In a retail first, Primark is taking eco-friendly glitter to the high street.

The company has joined forces with environmentally friendly glitter brand, Bioglitter™ to launch the PS…Festival collection.

The new range includes nine products, with six different loose glitter options for £2 perfect for the festival season and the popular eye shadow palettes, Glitter Eyes, which offers 32 colour options for just £4.

Furthermore, from July 2019, all the glitter Primark buys for use in its own-brand cosmetics will be made from these eco-friendly alternatives.

Bioglitter™, unlike traditional polyester glitter, is based on plant material, cellulose and is designed and developed to naturally biodegrade in the environment. The product has picked up a host of industry awards since it was launched and received praise from major environmental royalty like Sir David Attenborough, as well as receiving worldwide press attention for the ground breaking work the brand is making.

Stephen Cotton, Commercial Director of the Bioglitter™ brand said: “It’s absolutely fantastic to be working with Primark as it introduces its first range of eco-friendly glitter.

“Primark is using our Cosmetic Bioglitter™ SPARKLE range, an eco-friendly glitter based on plant materials. The product is proven through independent testing to have well progressed biodegradation in natural and fresh water environments, which is a world first and we’re proud to play our part in making eco-friendly glitter available on the high street, whilst helping to protect our countryside, lakes and rivers too.”

Primark’s Group Product Director, Steve Lawton said: “We take our responsibility as a leading international retailer seriously and want to reduce our impact on the environment wherever we can by finding new ways to make and sell the products that our customers love. Introducing our first range of eco-friendly glitter is just one of the ways we’re doing that. It builds on the introduction of other products this year that are made with more environmentally-friendly materials, including our first range of jeans made with sustainable cotton sourced from the Primark Sustainable Cotton Programme and a set in our latest Alice Liveing x Primark workout collection, made from recycled polyester.”

As with all Primark own brand cosmetics, the PS…festival range is certified as cruelty free with Leaping Bunny – one of the world’s longest standing and most respected animal protection organisations and a visible reminder to Primark customers that its own brand cosmetics are free from animal testing.

For more information on Bioglitter visit www.discoverbioglitter.com and for details on the new PS..Festival Collection visit www.primark.com

We are happy to announce that Wood Wood will open a flagship store in central London. The store will be located at Brewer Street in Soho and will open Summer 2019.

After three succesful presentations during London Fashion Week Men’s and with a sales showroom in London since 2014, Wood Wood is now ready to embark on the next adventure in the UK with the opening of a flagship store in the vibrant and buzzing area of the big city. Located in London’s West End, the Brewer Street location is the perfect address to fully expand the W.W. universe providing a local hub for established fans while also attracting new customers. London’s vivid streetwear culture is a great match to Wood Wood’s take on contemporary streetwear and the brand looks forward to becoming a more integral part of the scene.

“English music and subcultures alongside the English iconic heritage of clothes and fashion have always been a huge source of inspiration for Wood Wood. Not only within our collections but also in the way we create the output of our brand mix in our stores. The opening of the Wood Wood London store in Soho will define us as brand in the next period of our journey, and I’m looking forward to this adventure with great anticipation and humbleness.”
– Karl Oskar-Olsen, Creative Director, Wood Wood.

London and Soho is home to some of the best and most intriguing retail spaces and with Wood Wood opening a flagship store, shopping will get even better for the inhabitants and visitors of the area. Wood Wood’s sophisticated charm and eclectic brand mix will no doubt be a great addition to the already exceptional shopping possibilities Soho has to offer.

“Wood Wood are renowned for contemporary streetwear, mixing their own revered label with a cool mix of sought after urban fashion brands. They are the perfect fit to Brewer Street and an important addition to Shaftesbury’s growing portfolio of cutting edge fashion brands in Soho. The Danish brand joins recent openings such as Swedish label Our Legacy, Folk, The Collection and Dutch brand Ace & Tate.”

– Addy Williams, Senior Retail Portfolio Manager at Shaftesbury

With stores in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Berlin, Frederiksberg and at Copenhagen Airport, Wood Wood has since the inception of the brand in 2002 always been equally submitted to wholesale distribution and retail. The last couple of years Wood Wood has witnessed a significant growth, not only in the UK where W.W. is stocked at the likes of Liberty, END. and Good Hood, but also in Continental Europe and in Asia. Today Wood Wood is stocked at around 400 retailers worldwide.

The Brewer Street location will both serve as flagship store, showroom and creative space for the Copenhagen based contemporary streetwear brand.

Long-time collaborators Spacon & X will help conceptualize and design the space.

Wood Wood London
33-35 Brewer Street
Soho, London W1F 0RX

• The group reused and recycled 1,799 tons of materials during the first quarter of 2019, which represents 97.5 per cent of its waste derived from the use of raw materials in manufacturing processes.
• Of these residues, 81.4 percent have been reused by HMY, a growth of two percent with respect to the same quarter of 2018.

HMY, the international leader in global services and innovation for retail, has confirmed its commitment to the circular economy on World Recycling Day. The company, in the first quarter of the year, reused and recycled 1,799 tons of materials, representing 97.5 percent of the waste generated in the manufacture of its products.

HMY’s commitment to the circular economy is based on the ‘3R’ paradigm of caring for the environment: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

The group recycled 16.1 percent of its waste in the first three months of the year as well as reusing 81.4 percent of it – an increase of almost two per cent in comparison to last year.

HMY works with materials including metal, wood, plastic, cardboard and paper. Specifically, in the first quarter of 2019, the remaining steel was used for melting and the generation of new metals, while the wood was reused for the manufacture of conglomerate panels. In addition to this, plastic waste was reused as a raw material for the manufacture of new products, such as rubbish bags. Finally, the remaining paper and cardboard has been re-used for the production of recycled paper.

Javier Rey, ESG & Quality Group Manager at HMY said: “Caring for the environment is everyone’s business. At HMY, we believe that all citizens must contribute their part, and companies cannot miss this joint effort. Therefore, we have designed an ambitious plan to reduce the environmental impact produced by our activity and encourage recycling in all our factories. The first results encourage us to continue on this path and reinforce our goal of growing in a sustainable manner, working in respect of both the environment and people. ”

This commitment to recycling comes as part of HMY’s global strategy for sustainable growth that respects the environment and people. As of last September, the company has integrated sustainability as an essential value of its development, and as a key element to achieve its main objective: acheiving long-term commercial success by promoting a positive effect on its employees, its customers, its suppliers, nature and society.

With this, HMY seeks to satisfy current needs without compromising future generations as well as focusing on the promotion of good practices in the environmental, economic and social spheres.

More information: https://hmy-group.com

On Wednesday 15th May Mill Gate Shopping centre launched a new initiative called OPEN, with a drop-in session designed to break down the often daunting barriers to taking your first retail space.

The first ever OPEN drop in session took place in the shopping centre with experts on hand to answer questions, on how to get into the retail market without any of the jargon or confusion that can often come with leasing retail space.

Visitors were also given a real insight into everyday life at Mill Gate by having the chance to talk with established businesses that started in the centre. One such retailer was Carol Jolly of Perfect fit who came to the centre with a dream of opening a bra shop with personal fitting service and has now been in the centre 10 years.

Mill Gate Shopping Centre Manager Marie Gribben along with Lisa Smith of PinPointer was on hand to answer any questions that attendees had and to explain the opportunities available at the centre. Marie commented,

“The centre has been at the heart of the Bury community for almost three decades and it is so important that local businesses looking for an opportunity to reach more customers understand that Mill Gate is the perfect place to do just that.”

“By launching OPEN we hope to create a space where people who might be worried about what can be a daunting letting process can come and ask the questions they have and get honest straight forward advice”

As well as the drop-in sessions, Mill Gate has also created some simple FAQs that give straight forward answers to the most common questions that come up when someone is looking to lease a new space. The section includes questions on business rates, leasing charges and what can be sold at the centre.

PinPointer‘s Lisa Smith, said: “This is a really positive step in making retail spaces more accessible to all businesses. The Mill Gate is ahead of the curve by hosting the OPEN project providing a simple and supportive approach to the leasing process. The initiative really carries on the great entrepreneurial tradition of Bury, looking at using spaces in new ways. So, whether it’s for offices, dentists, estates agents, homeware or microbreweries or the more conventional retail offerings, the Mill Gate has the space for your business.”

The OPEN unit will be open on the first Monday of each month, you can pop in or make an appointment to view potential units with the centre management and PinPointer team offering that personal insight and support through the leasing process.

By David Buckingham, CEO at Ecrebo

For the last few years we’ve been asking whether the high street is dead. The answers vary, with many people holding the opinion that it’s not quite the end yet, it just needs to adapt; to new market conditions, increasingly demanding shoppers, and the continued threat from e-commerce retailers. But does this extend to the department store? As a cornerstone of our town centres, the department store has been a much-loved fixture in retail for many years. However, despite recent high-profile closures, many are taking steps to breathe new life into the in-store experience.

Much like the high street as a whole, the department store needs to evolve in order meet the changing needs of the market. In the U.S., one major chain is reinventing itself by bringing an innovative storytelling approach to its merchandising strategy, while in Germany, a merger between the country’s two largest department store brands is strengthening the group’s position in the market. Looking specifically at UK department stores, how are they evolving to remain relevant?

The in-store experience will continue to play a critical role. Whether that means improving customer service or streamlining the payment process, the aim is to keep shoppers in-store, make the entire shopping process as engaging and frictionless as possible, and then convert those visits into sales.
Technology can play a major role here; smartphone apps and near-field communication (NFC) technology can help shoppers find what they’re looking for or send them targeted offers while they’re walking around the store. Endless aisle technology can be used to align the in-store with the online experience, bringing greater levels of choice to shoppers in a physical shop. Shoppers can use interactive kiosks to browse a product range, seeing stock availability with the option to order out of stock items for delivery to the store or home.

Further, many retailers are empowering sales staff with tablets, making them more mobile and more easily available to shoppers. Technology can also be used to eliminate frustrating queues at the point of sale. The point of sale itself can evolve to be more valuable, enabling staff to take payments wherever they are in-store, as well as adding functionality that can improve the overall customer experience, such as using transaction data to create relevant and personalised offers or messages at the till to drive loyalty and encourage shoppers back into the store.

Experiential retail or “shoppertainment” is fast becoming popular in the department store environment. This strategy focuses on selling customers an experience; providing a reason to come into store, above and beyond just the products on sale. It uses entertainment and engagement to elevate the shopping process and make it more than just a transactional buying experience.

The tactics and strategies deployed will vary; by retail, by location, by sector and perhaps by store size. Regardless, success will invariably involve a combination of increased adoption of new technologies, more collaboration across brands (possibly even competing ones) and new marketing approaches. Those that make the forward looking, bold choices in these areas are likely to improve their chances of riding out the storm.

The flagship conference will feature more than 50 sessions presented by customers and industry experts

NICE (Nasdaq: NICE) has announced the launch of Interactions EMEA 2019, its flagship conference delivering innovative content, live demonstrations and networking opportunities. The event will showcase innovative ways to drive customer engagement via analytics, automation, cloud and workforce optimization. With ‘Personal Connections Elevated’ as its theme, the event will feature exclusive content curated by NICE customers and industry experts and will be held at Cineworld Cinema – The 02 in Greenwich, London on 4-5 June.

Interactions EMEA 2019 will host over 500 customers and industry leaders, and will feature speakers from customers such asDeloitte, Deutsche Telekom, Experian, MoneyGram, Orange Poland, Samsung, Sitel Group, Teleperformance and Thomas Cook. NICE CEO, Barak Eilam and renowned actor, writer, comedian, Stephen Fry will deliver keynote addresses at the conference. Television broadcaster and panelist, June Sarpong will also join the event.

Comprising seven interactive breakout tracks and over 50 sessions, Interactions EMEA 2019 is dedicated to empowering organizations and their executives in facilitating exceptional customer experiences and improving business performance. Sessions will include: Innovations in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Making Smart Customer Connections with Analytics and Quality Management, Using Cloud to Deliver an Omnichannel Customer Experience, Picture Customer Feedback Management, Advances in Compliance, Recording and Fraud Prevention and Driving Employee Engagement and Financial Compliance. A rich array of workshops will also be offered at the event, covering topics such as harnessing data analytics for business transformation, the economics of customer experience and more, as well as hands-on training from seasoned specialists and consultants. In addition, NICE will host a Business Partner Summit on 3 June, where attendees can participate in demos of cutting-edge technology and connect with NICE executives and product experts.

John O’Hara, President, NICE EMEA, said: “With the enterprise technology landscape rapidly evolving and innovative advances being made in the cloud, Interactions EMEA 2019 is a fantastic opportunity for our network to learn from their peers and gain game-changing insights. By attending this event, attendees will learn new ways to enhance and personalize their interactions with customers, while staying on top of the industry’s latest and emerging trends.”

To register for the event, please click here. To keep up to date with the latest news regarding Interactions EMEA 2019, follow NICE on Twitter @NICELtd, on Facebook and LinkedIn, or via the hashtag #NICEi19London.

Google has announced the launch of an experiment in collaboration with innovation consultancy Current Global, to build-out a data analytics and machine learning tool powered by Google Cloud technology that will enable fashion brands to make more responsible sourcing decisions.

The initiative, revealed at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, one of the fashion industry’s key sustainability events of the year, aims to focus on the raw materials stage (referred to as ‘Tier 4’ of the supply chain), providing brands with greater visibility as to the environmental impact of different textiles. The hope is to translate data into meaningful insights so the industry can take action.

Sustainability in fashion is a global environmental emergency. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the fashion industry accounts for 20% of wastewater and 10% of carbon emissions worldwide. The 2019 Pulse of the Fashion Industry report also shows the fashion industry is not implementing sustainable solutions fast enough to counterbalance the harmful environmental and social impacts of its rapid growth.

Current Global, an innovation consultancy that empowers fashion brands to reach their sustainability goals through the use of relevant technologies, analysed where the industry’s largest environmental challenges are, and worked with Google to determine how it could help be part of the solution through the use of cloud-based tools for data collection and analysis.

What was identified was the need to focus on Tier 4, where brands have little to no visibility. This is an industry wide problem, where supply chains are highly fragmented, unregulated and with little transparency, yet where the  majority of negative impact occurs.

Many organizations and brands have been trailblazers in an effort to collect and surface data that can lead to better sourcing decisions, but gaps in the data continue to persist due to its complexity and global nature. The aim of this experiment, is to bring together information in a way that will complement existing tools, consolidating and building on the data to shine a light into the furthest parts of the fashion supply chain.

To bring it to life, we’ll be collaborating closely with Stella McCartney on the first pilot project. This brand has been a pioneer in leading the fashion industry towards sustainability, helping to launch the UN Fashion Industry Charter for climate change and recently introducing Stella McCartney Cares Green, one of the arms of the Stella McCartney Foundation, to further promote sustainability and environmental protection.

The tool will use data analytics and machine learning on Google Cloud, focused on sources that allow companies to better measure the impact of their raw materials, relevant to key environmental factors such as air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water scarcity.

To start, it will look at cotton and viscose, each chosen due to the scale of their production, data availability and impact considerations. More specifically, cotton accounts for 25 percent of all fibers used by the fashion industry, with a notable impact on water and pesticide use. Viscose production is smaller but growing in demand, and has links to the destruction of forests—some endangered—which are critical in mitigating carbon emissions.

The goal is not only to be able to determine the impact of producing these raw materials, but also compare the impacts of these in different regions where they are produced. This pilot will enable us to test the effectiveness of the tool on these different raw materials, building out the possibilities for expansion into a wider variety of key textiles in the market down the line.

This is the first phase of the experiment. Google and Current Global are now actively working with further fashion brands, experts, NGOs and industry bodies with the ambition of creating an open industry-wide tool, and plan to continue driving collaboration with other key players—large and small.

The hope is that the experiment will give fashion brands greater visibility of impact within their supply chain and actionable insights to make better raw material sourcing decisions with sustainability in mind.

Payment innovator, FreedomPay today announces a strategic partnership with the Shiji Group (Shiji) to help drive significant global expansion across Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Shiji, the global provider of world-class technological solutions for the hotel, retail, food service and entertainment industries, has integrated with FreedomPay to support the expansion of its payment solution to tens of thousands of additional hotels, stadiums and restaurants worldwide.

Shiji Group recently completed its EMV certification with FreedomPay which allows both FreedomPay and Shiji to securely process and extend both eCommerce and Card Present transactions internationally – meeting the needs of retail, food and beverage and hotel merchants across the globe.

This certification includes three main features: PCI-Validated P2PE, enabling contactless payments, and a multi-channel solution, including Hosted Payment Page, Payment Information Proxy and Virtual Terminal.

Having an EMV certified and PCI-Validated P2PE solution dramatically reduces the cost of compliance and provides greater business protection in the event of a data breach, in addition to enabling contactless payments allowing for faster transactions, less queuing time and consequently a vastly improved consumer experience.

“This is an exciting announcement for FreedomPay and we look forward to supporting Shiji to serve thousands more merchants across the globe. FreedomPay wants to help merchants become more efficient at the point of sale, grow their bottom line and give them more time to devote to running their businesses in a complex, highly customer centric payments ecosystem.” said Tom Durovsik, FreedomPay Founder and CEO.

“By partnering with FreedomPay we can continue to provide secure, easy-to-use and modern connectivity to the hospitality market and beyond. The certification of the Shiji Payment Solution with FreedomPay supports our global strategy to create an open platform that integrates widely for the benefit of our customers around the world, as well as enabling the Global Tokenization Service for the hospitality industry.” added Michael Balzer, Vice President – Shiji Global Payment Solutions.

Shopping centre owner, manager and developer intu is adding a climbing wall attraction to intu Metrocentre’s growing leisure offer, weeks after signing up a new-concept Angry Birds mini golf course for the centre.

Clip ‘n Climb will launch there this summer to capitalise on the centre’s 20 million annual footfall and the growing appeal of indoor climbing walls, which are recording visitor growth of 15-20% a year according to the Association of British Climbing Walls.

The 3,700 sq ft attraction is being created within mall space close to a number of catering outlets and will feature 26 colourful climbing walls to cater for a range of ages and abilities. There will even be an augmented climbing wall that projects graphics onto the wall and uses motion tracking sensors to create interactives games for one or two players.

Clip ‘n Climb’s operator Namco UK, which already runs intu Metrocentre’s Funscape entertainment centre, is also launching the first in a chain of Angry Birds adventure golf courses at intu Metrocentre this autumn in partnership with game developer Rovio.

The new attractions will add to intu Metrocentre’s leisure offer by providing more activities to entertain customers and create an even bigger draw for people looking for a day out destination. The centre is already one of the country’s most popular shopping destinations, with more than 300 stores, a wide range of restaurants and an IMAX cinema. It was recently named a top-10 shopping centre by data analytics company GlobalData according to research taking into account the requirements of both tenants and shoppers.

Kate Grant, regional managing director at intu, said: “Clip ‘n Climb will join intu Metrocentre’s popular line-up of aspirational brands and high street names and drive up the centre’s appeal as a day out retail and leisure destination, which is all part of our strategy to create winning destinations in sought after locations. We know it is going to thrive here and the attraction will also create a real sense of theatre for our customers due to its location in the mall itself.”

Philip Millward, commercial director at Namco, said: “intu Metrocentre’s high footfall, wide range of top-performing retail brands and complementary leisure offer makes it the perfect location to launch the latest Clip ‘n Climb. The centre’s Funscape is one of our most successful venues so we know that Clip ‘n Climb is going to do equally well at intu Metrocentre.”