News brief
China. Beauty is back online
Despite the coronavirus crisis, which caused cosmetics sales to fall by 80% in February 2020, international retailers are betting on the Chinese online beauty market. On Alibaba‘s...
15 June 2020
Wall Street is tightening its access to Chinese companies
After the Luckin Coffee scandal (removed from the Nasdaq after reporting more than US$310 million in false sales) and in a climate of tension between Washington and Beijing, the Senate voted...
15 June 2020
Commercial real estate. Arm wrestling over the notion of force majeure
In the U.S.A., the time is not suitable for major acquisitions. The No. 1 shopping centre operator Simon Property cancelled an acquisition of Taubman Centers (26 centres in the U.S. and Asia) for...
15 June 2020
Department stores. Rinascente goes into e-commerce
As part of the Thai Central Group, the Italian Rinascente ‘store’ is a 10th unit, but actually a website exclusively devoted to e-commerce. At the launch scheduled for mid-June in...
15 June 2020
Ikea innovates in Japan
The Swedish kit furniture giant is opening its first city centre format dedicated to urban spaces in Tokyo, Japan, where it operates a total of 11 points of sale. Located near a Uniqlo store, Ikea...
15 June 2020
Primark in discussion with landlords
Closed since March 23rd, the fast fashion retailer Primark will reopen all 189 stores in the U.K. on June 15th. The giant retailer pays around €147 million in rent per year and has lost...
15 June 2020
Harrods temporarily expands into outlet
British department store Harrods (turnover of €987.6 million for the financial year ending February 2019, up by 1%), a subsidiary of Qatar Holding LLC, announces a new temporary outlet store...
15 June 2020
Furniture. What post-crisis model?
From Europe to the U.S.A., exciting lessons are being learned for home-decoration retailers. According to Neela Montgomery, C.E.O. of Crate & Barrel, “We are starting to see the...
15 June 2020
E-commerce, China, 3D designs. Which business levers work for fashion?
Faced with the Covid-19 crisis, e-commerce has proved to be a real lifeline for some fashion retailers. However, digital services are not comprehensive across the sector. According to Bain &...
15 June 2020
Carrefour advances pawns into Taiwan
2020 is a year of international expansion for the giant Carrefour (turnover of €80.7 billion in 2019). After the acquisition of 30 Makro Atacadista cash & carry stores in Brazil in...
15 June 2020
Luckin Coffee. Dismissal at the top at the “Chinese Starbucks”
It’s a lesson in terms of rushed investment. Oversupply of cash in the U.S. seeking a home pushed investors to rush into Chinese mobile applications, convinced at all costs that a population...
20 May 2020
Why is Kretinsky investing in Macy’s?
According to Forbes, the activist investor Daniel Kretinsky (aged 44) is the fifth richest Czech citizen. He has taken a 5% stake in the American department store chain Macy’s (US$24 billion...
20 May 2020
Boom in local demand in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, local products are booming. While 50 years ago 50% of the fruit and vegetables consumed in Hong Kong were produced locally, 98% are now imported, especially from China. In Singapore...
20 May 2020
South Korea and China move to revive reciprocal business travel
On May 1st, 2020, China launched a new bilateral “Green Lane” immigration program, aimed at facilitating business travel with South Korea. Koreans can now travel to 7 provinces and the...
20 May 2020
China. Retail support by state intervention
Will Chinese state interventionism be sufficient to put retail back on track, at a time when G.D.P. fell by 6.8% in the first quarter of 2020, following a 6% rise in Q4 2019? This was the first...
20 May 2020
The Chinese Dada soon to be listed in the U.S.?
While China and the U.S.A. clash over the origin of the pandemic, the American market remains receptive to Chinese companies. As financial markets have survived the crisis rather well, a major...
20 May 2020
Our mind news
While his start-up shakes up an array of players focused on product data management solutions, Edouard Margain, Co-Founder of Upsellr, shared with us at NRF Europe the results of the data...
- Retail
- mind Exclusive
- Retail tech
19 September 2026
While at NRF Europe, Hanshow revealed a major contract with one of the U.S. retail giants to mind Retail, its smart trolley has yet to prove a market match. A hardware-focused strategy that raises...
- Retail
- mind Exclusive
- Retail tech
18 September 2026
The Hygie31 retail group, known for the Lafayette Pharmacies, is continuing to transform its websites, driven by Cocooncenter. Thanks to an AI strategy and a fully redesigned IT architecture, it...
10 September 2026
By launching a conversational chatbot with Algolia and a new module converting school lists into e-commerce carts this summer, Bureau Vallée aims to ease the chore of back-to-school supply list...
10 September 2026
Most viewed articles of the month on mind Retail
What readers clicked on the most last month.
What readers clicked on the most last month.
1
Electronic shelf labels: why the US regulator threatens rollout
In the USA, the Federal Trade Commission has just required full transparency on the use of pricing algorithms based on personal data, under threat of penalties. In this regulatory framework...
- Retail
- Economy and regulators
- Analysis
21 August 2026
2
From ChatGPT Ads to Amazon Alexa for Shopping: advertising in LLMs scales up in Europe
This summer, OpenAI successively rolled out its ChatGPT Ads platform in the UK and in 30 European countries. From formats used, CPM levels notably for FMCG products and the new role of GEO...
- Retail
- Retail tech
- Analysis
27 August 2026
3
With Claudeforce, Salesforce opens data to Anthropic and shifts into the conversational AI era
With the announcement of deep integration of the Claude LLM within the Salesforce ecosystem via MCP servers, SaaS software interfaces are fading in favour of AI agents. According to...
- Retail
- Retail tech
- News
9 September 2026
4
Retail media & LLMs: navigating intent-driven and custom experiences
From store aisles to ChatGPT Ads placements, retail media is shifting away from traditional slots, formats and keywords toward intent-based targeting. Driven by lower access costs to LLMs, full...
- Retail
- Retail tech
- Special Reports
31 August 2026
5
Facing SharkNinja’s hegemony, Carrefour and Darty gain ground on TikTok Shop
While Sephora follows in Ulta's footsteps on TikTok Shop in the US, mind Retail analyzed sellers performance in Q2 2026. Based on exclusive data from Lengow and Kalodata, this European market...
- Retail
- Retail tech
- Analysis
7 September 2026
6
Fnac Darty to launch Wero on its e-commerce sites
According to our information, Fnac Darty is about to deploy European payment solution Wero, based on account-to-account instant transfers, on its e-commerce sites. Already active in Germany at...
- Retail
- mind Exclusive
- Retail tech
4 September 2026