Retail News CRM

Author: Mei Ling Tan

  • Microsoft partners with Alibaba to enhance IP protection for its products

    Microsoft partners with Alibaba to enhance IP protection for its products

    An agreement between Microsoft (China) and Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Alibaba Group) is expected to enhance the protection of Microsoft’s intellectual property rights (IPR) on the two most popular e-commerce platforms in China operated by Alibaba – Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com.

    The cooperation is also expected to strengthen anti-counterfeit measures already in place on both platforms.

    Both sides said they will work to raise awareness among consumers about the threats posed by counterfeit and unlicensed software to their information security, privacy and personal data.

    Tim Cranton, Microsoft’s Associate General Counsel and Greater China Region’s Chief Legal Counsel, said legitimate businesses and innovators in China will also benefit from a safer and more robust e-commerce marketplace with safeguards to protect intellectual property rights.

    Under the agreement, Taobao and Tmall will remove product listings suspected of offering counterfeit or unlicensed Microsoft products. Alibaba Group and its associated companies like Alipay will cooperate with relevant parties and provide necessary information to those consumers who mistakenly buy unauthorized software to receive compensation from the sellers according to relevant laws.

    Microsoft’s cooperation with Alibaba Group dates back to April 2007 when Microsoft signed a memorandum of understanding with Alisoft as the two parties joined hands in providing information service for small- and medium-sized businesses.

    In December 2013, Microsoft launched its flagship online store on Tmall.com, the largest e-commerce platform in China with to promote genuine Microsoft software.

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  • Burberry warns fall in HK sales could impact its full-year margin

    Burberry warns fall in HK sales could impact its full-year margin

    British luxury brand Burberry warned on Wednesday that a fall in sales in the key market of Hong Kong in the last quarter of 2014 could impact its full-year margin. Pro-democracy protests began choking parts of the Asia financial center in late September, disrupting business in one of the world’s top markets for luxury companies, which accounts for about USD9.7 billion of global luxury sales, or 4 percent of the total, according to estimates by Bernstein Research.

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  • Walmart India head likely to meet Sitharaman

    Walmart India head likely to meet Sitharaman

    Under pressure from the US, the government might again be compelled to review the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy in multi-brand retail trading (MBRT). At the forefront is American retail giant Walmart, demonstrating a renewed interest in entering India’s fast growing retail market, estimated at USD600 billion. Currently, Walmart operates 20 cash-and-carry or wholesale stores in the country, for which there’s no foreign investment cap.

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  • Former Gucci Group boss joins North Sails

    Former Gucci Group boss joins North Sails

    International sailmaker and sportswear brand North Sails has appointed former Gucci Group president and chief executive officer Robert Polet as a partner of its apparel division, effective immediately.

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  • Prada opens third KL store

    Prada opens third KL store

    Prada recently opened its third store at The Gardens Mall in Kuala, Lumpur. Designed by architect Roberto Baciocchi, store covers a total area of approximately 390 square metres on a single level and houses the women’s and men’s leather goods, accessories and footwear collections as well as the men’s ready-to-wear collection.

    The area dedicated to the women’s collections has the signature black-and-white marble chequered flooring and green fabric-clad walls with polished steel display counters covered in coloured saffiano leather and green velvet sofas.

    Meanwhile, the space devoted to men discloses masculine materials and finishes. The first room, dedicated to leather goods and accessories, features black marble-clad walls with elegant polished steel display cases.

  • Australian retail sales miss expectations in November

    Australian retail sales miss expectations in November

    Soggy November sales figures have increased the scrutiny on Christmas trade for Australia’s struggling retail sector as lagging consumer confidence weighs on spending. Official retail sales released on Friday for November came in softer than expected, inching up just 0.1 per cent over the month, but retailers hope that Christmas and Boxing Day sales will have boosted December numbers.

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  • Starhill Global REIT sells prime Tokyo retail property for $29.9m

    Starhill Global REIT sells prime Tokyo retail property for $29.9m

    Proceeds will be used to pay off Yen loans.

    Starhill Global REIT has divested Roppongi Terzo, a prime retail property located in Tokyo, for $29.9m.

    This is above the property’s last valuation of $29.2m, and the sale consideration translates to a yield of 4.4%.

    After the transaction, the REIT’s portfolio in Japan will be reduced to four properties.

    The net sale proceeds would be used to repay the Yen loans and/or for working capital purposes. SGREIT’s gearing is expected to decrease from 35.7%3 to 35.1% assuming that the net sales proceeds are substantially used to repay the Yen loans

  • Bookseller Dymocks to close flagship IFC Mall store and HK office

    Bookseller Dymocks to close flagship IFC Mall store and HK office

    Hong Kong’s largest English- language bookseller, Dymocks, is to end its 15-year local presence in an industry battered by high rents and shifting reading habits.

    To view the full article (note: you must be an scmp.com subscriber), visit scmp.com. (From seven days after publication, this article will appear in Archive Search.)

  • UK footwear brand Church’s entering India through tie-up

    UK footwear brand Church’s entering India through tie-up

    UK luxury footwear brand Church’s will now be available in India, priced at up to Rs. 72,000 (USD1,159.72), following an exclusive distribution tie-up with multi-brand retailer Heel & Buckle. “UK’s iconic luxury footwear brand Church’s is entering into India as a result of an exclusive distribution tie-up with Heel & Buckle. Churches will be available at Heel & Buckle’s outlets,” Heel & Buckle Managing Director of Heel & Buckle Dhiraj Bathija told PTI.

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  • foodpanda partners with HSBC in HK, Southeast Asia

    foodpanda partners with HSBC in HK, Southeast Asia

    Online food delivery service foodpanda is partnering with HSBC in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

    Customers and cardholders in eight Southeast Asian countries – Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, and India – will benefit from the partnership through discounts.

    In the first quarter of 2015, cardholders will get 25 percent off on all orders, and will enjoy HKD50 off on their first order for the rest of the year; subsequent orders will be discounted 10 percent for standard cardholders, and 15 percent for Premium cardholders.

    food panda has nearly nearly 500 restaurants in the region and offers the largest variety of restaurants and cuisines of any food delivery service in Hong Kong.

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  • Hermès reports 10pc revenue increase for 2014

    Hermès reports 10pc revenue increase for 2014

    Hermès maintains course in 2014 with a healthy 10 percent increase in its turnover, at constant exchange rates – according to Guillaume de Seynes , managing director manufacturing division & equity investments of the Group of luxury. Interviewed by the German newspaper Handelsblatt , De Seynes said that the House wants to expand in Germany , expanding the spaces in cities where it is already present.

  • Cyber attacks on US retailers drop, but records stolen remain high

    Cyber attacks on US retailers drop, but records stolen remain high

    Cyber attacks agains US retailers declined by as much as 50 percent since 2012, but the number of records stolen from them remains at near record highs, a new IBM study shows.

    IBM Security researchers recently reported that during the year cyber attackers still managed to steal more than 61 million records from retailers despite the decline in attacks, demonstrating cyber criminal’s increasing sophistication and efficiency.

    According to the research, cyber attackers are using new techniques to obtain massive amounts of confidential records with increased efficiency. This is why despite the decline in the number of attacks, the perpetrators were able to impact a far greater number of victims with each incident.

    “The threat from organized cyber crime rings remains the largest security challenge for retailers,” said Kris Lovejoy, General Manager, IBM Security Services. “It is imperative that security leaders and CISOs in particular, use their growing influence to ensure they have the right people, processes and technology in place to take on these growing threats.”

    Surprisingly, majority of cyber attackers scaled back their hacking efforts around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two biggest shopping days of the year.

    IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark, the number of daily cyber attacks during the two week period (24 November – 5 December) was 3,043, nearly one third less than the 4,200 average over this period in 2013.

    In a year’s time, the number of breaches also dropped by more than 50 percent for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2013, there were more than 20 breaches disclosed including several large breaches that caused the number of records compromised to rise drastically, reaching close to 4 million. Over the same period in 2014, 10 breaches were disclosed which resulted in just over 72,000 records getting compromised

    Despite this “cyber threat slow down,” the retail and wholesale industries emerged as the top industry target for attackers in 2014, a potential result of the wave of high profile incidents impacting name brand retailers.

    IBM need that while there has been a rise in the number of Point of Sale (POS) malware attacks, the vast majority of incidents targeting the retail sector involved Command Injection or SQL injection. The complexity of SQL deployments and the lack of data validation performed by security administrators made retail databases a primary target.

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  • India’s Big Bazaar opens 100th store

    India’s Big Bazaar opens 100th store

    India’s Big Bazaar is now present in more than 100 cities in India. The last store to be opened by the retail chain last December was the Rourkelo store in Orissa.

    In the last three months prior to the opening of its newest store, Big Bazaar also opened 17 new stores across the country, in cities like Jharsugda, Bhopal, Varanasi, and Bokaro.

    To celebrate its 100th city milestone, Big Bazaar held the “100 cities Celebration” last month in all Big Bazaar outlets, offering as much as 50 percent discounts in various product categories like kitchenware, home furnishings, fashion apparels, and electronics.

    “Our strategy has been to understand the art of doing business in India, while putting in the best practices in Science of retailing. This has helped us customize a complete experience for our customers,” Sadashiv Nayak, CEO Big Bazaar, said in a news release.

    Big Bazaar said it has a loyal customer base of over 2.5 crore (25 million). These customers are part of its various loyalty programs like, Payback, T24 Mobile and Big Bazaar.

    The retail chain is the flagship hypermarket retail chain from Future Group, with  has over 184 stores across the country.

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  • Myntra rejigs top management

    Myntra rejigs top management

    Ganesh Subramanian, Chief Operating Officer at Myntra.com, has been given a new responsibility as Head – New Initiatives with immediate effect. Confirming the development, Subramanian told BusinessLine: “As a company, we are thinking long term. Therefore, we are investing to look at continuously creating unique value for customers by challenging the way the fashion business is run at present. For instance, it takes 12-15 months to deliver fashion products from concept to retail to consumers; why should it take so long?”

  • Tiffany & Co debuts its first same-sex couple ad campaign

    Tiffany & Co debuts its first same-sex couple ad campaign

    American jeweler Tiffany & Co makes its first foray into featuring same-sex couples in its advertising with its new engagement campaign for 2015. A rep for the jeweler didn’t release the guys’ names because despite being extremely attractive, they are not professional models.

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