What: Skims has entered the Spanish market through El Corte Inglés, opening its first points of sale at the Serrano store in Madrid and in Marbella, and selling its collections on the department store's website.

Why it is important: By securing Skims' first Spanish stores and its local online distribution, El Corte Inglés gains a high-visibility, social-first brand that can draw younger customers to its stores and website.

Skims, the intimate apparel and loungewear company founded by Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede in 2018, has entered the Spanish retail market through El Corte Inglés. The brand is present at the Serrano Street store in Madrid and is now expanding to Marbella. The agreement also covers sales through El Corte Inglés' website; until now, Spanish customers could only buy Skims products through the company's European e-commerce platform, which has no dedicated page for Spain.

The move is part of a wider international push. Following its recent London opening, Skims set itself the goal mid-year of ending 2026 with 55 own stores, doubling its current network, and exceeding one hundred points of sale in 2027. It has recently expanded into the United Arab Emirates, with a presence in Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates, and into Mexico through local partners, with openings planned in Seoul, Delhi and Mumbai.

To support growth outside the United States, the company hired Natalie Buchberger, formerly of Tapestry, Zara and Snipes, to lead franchise expansion across EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Skims had 27 own stores in early September and reached a $5 billion valuation in November 2025 after a $225 million funding round.

IADS Notes: Skims' choice of El Corte Inglés as its entry point into Spain follows a wider pattern of digital-native brands using department stores to reach new markets, as when Nuuds moved into wholesale with Nordstrom to use the retailer's curation and customer engagement (Inside Retail, March 2026). The same partnership-led logic underpinned Marks & Spencer's US fashion debut, which relied on Nordstrom's stores and website rather than standalone openings to build awareness at lower risk (WWD, March 2026). The combined store-and-online format of the Skims agreement is consistent with El Corte Inglés' updated strategic plan, which treats physical stores as experiential differentiators and positions the website and app as the first point of contact for many customers (Press Release, July 2026). Celebrity-linked brands are also being used to draw traffic and engagement: Breuninger staged s.Oliver's campaign launch around an in-store appearance by Heidi Klum, with ticketed Meet & Greet access and an exclusive capsule pop-up (Press Release, September 2026). Reliance Retail acquired Priyanka Chopra Jonas's Anomaly for its brand equity and appeal to younger, digitally engaged consumers (India Economic Times, May 2026).

El Corte Inglés onboards Skims

What: John Lewis is adding specialist concessions from Audley Travel, Clarendon Fine Art, Randox Health and Tish Lyon piercing to its stores to reposition them as service-led destinations.

Why it is important: By bringing in advisory services that cannot be replicated online, John Lewis is making expertise, rather than product range, the main reason to visit its stores.

John Lewis is expanding its line-up of in-store specialist concessions as part of its £800m brand transformation, which includes four store refurbishments this year. The retailer says shoppers increasingly want advisor-led, tactile experiences over routine transactions, and that the concessions will give customers more reasons to spend time in store while supporting its omnichannel strategy.

Audley Travel will open travel hubs in 12 stores from November, offering end-to-end holiday planning across more than 90 destinations, from private safaris to milestone celebrations. It is the brand's first high street presence in its 30-year history. Clarendon Fine Art will open galleries in three branches by early October, offering personalised art consultancy and works by artists including L.S. Lowry, Picasso and Keith Haring.

Randox Health is more than doubling its in-store clinics offering blood testing and wellness assessments, while piercing and jewellery brand Tish Lyon is more than doubling its presence, with premium piercing, jewellery welding and 14k gold jewellery fitted in bespoke studios.

The concessions sit alongside John Lewis's Partner-led advisory services, including home design, personal styling and nursery consultations, and existing partners Tapi and David Clulow Opticians. Demand for advisory services rose by more than 5% in the first half.

IADS Notes: John Lewis's expansion of specialist concessions builds on a services-led repositioning already visible across its stores, most recently with Sports & Wellness departments that combine sportswear and wearables with gait analysis, AI-powered fitness mirrors and run clubs under the same £800m transformation programme (John Lewis press release, August 2026). The logic reaches beyond one retailer. Frasers' acquisition of Harvey Nichols has been read as evidence that large department store footprints regain value when they become platforms for services, smaller brands and experiences that cannot be replicated online, with John Lewis cited for rising demand for personal styling and nursery appointments (Financial Times, August 2026). Selfridges, Liberty and Harrods are following a similar path, turning their stores into leisure destinations built around hospitality, workshops and culture to justify the visit and extend dwell time (The Retail Bulletin, July 2026). Harvey Nichols took the wellness route directly, giving an entire Knightsbridge floor to Pilates, clinics and functional nutrition within its three-year refurbishment (WWD, May 2026). Operationally, the shift towards concession-heavy models and strategic partnerships has emerged as one of the main responses to financial pressure on the format, though results remain uneven across operators (Fashion Network, January 2026).

John Lewis adds expert services to stores as it leans into experiential retail

What: Thailand has launched THIM, a government app for foreign visitors that brings immigration procedures and retail and travel privileges from partners including The Mall Group onto a single platform, recording more than 600,000 downloads since 1 August.

Why it is important: A state-run entry platform is becoming a retail channel, giving launch partners such as The Mall Group access to foreign visitors before they reach a store.

Thailand's Immigration Bureau, which operates under the Royal Thai Police, has launched THIM as a single digital gateway for foreign nationals, covering pre-arrival preparation, entry procedures, stays in the country, tourism information and visitor privileges. The bureau cites mounting pressure on airport and border checkpoint capacity, aiming to speed up procedures without compromising national security.

The app hosts the Thailand Digital Arrival Card and an Explore Thailand section. Queue booking, certificates of stay, visa extensions, 90-day reporting and visa on arrival are planned. Available since 1 August 2026, THIM has recorded more than 600,000 downloads and over 580,000 users.

Identity verification relies on NFC reading of passport chips, liveness detection and facial comparison. Biometric data is kept separate from other personal data, data is encrypted in transit and storage, and personal information falls under Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act. The app is hosted on the AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region.

Explore Thailand gives visitors coupons and privileges redeemable by QR or promotion code. Launch partners include The Mall Group, GrabTaxi, Wipay, True Corporation, The Minor Food Group, Minor International and Bangkok Dusit Medical Services. The bureau plans to add information on attractions, accommodation and activities.

IADS Notes: The Mall Group's presence among THIM's launch partners follows its payment partnership with UnionPay International, which combined acceptance for Chinese tourists with a year-long programme of discounts and cash coupons (The Nation, November 2025). The group has since built a loyalty base of more than seven million members, co-branded payment cards and multilingual AI shopping assistants (Retail News Asia, May 2026). The competition for inbound spending is intense: Thailand captured a large share of the Chinese tourists who turned away from Japan over Lunar New Year, while Japanese duty-free and luxury retailers absorbed the loss (South China Morning Post, February 2026). China's visa-free scheme, under which 77.7% of foreign arrivals entered the country in the first half of 2026, shows how entry policy has itself become a lever for inbound demand (The Diplomat, August 2026), although higher arrivals do not automatically translate into retail sales, a gap that privileges distributed at the point of entry are designed to address.

Thailand launches THIM as digital gateway for foreign visitors