil prices and changes in the behavior of customers in China, the world’s leading market for luxury timepieces.

Exports of Swiss timepieces fell 10.4 percent between January and Novem-ber 2016, their worst performance since 2009, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. Figures for Decem-ber are due to be published on Jan. 26, with analysts looking for further signs of a turnaround in Greater China, following encouraging signs in November.

Compagnie Financière Richemont, the parent of brands including Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre and IWC, is scheduled to publish revenues for its fiscal third quarter on Jan. 12. To offset falling sales, the company has launched an inventory buyback program, a cost-cutting plan at Dunhill and 170 jobs cuts at its Piaget and Vacheron Constantin brands.

Investors were encouraged by the company’s statement that October was a positive month for organic growth, even though overall Swiss watch exports fell 16.4 percent during the month, their steepest drop of the year. Richemont

shares closed up 8.3 percent following the announcement on Nov. 4.

Swatch Group, the world’s largest watchmaker with brands including Swatch, Omega and Breguet, officially plans to issue key 2016 figures on Feb. 16, though it regularly releases its financial information ahead of schedule. Last year, it published the report — including an outlook for the year ahead — on Feb. 3.

The company said in July it expected to end 2016 with flat net sales, despite a drop of 11.4 percent in the first half. But analysts are skeptical it will achieve its target in light of the poor Swiss watch export figures, which closely mirror

Swatch Group’s performance.The Biel, Switzerland-based group also

has excess inventory, but has refused to cut staff despite shrinking margins. However, Swatch Group has threatened “massive price hikes” for its component deliveries to other watchmakers after Swit-zerland’s competition regulator denied it the right to sell its surplus stocks.

Barclays Bank on Wednesday reiterated its share price target of 70 Swiss francs for Richemont and raised its price target for Swatch Group to 290 Swiss francs from 230 francs. Richemont traded at 66.55 francs, or $64.85 at current exchange rates, and Swatch Group at 312.70 francs,

or $304.69, at 11:15 a.m. CET.Despite uncertain prospects, both

companies remain attractive to investors, according to Barclays. Richemont is trading on 25.7 times estimated earnings in 2017, while Swatch Group has a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.1, according to the bank’s fore-casts. This compares with a luxury industry average of 22.2 percent, it said.

Barclays said the outlook for Richemont is improving and the company’s Decem-ber sales should benefit from an earlier Chinese New Year, which in 2017 falls on Jan. 28. “We assume a flat Q3 performance with weak watches offset by a robust performance from jewelry and the other categories,” analysts Julian Easthope and Julie Zhuang said in a report.

However, their overall view of the watch sector was cautious. They noted that although there is still positive momentum in the watch names, no single economic event could be blamed for the segment’s decline in 2016, raising the prospect that timepieces could be falling out of favor.

“Without a significant pickup in demand we would expect continued margin con-traction,” the analysts said. “We believe the industry remains over-supplied and capacity will need to be cut or capacity utilization will fall.”

In the latest sign of the challenges fac-ing the sector, Aldo Magada this week left his position as chief executive officer of Zenith. Jean-Claude Biver, president of the watch division at parent company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, is taking over the interim management of the Swiss watch brand, whose performance has lagged that of its stablemates Tag Heuer and Hublot.

business

Swiss Watchmakers Seen on the Cusp of RecoveryA pedestrian walks past an advertisement for Rolex watches China.

● The e-commerce giant said it has filed a lawsuit against two merchants for allegedly selling fake Swarovski watches on the platform and it plans to take other legal actions against counterfeiters.

By aManDa KaiSer With ContriButionS FroM JoeLLe DiDericH

Alibaba Group said Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit against two merchants for allegedly selling fake Swarovski watches on its Taobao platform and it plans to take other legal actions against counterfeiters.

The e-commerce giant, which has faced a barrage of criticism for the proliferation of fakes on its platforms, claimed that the Swarovski watch case is the first-ever legal action taken by an e-commerce platform in China against counterfeiters. Last month, the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office relisted Alibaba’s Taobao site on its “Noto-rious Markets” list for 2016, four years after removing it.

Alibaba said it filed the suit with Shen-zhen Longgang District People’s Court, claiming 1.4 million renminbi, or $201,555 at current rates, in damages for contract and goodwill violations.

“We want to mete out to counterfeiters the punishment they deserve in order to protect brand owners. We will bring the full force of the law to bear on these

counterfeiters so as to deter others from engaging in this crime wherever they are,” said Zheng Junfang, Alibaba’s chief

platform governance officer.Alibaba declined to comment further on

the Swarovski case and its plans for other

legal action as of press time.Andrea Durnthaler, head of group

public relations and corporate affairs at Swarovski, said the company welcomed the initiative. “We take counterfeiting seriously and we have been steadily increasing our anticounterfeiting efforts worldwide. Swarovski has cooperated with Alibaba on cases against sellers who are offering Swarovski counterfeits on Alibaba platforms, and applauds any steps Alibaba takes to discourage counterfeiters from selling on Alibaba platforms,” she said.

Alibaba said its platform governance team detected one of the fake sellers through its “test-buy purchase program” by buying a watch and having Swarovski authenticate it. The Shenzhen Luohu District police then raided the seller in August and confiscated over 125 counter-feit Swarovski watches, valued at nearly 2 million renminbi, or $287,936.

“We take a holistic and technolo-gy-driven approach to IPR enforcement,” said Matthew Bassiur, Alibaba’s head of global intellectual property enforcement. “Big-data analytics enhance our ability to identify and pursue counterfeiters, and make it increasingly difficult for these illicit sellers to hide in the shadows.”

Alibaba said it has enlisted 7,000 employees and volunteers in its fight against counterfeiting. But the company continues to face criticism over the pres-ence of fake products on Taobao.

The American Apparel and Footwear Association and 17 other organizations filed a complaint in October with the USTR, urging the agency to step up its scrutiny of the Chinese e-commerce giant and relist it on the counterfeit watch list. The USTR complied in December, a move that Alibaba protested vigorously.

Jack Ma is pushing Alibaba to keep

changing for the future.

“Big-data analytics enhance our ability to identify and pursue counterfeiters, and make it increasingly difficult for these illicit sellers to hide in the shadows.”

— Matthew Bassiur, Alibaba

role

x ph

otog

raph

by

imag

inec

hina

/ap;

Ma

by V

iann

ey L

e C

aer/

reX

/Shu

tter

stoc

k

business

Alibaba Sues Taobao Sellers

January 5, 2017 11

brick-and-mortar retailers are under from the likes of Amazon and other pureplays as consumers opt for the convenience of e-commerce over a trip to the mall, and spend on experiences over apparel. Further indication of the department store sector’s woes came Wednesday when Kohl’s Corp. stock dropped nearly 15 percent in after-hours trading as it lowered guidance and reported that holiday comps declined 2.1 percent.

Macy’s also isn’t alone in cutting jobs or shuttering stores, with that bastion of mall specialty retail The Limited beginning to close all of its units and Sears Holdings needing yet another cash injection from Eddie Lampert’s ESL Investments.

In addition to announcing the layoffs, on Wednesday Macy’s said it will close 63 Macy’s stores in early spring and about 32 others will shutter over the next few years, as part of the approximately 100 store closings unveiled in August. Three units closed in the middle of last year. Macy’s will lose about $575 million in sales this year due to the closings. There are currently 730 Macy’s stores and 38 full-line Bloomingdale’s stores.

“We looked at every pyramid of the company. We looked at benchmarking. We have been planning this very carefully. This is not something we did quickly,” said Jeff Gennette, Macy’s president, who will succeed Lundgren as ceo sometime in the first quarter of the year.

A wide range of jobs are impacted, Gennette said, citing upper management slots, vice presidents, buyers and assis-tants, among other types of positions.

Lundgren and Gennette said Macy’s also intensified efforts to reduce non-pay-roll costs next spring, such as marketing, inventory, travel, cell-phone usage and supplies. “We really are looking at every

single account,” Gennette said. “Every-thing is under scrutiny.”

The reductions, which are occurring at both the Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s divi-sions of the $27 billion Macy’s Inc., leaves the corporation with the “right tools” and team to fuel its growth strategy for the future, Gennette emphasized. It also leaves the retailer with potentially a more manageable and productive store fleet.

Lundgren even said Macy’s brought in an outside consultant with experience in consumer package goods and other non-retail sectors “to get a fresh look at the expense reduction possibilities.” He declined to name the firm.

While sharply reducing its footprint, Macy’s will be rolling out Bluemercury freestanding and in-store shops and Backstage off-price departments inside its stores, as well as growing its domes-tic online businesses and omnichannel operations, and its China business, which is online through Alibaba’s T-mall. Asked if Macy’s might one day open a store in China, Lundgren replied, “At this point, Macy’s in China is an online business only, but we remain open to understanding the opportunities in China.”

In the U.S., two new Macy’s stores are set for Westfield Century City, L.A. and Fash-ion Place in Murray, Utah. New Blooming-dale’s stores are set for Westfield Valley Fair Shopping Center, San Jose, Calif., and The SoNo Collection in Norwalk, Conn. No Bloomingdale’s stores will close.

Overseas, under license agreements with Al Tayer Group, Bloomingdale’s will open in 360 Mall in Al Zahra, Kuwait in the spring and new Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores will bow in Al Maryah Central in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in 2018.

Macy’s growth strategy will be revealed in greater detail on Feb. 21 when results for 2016 are disclosed.

The retailer has been under pressure from activist shareholders to boost its stock price, and from consumers who are bored with traditional store formats and demanding new shopping experiences.

In response, Macy’s has been monetiz-ing some of its owned real estate, while

seeking to develop distinct in-store con-cepts and offerings, such as Backstage. In November, Macy’s formed an alliance with Brookfield Asset Management, which has rights over the next two years to create a “pre-development plan” for about 50 Macy’s properties. Also last year, Macy’s Herald Square introduced the first Apple shop inside a department store, and Lady Gaga and Sir Elton John collaborated on a limited-edition line of clothing and acces-sories called Love Bravery, which was sold exclusively at Macy’s and supported charities championed by the celebrities.

“To make our existing stores more productive, that is job number one,” said Lundgren, who becomes executive chair-man once Gennette succeeds him as ceo.

In its lengthy announcement Wednes-day, Macy’s said it will sell its 1.3 million-square-foot Minneapolis flagship to 601W Companies, which will redevelop the site. It will no longer operate as Macy’s. The deal is expected to close by the end of this fiscal year. No purchase price was given.

In addition, Macy’s Stonestown store in San Francisco has been sold to General Growth Properties. Macy’s will lease the store back from GGP as that company develops plans for that location.

About $250 million of charges, or 50 cents a share, will be recorded in the fourth quarter of 2016 related to the changes. However, Macy’s expects to generate expense savings of about $550 million beginning this year, enabling the company to execute growth strategies.

Macy’s comparable sales declined 2.1 per-cent in November and December 2016. “We expect our 2017 change in comparable sales to be relatively consistent with our Novem-ber-December sales trend,” said Lundgren. “Our apparel business, which includes women’s, men’s and children’s, performed well, with particular strength in active and cold-weather merchandise. Sales were also strong in fine jewelry, as well as furniture and bedding, reflecting the success of our initiatives in those categories. However,

ongoing weakness in handbags and watches negatively impacted our results.”

The company expects full-year 2016 diluted earnings per share (excluding asset impairment, restructuring, retirement settlement and other charges) to be in a range of $2.95 to $3.10, compared with previous guidance of $3.15 to $3.40.

“Over the past year, we have been focused and disciplined about making strategic decisions to position us to gain market share and return to growth over time,” Lundgren said. “While we are pleased with the strong performance of our highly developed online business, as well as the progress we have made on sell-ing and visual presentation programs and expense reduction initiatives in 2016, we continue to experience declining traffic in our stores where the majority of our business is still transacted.

“Our omnichannel strategies continue to evolve based on the changes in our cus-tomers’ shopping behaviors, including a focus on buy-online, pick-up-in-store and mobile-enabled shopping. In addition, we have invested in and enlarged our customer data and analytics team, which will help drive our new marketing strat-egies for 2017. Whether it is improving corporate agility, enhancing our customer engagement strategies, or continuing to capitalize on the potential value of our real estate assets, we remain focused on the actions that will ultimately improve our financial results and provide the greatest return for our shareholders.”

While optimistic for Macy’s future, Lundgren acknowledged it’s been a difficult period for the business. “It’s never easy to have to let people go. It’s the hardest part of our job,” he said. “The only thing that helps us get through these challenging moments is recognizing that by doing this, we are preserving tens of thousands of other jobs and that these actions put us in a position for growth and success in the future. We are still a very, very successful and profitable business.”

Macy’s Cuts Thousands Of Workers Amid Slowed Store Traffic CONTiNueD fROM PAGe 1

phot

ogra

ph b

y a

my

Sus

sman

“We have been planning this very carefully. This is not something we did quickly.”

— Jeff Gennette

Terry J. Lundgren

Jeff Gennette

“We continue to experience declining traffic in our stores where the majority of our business is still transacted.

— Terry J. Lundgren

12 January 5, 2017

Sister ActSylvester Stallone and Jennifer Flavin’s daughters Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet take on the roles of Miss Golden Globe.

on Wednesday afternoon the Stallone sisters — Sophia, 20; Sistine, 18, and Scarlet, 14 — ar-rived at The Beverly Hilton Star-dust Ballroom for a luncheon to celebrate their shared title, Miss Golden Globe 2017. Dressed in Michelle Mason, Armani and Cushnie et Ochs, respectively, the trio often laughed in unison and finished each others' sen-tences. The daughters of 2016 Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor Sylvester Stallone and model Jennifer Flavin shared their experience growing up with a famous dad, career goals and their upcoming television debut.

WWD: What does it mean to be Miss Golden Globe?

Sistine Stallone: It’s such a privilege and honor to be asked and even considered to do it following the previous Golden Globes Girls that have made such a name for themselves. They’re such profound young women and it’s such an honor.

Sophia Stallone: I think for me, it means an amazing memory that I’ll have for the rest of my life that I’ll never get to experience again, especially with my two sisters by my side so it’s more of future impact for me.

Scarlet Stallone: It definitely takes off the pressure with the three of us doing it. My mom tells me every day, "Live in the mo-ment. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity," and I’m just going to enjoy it while I can.

WWD: Do you do a lot togeth-er as sisters?

Sophia: Not public stuff. Sistine is an amazing model and she’s been doing that alone and killing it, I’m in college, and [Scarlet’s] only in middle school. But behind the scenes we spend every second with each other.

WWD: What do you do?Scarlet: We’re such homebod-

ies. We like spending time with our dogs, swimming, watching movies together.

WWD: in terms of the big day, how are you preparing?

Sistine: I think it’s finally hitting us how close it is. We’re just get-ting our dresses together, getting hair and makeup together.

Sophia: We’re learning how to walk in our heels.

WWD: your mother was a model; was there any advice giv-en to make the day run smooth?

Scarlet: Go slowly, watch your step.

Sophia: I’m a bull in a china shop, so our parents are always like, "Look at your surroundings, look at the floor, make sure there are no wires. Take it one step at a time. Go up and down the stairs a bunch of times."

Scarlet: Practicing holding on to the award and not dropping it. Just those little things that make a huge, huge difference.

WWD: How did you find out that you got the job?

Scarlet: Oh, so we were all in the kitchen relaxing and my dad gets the call and he comes in and tells us the news. We have our dogs with us and when he tells us it’s ballistic what happens, it’s a big party. We were dancing and screaming, it was so much fun.

WWD: What will you be wear-ing for the big day?

Sophia: We have to color coordinate. I mean, there are three of us so we can’t all wear different colors.

Sistine: We’re all going long, but different styles. One look is really elegant, one is really sexy, and they all flatter us in different ways. We’re all excited to be wearing our dresses. Our mom was our go-to stylist.

WWD: What is it like to be the daughter of Sylvester Stallone?

Sistine: I just look at him as my dad. It’s crazy, because we didn’t realize how big of a deal he is until we were with him at the Golden Globes last year and watched him win. Having that moment, being able to share that is something that I’ll never forget.

Sophia: But I think we’ve all known that he’s a big person around the world and he’s an icon because we’ve got experiences that not a lot of people get to experience, but we hang out with him every day. He’s our dad to us and he’s awesome. He gives us a lot of advice. He’s very wise.

Scarlet: At school a lot of people will say, "Say 'hi' to Rocky

for me." But it’s normal for me. We all grew up with him and we really just see him as a great dad. He’s just really normal.

WWD: you mentioned your father is really wise. What kind of advice has he given you that’s really been impactful?

Sophia: Cherish the moment. Especially with this, we’re not going to ever have this mo-ment again with the three of us together at an age also that we’ll remember it, because if you’re too young it would be hard to.

WWD: What’s been a cool moment throughout this whole process?

Sophia: I think meeting Jimmy Fallon today. It felt like we’ve known him for 20 years. We walked into the green room and he was right there.

Sistine: He totally exceeded our expectations.

WWD: let’s talk about your careers. What made you want to be a model Sistine?

Sistine: I’ve always been drawn to the fashion industry ever since I was really little. My mom did it and I never thought that I would be able to do it ever. I just didn’t think I was capable of ever doing something like that and when I was 15 my mom pushed me. She was like, "I want you to go for your dreams. Try it and see what happens." I ended up loving it. I’ve been doing it for two years now. I’m signed with

IMG in New York. It’s so much fun. It does not feel like work, I would literally do it for free.

Sophia: I was so proud of her when she went to Paris and she walked for Chanel. She was so mature about it. She’s my baby sister and she was so mature about it, it was crazy.

WWD: Sophia, what is school like for you?

Sophia: I’m at USC; it’s my second year. I have been drawn more toward the business side like my mom. My mom is an entre-preneur and I love that. I kind of want to do that. I guess I would be on TV partially and have my own business, which I think is a great women empowerment thing to be able to control your world.

WWD: What kind of business would you like to start?

Sophia: I’m a communications major with a minor in entrepre-neurship so I want to do some-thing in beauty or fashion. It’s very new and I just realized this about myself, which is crazy at 20 years old. I’m glad; I’m usually a planner. We’re so blessed to have our dad in the film industry and then we have our mom who’s in the business side. My mom has an amazing skin-care line and she’s teaching me the ropes. That com-bo together is really beneficial.

WWD: What about you, Scar-let, as the youngest?

Scarlet: I’m only in junior high; I’m not as successful as these

girls. A lot of people ask me if I want to be in the film industry, but I tried it in fourth grade and let’s just say it didn’t turn out as well as I thought it should. [All laugh.] Actually, I did so bad in that they cut my line during the movie. They literally cut my line. I had to say three words. I was really nervous.

WWD: What do you want people to know about you, since this is a huge public debut?

Sophia: I think overall, we’re very grounded and we really care about school and educa-tion. That’s probably a reason we really haven’t been in the public eye. We really cherish being as normal as possible, having friends, going to high school parties and getting our degree, taking that time. My mom really pushes that all the time. We’re just nice. We as a family are extremely close. We have dinner probably every night together.

Sistine: I think people build up this perception of who we are. Normally when I meet someone they’re like, "Oh you’re a lot nicer than I thought you were." And I’m like, "Oh thank you."

WWD: Do you care about the fame at all?

Scarlet: We don’t want fame to get in the way.

Sistine: We’re trying to live in our childhood for as long as we can.

Sophia: Yeah, being an adult sounds really not fun [All laugh]. — Ericka Franklin

Sistine, Sophia and Scarlet Stallone.

phot

ogra

ph b

y ty

ler B

oye

AT T E N D : PAT R I C I A R E I D Y, P R E I D Y @ W W D. C O M , 6 4 6 . 3 5 6 . 4 7 2 4 S P O N S O R : A L E X I S C O Y L E , A C O Y L E @ W W D . C O M , 6 4 6 . 3 5 6 . 4 7 1 9

s u m m i t s . w w d . c o m

men’s wear summit M A R C H 2 1

B R O O K L Y N

1 HOTEL BROOKLYN BRIDGE • OFF ICIAL VENUE PARTNER

ANNUALPARTNERS

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

Tim CoppensT I M C O P P E N S & U N D E R A R M O U R S P O R TSW E A R

Joëlle GrünbergL AC O ST E

N O R T H A M E R I C A

Aaron LevineA B E R C R O M B I E & F I TC H

EVENT SPONSOR

P R E S E N T I N G S P O N S O R • F I R ST I N S I G H T

14 January 5, 2017

Fashion Scoops

Memo Pad

Coppens’ new Dealtim Coppens has lined up another col-laboration. The buzzy designer, who also serves as creative director for Under Armour’s UAS contemporary sportswear collection, has now teamed with Mykita for a collection of eyewear.

Coppens has worked with the Ber-lin-based eyewear firm to create the Tequila, a unisex sunglass model that will be available in five colorways: black/navy; black/silver; two shades of gray; gray/rainbow, and brown/gold. The frame will debut during Coppens’ fall show at Pitti Uomo later this month, where he is the featured designer.

Tequila is the female character that Coppens envisioned as a muse for his fall collection. Like the character, the sunglasses have a “Nineties dirt bike vibe” that was “translated into an un-compromising, modern eyewear design,” according to the companies.

The Tequila has a streamlined silhou-ette and an elongated keyhole bridge. The frame is created using a 3-D print-ing technology called Selective Laser Sintering that produces a pigmented,

matte finish intended to contrast with the mirrored lenses.

The Mykita + Tim Coppens Tequila will be available beginning in April at Mykita’s shops, select fashion retailers and online. It will retail for $599. — JEan E. PalMiEri

Match MakerBally is joining the coed club, with plans to show its men’s and women’s collec-tions during a single presentation during Milan Women’s Fashion Week in February.

The decision is part of a new business strategy and a natural step, said design director Pablo Coppola.

“There is clearly a need to rethink the way we are showing collections. We have taken our time to address the evolving landscape, and this feels the right direc-tion for the season,” he said.

The women’s and men’s fall press presentation will take place on Thursday, Feb. 23 at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braid-ense, at 28 via Brera.

Bally’s women’s resort collection, and the men’s spring one were both inspired by David Hicks interiors and Sixties-era Mods. During the presentation in June, Coppola said both collections had the same foundations. “It’s a very rich sauce,

made from lots of ingredients: Studio 54 transferred to a ski resort, it’s David Hicks — and the Bally archive.” He added: “I nev-er think archives should be sacrosanct — it’s good to look at them, and then play around with them.” — SaManTHa cOnTi

good Causelouis Vuitton is to launch its first #makeapromise day on Jan. 12 in partnership with the United Nation’s Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, to raise funds for children in urgent need.

The initiative comes a year after the luxury brand embarked on the charitable project with an initial three-year global partnership with the UNICEF fund.

During this day, some 12,000 Louis Vuitton sales associates in 460 Louis Vuitton stores worldwide will pitch the partnership and promote the sales of the Silver Lockit jewelry items, with $200 from each sale of the $600 pendant and $500 bracelet donated to UNICEF. An offer will be made that day for those who purchase two Silver Lockits items in all Louis Vuitton stores and on louisvuitton.com.

The event will be held in tandem with a campaign where clients will be encouraged to come accompanied with

someone close to make a “pinky prom-ise” and to share their promise online with a hashtag #makeapromise. Vuitton staff is also inviting clients to make direct donations online throughout the year and especially during emergencies.

Since January 2016, the partnership has helped raise $2.5 million to help bring children life-saving humanitarian support in Syria and Nigeria.

“The idea of the #makeapromise campaign comes from children: when they make a promise, they mean it, and they seal it with a pinky promise. Children

show us a simple way to change the world,” the house’s chairman and chief executive officer Michael Burke stated. “One year after our successful launch, our teams have come up with this idea to keep our promise alive. It’s about joining forces worldwide to raise funds and awareness for children. We believe in word of mouth. Our goal is to reach as many people as possible and to make a real difference,” the executive added.

“Now more than ever, the need to stand together for and with children is critical. By making a promise for children, particularly those affected by conflict situations, the customers and employees of Louis Vuitton are showing their commitment to bring hope to the most vulnerable children,” said Gérard Bocquenet, UNICEF director of private fund-raising and partnerships.

In Syria, since the beginning of the year, the UNICEF fund reached four million children under five with polio vac-cinations, 14 million people with drinking water, and nearly 140,000 children with school supplies.

According to UNICEF, nearly 250 million children live in countries affected by conflict and millions more face risks from natural hazards and fast-spreading epidemics. — laUrE GUilBaUlT

new realitythe layoffs came a week after the presi-dential election. Fusion staffers received a “cryptic” calendar invite for a 10 a.m. meeting the following morning. Minutes before they were set to meet, a company-wide e-mail from chief executive officer Isaac Lee went out describing various reorganizations at Fusion parent Univi-sion Communications. Buried toward the end of the lengthy note was the news that some positions at Fusion would be eliminated as a result. Rushing to the meeting, many of Fusion’s staffers didn’t see the note, or a story on the some 200 to 250 layoffs that the company fed to The Washington Post under embargo, which was published online at the same time the meeting was scheduled to begin.

It was reported that Univision slashed 6 percent of its workforce and that Fusion was hit particularly hard with 70 cuts, amounting to around a third of the staff on both the editorial and business sides. Just a few months before the layoffs, Univision had purchased Nick Denton’s bankrupt Gawker Media sites for $135 mil-lion. By November, efforts were under way to integrate Gizmodo Media Group, as the Gawker sites were now known, into the company and Fusion’s editorial staff had recently voted to unionize, like the staffs at the Gizmodo sites. With a sizable por-tion of Fusion’s editorial team heading for the door, many at the company wondered if the site would close altogether.

WWD has learned that the Fusion site will be rolled up into the Gizmodo Media Group, which — somewhat confusingly — is part of what is called the Fusion Media Group. David Ford, a spokesman at Fusion Media Group, confirmed the news. Those still at Fusion will move from their offices in SoHo to GMG’s Flatiron headquarters this month, along with the team from The Root, the company’s African-American-centric site that was acquired last March.

The Root also speaks to the “woke” multicultural Millennial audience that is Fusion’s target demographic. (For those not in the know, “woke” refers to being aware, especially to racial and social injustice.) The Root will exist under the Gizmodo Media Group umbrella, accord-ing to Ford, and both sites will switch to Kinja, Gizmodo’s proprietary publishing

platform that Univision acquired when it bought the Gizmodo network of sites.

On the business side, Fusion’s sales team has been centralized, so sales staff can now combine the company’s web traffic numbers to add scale and sell by category across the 11 sites that make up the Fusion Media Group, a larger struc-ture that includes the eight sites under the Gizmodo Media Group umbrella as well the Onion, Clickhole and the AV Club, which became part of FMG last year when Univision bought a majority stake.

“The beauty of Fusion is that it has a perfect name for what we are trying to do,” Gizmodo Media Group chief execu-tive officer Raju Narisetti told WWD. “Also, the brand is not fully formed in anybody’s mind. And that actually gives me the opportunity to do a lot with it.”

A source from Fusion’s business side said the changes “make sense” for the business.

“It’s been proven that it was a chal-lenge to sell Fusion as a property of its own,” the source said, adding, “I loved what Fusion stood for. It’s a great proper-ty — the voice of a new America.”

Fusion, which marked Spanish language network Univision’s attempt to create an English language TV channel when it launched in partnership with ABC/Disney in 2013, debuted its digital news arm with minimal fanfare in early 2015 — initially, it was known more for its serious hiring spree and heavyweight backers than for its content.

The digital venture snatched up big name journalists and showered them with TV money, doling out salaries around the $300,000 and $500,000 range for marquee hires, insiders said. Fusion would not confirm those figures.

The goal was to develop a digital property for English-speaking Millennial Hispanics that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Vices and Voxes of the media world when it came to investiga-tive and lifestyle content. But after finding the English language, Hispanic Millennial market too limited from a readership per-spective Fusion broadened its mandate to cater to diverse Millennials.

Even then, though, Millennials didn’t exactly flock to Fusion. Even on Millenni-al-friendly platform Snapchat, Fusion’s channel was swapped out of the “Discov-

er” platform for a channel by sister site the Onion last summer.

This didn’t bode well for Univision, which had been losing money on Fusion to the tune of between $20 million and $35 million a year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In the spring, Disney exited the ven-ture and not long after, Univision, which is in the process of preparing for an initial public offering, posted a loss of $30.5 million in the third quarter on an 8.3 percent decrease in revenue to $734.8 million. The company cited a weaker advertising environment and a $199.5 million impairment charge related to the write-down of radio broadcast licenses as a reason for the loss.

To accelerate growth, Univision turned to a strategy of acquisition, betting big on Gizmodo Media Group — and it worked. Web traffic increased from the 10 million average that Fusion.net was pulling in up-ward of 60 million in a month, according to comScore. As a result of Fusion Media Group’s expansion, Narasetti has an ambitious target of growing the revenue by 30 percent over the next year with the help of a more robust ad selling strategy and the continued development of Kinja Deals, an affiliate e-commerce site.

“It’s a big number, but I think we can do it because now we can give advertisers a lot more of any particular category they are looking for,” he said.

With the addition of Gizmodo’s net-work of sites, the robust — and in some cases, highly paid — Fusion staff was harder to justify.

“We wanted to build up something organically and staffed up. But when we realized we could actually acquire a bunch of verticals with a big audience for a reasonable price, then it didn’t make sense to continue to build organically,” said Narasetti, who came to run Gizmodo Media Group from News Corp. at the end

of September. “And that unfortunately meant that people had to be let go.”

To some, Fusion was just another cau-tionary tale of new media hubris. Others saw it as a genuine attempt to reach a new demographic by a new kind of media company. Unfortunately, building a new media company from the ground up was a hard sell given the mandate of clicks and ad dollars.

While there was worry among staff that layoffs were inevitable after the Gizmodo acquisition, there was reason to believe that they wouldn’t be imminent. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Fusion was on a hiring spree (“Congrats on your job at Fusion,” was a running joke on Media Twitter).

And the election gave the journalists an opportunity to do stories in their “woke” wheelhouse (LGBTQ rights, immigration issues, Black Lives Matter, gender issues), making the voice of Fu-sion more relevant than ever. That notion was conveyed in a cheerleader-y note to readers by Fusion editor in chief Dodai Stewart the day after the election:

“Fusion’s mission is to tell stories of underrepresented voices, and we have done so, consistently. Going forward, that duty is even more important. We are essential. It’s time to go all in,” she wrote.

Another promising sign that jobs were secure was that Fusion was in the process of transitioning its Sex and Life section into Rouser, a branded vertical (much like The Cut is to New York mag) fo-cused on sexual health and wellness that, while aimed at woman, was committed to gender inclusivity. Fusion was hiring to fill several new roles at Rouser and it was set to launch the week after the election. Instead, the entire section got laid off.

When Fusion.net (the one thing the company never acquired was a dot-com) began, it struggled to convey an identity. Its original Twitter handle “This is Fusion” prompted the question of what, exactly, “this” was (insiders jokingly referred to it as “ConFusion”).

Early big name, big money hires, many of whom also worked on Fusion’s TV net-work in some capacity, included Reuters finance writer Felix Salmon; Kevin Roose, who was hired away from New York magazine to be a senior editor (more re-cently, he has taken over the podcasting

arm and focus on tech coverage); Alexis Madrigal, who came from the success of Quartz and ran the site until earlier this year; Vice’s beanie-clad drone expert Tim Pool; Jezebel founding editor Anna Holmes; former Jezebel editor Stewart, and NBCNews.com director Hillary Frey. All those men, except for Pool, who is said to have taken a package, are still there. Of the women, only Stewart has stayed — and was recently promoted to editor in chief.

But as Fusion found its identity as a progressive site for multicultural Mil-lennials (another inside joke termed it “Woke.net”), many felt that the company structure often failed to reflect that shift. An insider at the company griped that, for all its emphasis on diversity, the firm is still primarily “run by dudes.”

Perhaps unfairly so, Salmon is widely seen as emblematic of this discrepancy. There is general newsroom anger that, following the layoffs, he was still standing at his standing desk (literally, according to insiders). Many sources cited his sporad-ic contributions to the site in contrast to his big salary — which is, naturally, subject to much newsroom gossip. But his main role seems to be as a representative of the company, frequently appearing at parties and as a talking head on TV on the company’s behalf. In his free time, the formerly post-text Salmon has recently branched into the personal newsletter space, something Deadspin took shots at him for in its year-end list of “the least important writers” (to be fair, they also included themselves). Several insiders say his contract is up in the new year, but Fusion declined to comment.

“It’s been a bumpy couple of months, but things are settling down. Part of the reason I want to bring everyone together is because just the physical fact of losing your colleagues and having a newsroom that is half empty is not good,” Narisetti said. “It will be good to put some of the difficulties of this year past us and focus on what needs to be done.”

According to Narisetti, there are no more layoffs planned for the coming year — in fact, Gizmodo Media Group will be hiring. — kara BlOOMGardEn-SMOkE wiTH cOnTriBUTiOnS FrOM alExandra STEiGrad

The fusion logo.

A visual for Louis Vuitton’s #Makeapromise initiative in

partnership with the uNiCef fund