The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the largest in the tournament's history: 104 matches across 16 cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada (40 matches more than the last edition), running from 11 June to 19 July, with an estimated six billion people — roughly three-quarters of the planet — expected to engage with it. For scale, the Paris 2024 Olympics drew around five billion viewers. The magnitude of the audience makes headlines, but the actual impact comes elsewhere: audiences have only a modest national effect, with the main beneficiaries being host cities through tourism, services, and consumption. As a result, the most interesting story may not happen on the pitch but in retail, especially in department stores that are seizing the moment as both a business opportunity and a chance to become cultural destinations. Here's how the biggest names in retail are playing the game.

IADS Exclusive - How department stores are playing the 2026 FIFA World Cup

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Everlane made transparency its commercial proposition. Shein has now bought the remains of that proposition at a price shaped less by brand heat than by financial distress.

In May 2026, Everlane said it had reached an agreement to be acquired by Shein, the ultrafast-fashion platform IADS examined in its January 2026 Exclusive, ‘The Shein paradox: when digital ultra-fast fashion meets physical reality’. That article documented what happened when Shein tested that ambition at BHV Marais in Paris: 300,000 initial visitors gave way to near-empty floors within weeks, as in-store prices far above the online average undermined the very proposition that drove the brand. The Everlane acquisition extends the same question: can Shein acquire the trust it cannot earn, through a brand once built on radical transparency?

The reported price was about $100 million, although the companies did not publicly disclose financial terms. Six years earlier, Everlane had been valued at $550-600 million. By the time the sale was being discussed, the company had accumulated around $90 million in debt, and common shareholders were expected to receive no payout.

IADS Exclusive: Everlane, Shein and the price of convenient transparency   

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What: Agentic marketing is moving from theoretical promise to operational reality, with AI-driven strategies now central to growth and competitive advantage.

Why it is important: The operationalisation of agentic marketing is now a key differentiator, with only 32% of CMOs currently deploying AI agents across meaningful workflows — and 42% at risk of an adoption that pilots without ever scaling.

The BCG CMO Survey 2026 offers a clinical correction to the optimism of recent years. Nearly every CMO surveyed (96%) claims that AI is driving end-to-end change across their function. Yet BCG's own maturity mapping tells a different story: only 32% of CMOs are genuinely deploying agents across strategy, content, and activation; 42% remain reliant on GenAI as a task-level assistant. The challenge is structural rather than motivational: most organisations have run successful pilots but have not yet redesigned their operating models, upgraded their martech stack, or built the internal AI talent that cannot yet be recruited externally. The results for those who have done so are measurable: 20–30% efficiency improvements and, for the leading cohort, a threefold gain in marketing ROI. The CMO's role has shifted from campaign leadership to structural build.

IADS Notes: Multiple recent analyses extend and sharpen the BCG CMO Survey 2026's central argument. In April 2026, Inside Retail and BCG warned that AI-driven agents are now mediating purchase decisions — shifting control from brands to algorithmic intermediaries — and that brands absent from agentic systems risk becoming invisible regardless of media spend. The need for robust data governance and scenario planning is pressing, as the absence of these systems translates directly to lost revenue. The gap between ambition and execution is well-documented across both sources: BCG's survey classifies only 32% of CMOs as genuine leaders, while the Financial Times reported in May 2026 that just 10% of retailers have successfully scaled agentic AI at an organisational level, citing persistent challenges in integration, governance, and workforce readiness. The evolving CMO role, as noted by BCG in November 2025, now centres on building the infrastructure, talent, and governance required for agentic marketing — a remit that extends well beyond campaign management.

Moving the agentic marketing transformation from illusion to reality

Retailers have long drawn on behavioural techniques, nudges, to persuade consumers to purchase. Some have given rise to eponymous concepts like the ‘IKEA effect’ where consumers attribute higher value to products assembled themselves, fostering brand resonance. In digital advertising, nudges include complete-the-look carousels, star ratings, and one-click shoppable ads on social media. However, the implicit assumption is that consumers pay attention to these. But does this remain true in 2026?

Economists now treat human attention as a scarce resource comparable to land, labour, and capital reflecting that attention is finite, rivalrous, and exhaustible. Social media platforms have industrialised the harvesting and monetisation of attention, creating a paradox: the more content floods the environment, the less effective each individual message becomes. In this context of structural overstimulation, brands including Gentle Monster and New Balance are moving from persuading through exposure to cultivating cultural belonging, offering a new angle to a job department store historically used to excel at: shaping their communities’ culture.

IADS Exclusive: The end of the nudge -reclaiming influence in the era of overstimulation

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Every year, Gallup surveys more than 150,000 employed adults across 160 countries and territories to produce the State of the Global Workplace report, the most comprehensive ongoing study of employee engagement, wellbeing, and job market perceptions. The survey uses Gallup's Q12 employee engagement instrument, a twelve-item assessment developed from decades of workplace research, which classifies employees into three groups: engaged (psychologically committed and contributing at full capacity), not engaged (present but psychologically absent), and actively disengaged (working, in Gallup's framing, against the aims of the organisation). The 2025 edition draws on data collected throughout 2024 and marks the seventeenth consecutive year of this global tracking. The  2026 edition, released this April, extends the dataset to 2025 and introduces a new analytical focus: the intersection of engagement with enterprise AI adoption. Both reports are referenced throughout, with data attributed to the year of publication rather than the year of collection.

Global employee engagement has fallen for two consecutive years. Enterprise AI investment has reached $40 billion with negligible returns on productivity. The Gallup 2025 and 2026 State of the Global Workplace reports trace back to the same cause: organisations have consistently underinvested in supporting and developing their managers.

For retail and department store organisations, these reports carry a direct operational message. 70% of team engagement is attributable to the manager, a finding from Gallup's own longitudinal research confirmed across both reports. In a department store, that figure describes whether floor teams build customer relationships or merely complete transactions, whether a new technology reaches the team or stalls at the briefing room door, whether new colleagues develop or leave quietly within 90 days.

IADS Exclusive: The $10 trillion management problem

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For at least fifteen years, department stores have been navigating a structural decline. Footfall in city centres has fallen in every measured year since 2009. Spending on fashion, department stores’ core category, has contracted. And the pandemic accelerated a migration to online shopping, compressing a decade of change into two years.

The industry’s initial response was to bolt e-commerce onto the existing model. What started as a modest add-on — often an experiment operated on the same principles as the traditional stores — soon grew into a parallel business with fundamentally different cost structures. Against in-store conversion ratios of 25% or more, online hovered at 1–2%. Against sales per square metre, online invoked profit per transaction. Against expectations of bottom-line profit, online demanded years of loss-funded growth. Department store companies found themselves running two business models simultaneously: one built on real estate and people, the other requiring heavy investment in systems, fulfilment, and digital marketing. Integration proved expensive, profitability remained elusive — even for the pure players — and the admittedly complex model of the traditional department store proved inadequate for a truly omnichannel operation.

The IADS Academy 2021 cohort framed this situation in scientific terms: the existing paradigm can no longer solve the problems. The question is no longer whether to become omnichannel, but how to move beyond integration into something more deliberate, precise, and profitable. The answer lies in four interconnected shifts:

• From channel ubiquity to journey optimisation,
• From channel-based P&Ls to customer-centric financial architecture,
• From uniform store networks to precision-engineered physical assets,
•  From inherited commercial models to purpose-built omnichannel ecosystems.

The article below reviews five years of IADS research, the current state of academic knowledge and the latest business articles on the topic, including research by Dr Christopher Knee, Honorary Advisor of the Association, and Professor Robert Rooderkerk, Academic Advisor of the Association.

IADS Exclusive:The next chapter of Omnichannel, from integration to reinvention

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In an industry defined by scale, the single-location department store is an anomaly, as conventional retail logic relentlessly pushes toward expansion: more doors, more markets, more revenue. Yet some of the world's most iconic department stores have only a single store and have not only survived but grown precisely because of it. This article explores Liberty and Harrods in London, Bergdorf Goodman on NYC’s Fifth Avenue and Le Bon Marché on Paris' left bank, but TSUM Kyiv would also have been interesting examples.

These department stores are not waiting to grow. They are institutions. And their singularity is not a limitation they have worked around, but rather the foundation of their competitive advantage. Single-location department store assets cannot be standardised across a chain or reproduced in a new market. They are deeply specific, historically grounded and impossible to copy at scale. But singularity carries its own risks. The same uniqueness that creates a destination can become a trap

IADS Exclusive – One door: how single-location department stores defy retail expansion logic

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Spring 2026 is here, and department stores around the world are making their mark. IADS has brought together the season's standout window displays, in-store installations, and visual moments from members and beyond.

DEPARTMENT STORES WINDOWS, IN-STORE INSTALLATIONS, VISUALS & SOCIAL MEDIA SPOTS

IADS Exclusive: Department Stores Spring Windows 2026

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This is the second article in IADS's series expanding on themes from the January 2026 White Paper DEI at a crossroads in retail. After reviewing the Abercrombie & Fitch business case the focus shifts to the broader US retail landscape.

In 2020, following George Floyd's murder, U.S. retailers launched ambitious DEI programmes and made sweeping public commitments. By early 2026, many had eliminated or scaled back their initiatives, citing changing political realities and legal risks. Target ended its Racial Equity Action and Change initiative. Walmart wound down its racial equity centre. Nike became the first major retailer targeted by federal investigators over its diversity goals.

For U.S. retailers, the stakes extend beyond reputation to legal and financial exposure. Federal contractors face potential liability for maintaining programmes the Trump administration deems "illegal DEI." Yet enforcement remains inconsistent, with conflicting court rulings creating uncertainty about what's permissible. In late April 2026, that uncertainty sharpened. The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais effectively ended sixty years of protections against racial discrimination in elections. The Trump administration's executive order barring DEI programmes among federal contractors remained in force despite legal challenges, carrying significant financial penalties for non-compliance.

IADS Exclusive – DEI at a crossroads: US retail trajectory since Trump’s Executive Order

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Few retailers conjure such immediate images of glamour, scale, and international cachet as Harrods. Yet behind the emerald-green awnings and gleaming marble halls lies a story of almost two centuries of reinvention. This single-site retailer has grown from a modest Victorian grocer’s shop into a global icon of luxury commerce. Harrods’ journey mirrors the evolution of modern retail itself: a chronicle of shrewd pivots and calculated risks, of disasters turned into opportunities, and of an unrelenting pursuit of the extraordinary in both product and experience.

We took the pretext of a member’s request on Harrods’ points of differentiation to proceed to an in-depth research about the iconic store. More than a department store, Harrods is a case study in how legacy can be leveraged, risks managed, and differentiation sharpened in a marketplace where change is the only constant. IADS CEOs were fortunate to have a behind-the-scenes visit in November 2023 during the General Assembly in London, with Mr G, a colourful character. We blend the notes taken during this visit with the results of thorough research to explore in more depth what Harrods represents today.

IADS Exclusive - Harrods points of differentiation

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Beauty is no longer simply a category. It has become a strategic cornerstone for department stores, as the category is booming but is also highly challenged. Department stores used to be the primary channel for beauty discovery, but e-commerce and social media have eroded their historical authority. As an example, only 24% of US shoppers now visit a department store to learn about new products. Instead, 71% turn to Sephora or Ulta Beauty, according to a PowerReviews survey. In parallel, department store revenues are declining across much of the sector, and apparel and luxury are facing structural headwinds. Under such circumstances, the relevance of the beauty offer across all its dimensions becomes critical. Galeries Lafayette Haussmann has recently unveiled its new beauty department, the perfect occasion to gain perspective on the current state of beauty in department stores and to address a pressing question: is it possible to evolve the category model?

IADS Exclusive: The great beauty reset: department stores in search of a new model

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Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) was once the epitome of “cool” for American teens in the late 1990s and early 2000s – a brand built on exclusivity, aspirational imagery, and a very narrow definition of who fits in. Its stores, with thumping music and overpowering cologne, became social hubs for youth and symbolised status for those deemed attractive enough to “wear the moose”. Yet the same exclusivity that fuelled Abercrombie’s rise eventually led to its fall. Controversies over discrimination and a lack of diversity tarnished the brand’s image, leading to lawsuits, public backlash, and a significant loss of relevance.

This is why, in the 2025 IADS White Paper, DEI at a crossroads in retail, Abercrombie & Fitch is cited as a case where DEI was neglected, inconsistently sustained, and ultimately mishandled—resulting in significant reputational, cultural, and operational consequences. Positioned as a lesson from the field rather than an isolated failure, the brand’s trajectory illustrates how progress on inclusion is neither linear nor guaranteed.

This Exclusive examines Abercrombie & Fitch’s history through a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) lens – how an exclusionary culture caused harm, who was most impacted, and what lessons retail and department store leaders can draw from A&F’s reckoning and ongoing turnaround.

IADS Exclusive: From exclusive to inclusive – Lessons from Abercrombie & Fitch’s DEI journey

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Zara is, by any measure, the archetype of fast fashion. No other brand has done more to define the model: rapid design cycles, vertically integrated supply chains, relentless store expansion. The parent company, Inditex, is valued among Europe’s most capitalised corporations.

Yet something has shifted. Over the past five years, Zara has been reinventing what its stores look and feel like, how they operate, and what they aspire to be. Flagship after flagship, the brand has moved toward larger, locally rooted, experientially rich formats that blur the line between monobrand retail and something that looks remarkably like a department store. The prices remain accessible; the ambition does not.

As the recent flagship openings documented by Newstores, IADS’ retail observation partner, illustrate, this evolution deserves more than a passing glance from department store leaders. Zara is not merely a competitor occupying adjacent real estate in prime urban locations. It is, arguably, the most disciplined and best-capitalised retailer currently converging on the department store’s own territory — in format, in positioning, and in the role it seeks to play in cities. Understanding how it got there, and where it is heading, is not an exercise in competitive anxiety. It is an opportunity to ask what department stores can learn, where they must differentiate, and what they should refuse to concede.

IADS Exclusive – Zara, competitor, benchmark or mirror for department stores? 

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Galeries Lafayette’s first Indian flagship store opened in Kalaghoda district in Mumbai, at the historic Turner Morrison and Voltas House buildings. Indian shoppers were already among the top international clients at Galeries Lafayette’s Paris Haussmann flagship with India’s luxury market projected to reach USD 85 billion by 2030[1].

Income inequality in India is stark and ever-increasing resulting in a nascent luxury segment while mass-market retailers are squeezed. Mumbai, home to over 450 billionaires and 142,000 millionaires[2], and the cultural and financial capital of the country was the logical entry point for Galeries Lafayette.

Despite a later-than-planned opening due to the complexity of heritage building restoration, the Mumbai opening of Galeries Lafayette marks India’s first true luxury department store. It results from a seven-year ambition and partnership announced in November 2022 between Galeries Lafayette Group (Paris) and Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited (ABFRL), the fashion arm of India's Aditya Birla Group conglomerate. The deal was structured as a 20-year exclusive franchise agreement, giving ABFRL the sole rights to operate Galeries Lafayette stores across India. Strategic advisory firm Pike Preston served as the deal's advisor on record. The next planned store opening is in Delhi in 2027.

Beyond being a commercial retail space, this opening represents an extension of French cultural diplomacy, a part of strategic and geopolitical cooperation between France and India. By integrating local architectural heritage and hosting joint Franco-Indian initiatives, Galeries Lafayette Mumbai serves as a symbol of deepening cultural ties between the two nations.

IADS Exclusive - A landmark entry: Galeries Lafayette and the evolution of Indian luxury retail

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[1] Galeries Lafayette to open its first store in India amid luxury boom

[2]Hurun-India Wealth Report 2025

For 155 years, De Bijenkorf has stood as one of the Netherlands’ most recognisable retail institutions. Yet the past decade has tested the department store, from ownership shifts and pandemic shocks to repeated reorganisations and a push to reconcile heritage with profitability. The IADS had the occasion to visit the Rotterdam store. This article walks through the company’s history and the store floor and asks whether De Bijenkorf can create true excitement among its customers. Store pictures are attached to this article.

IADS Exclusive: De Bijenkorf Rotterdam - the quest for retail relevance

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During the last IADS Mid-year meeting in Seoul in June 2025, member CEOs had the opportunity to visit several Korean retail landmarks, including the much-acclaimed The Hyundai Seoul. To provide them with a complete understanding of the specificities of the Korean market, a visit to Hyundai’s first-ever department store in Seoul, in the Apgujeong neighbourhood, completed the tour.

Interestingly, this visit generated the highest number of questions, as this visit allowed all visitors to understand the weight of the VICs[1] in the traditional Korean department store business, to an extent well beyond what is experimented in other retail markets.

This Exclusive aims at understanding the specificities of this store and what it tells about high-end Korean retail. A picture report completes this article.

IADS Exclusive: Hyundai Apgujeong, a VIC playbook or how Korea treats its Han-picked clients

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The 2026 edition of the IADS Global Department Store Monitor covers department stores’ financial results from fiscal year 2024-2025, a year marked technological transformation, rising geopolitical tensions and subsequent effects on currency exchanges and consumer confidence.

Launched in 2021 by Dr. Christopher Knee, the IADS Global Department Store Monitor purpose is to enable data comparison of department stores’ financial performance, especially to compare pre- and post-COVID-19 performance. The goal is to make sense of a complex and culturally central sector characterised by changes in ownership, privatisation, and mergers. To achieve that, and to provide a benchmark for global department store stakeholders, the monitor reviews 58 department stores with publicly available information.

The report includes current and fixed (2021) exchange rates, to isolate the impact of sales growth from the effect of exchange rate changes. This feature is increasingly relevant as real and nominal sales growth have diverged in a turbulent economic and political landscape. To account for nonuniform accounting standards, the broken calendar year system ensures that retailers results are being compared across the same world events, offering a clear overview of their performance.

IADS Exclusive: Global Department Store Monitor (2024-2025): navigating the ‘vibecession’

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During the 2025 IADS General Assembly, which took place in Hong Kong. David Baverez, an investor and writer, shared his original understanding of the disruptions linked to the emergence of a “new world order”, influenced by the rise of the ‘New China’. From his vantage point in Hong Kong, he highlighted a $600 billion China-US trade relationship now conducted with Hong Kong functioning as neutral ground for Chinese and US American CEOs to meet without legal or political risk, a role he likened to Vienna in the 20th-century US-USSR relationship.

This text is a synthesised version of his presentation, where he characterises China’s ‘economy of war’ as well as political, economic, demographic and cultural considerations for retailers. Confidential information including the Q/A section, only available to IADS members in the meeting recap on the IADS website, has been omitted from this article. This article is based on the presentation and does not reflect the views of the IADS.

IADS Exclusive -“New China: new opportunities, new threats” 

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For 170 years, BHV has been one of Paris’s most durable retail stories, from a trinket shop to a multi‑floored department store that helped shape how Parisians furnished, fixed and lived in their homes. It is a real saga, from the entrepreneurial zeal at the beginning, the rise of consumer society that anchored the store as a home-goods destination, the consolidation under Galeries Lafayette leadership, to the shocks of the last years: a pandemic, a polarising commercial bet with SHEIN, and the subsequent arrival of institutional capital. At stake is more than square metres and sales: the future of a retail anchor whose identity is tightly woven into Parisian everyday life. 

IADS Exclusive – BHV: 170 years of history and an uncertain future

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The IADS invited Xiaohongshu, internationally recognised as Red Note, to present at the 2025 General Assembly held in Hong Kong. Xiaohongshu, now a key platform for brands navigating access to Chinese consumers, originated as a response to the needs of outbound Chinese tourists. When visiting Hong Kong, the founder realised that Chinese tourists were unaware of local purchase limits at the Apple Store, which led to the creation of seven region-specific PDF guides. Xiaohongshu evolved to include shopping tips, beauty advice and lifestyle inspiration. Today, the platform is a defining touchpoint for Chinese consumers, especially those travelling abroad, and the overseas Chinese population.

This text is a synthesised version of Xiaohongshu’s presentation, which provided an overview of the platform’s strategy, distinctive characteristics, and key user insights. They also explored how international brands can build a presence on the platform and harness user data to reach Chinese consumers across demographics. Confidential information including the Q/A section, only available to IADS members in the meeting recap on the IADS website, has been omitted from this article.

IADS Exclusive: Unlocking Chinese consumer trends via Xiaohongshu

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The IADS Academy programme, a 30-year-old tailor-made mentoring workshop open only to our members’ high potentials, promotes cooperation and future orientation. Over the years, the IADS Academy has trained 200+ executives from 29 companies in 22 countries, some of whom reached top positions in member and non-member companies (for IADS member companies alone, 4 CEOs).

Every year since 2020, IADS member CEOs have defined the question they want the Academy cohort to work on. In 2020, the Academy group examined the COVID-19’s consequences. In 2021, the topic was about the definition of an omnichannel P&L. In 2022, the cohort focused on improving the profitability of Private Labels. In 2023, the topic was about the skills of the future. In 2024, the group addressed the question of an AI decision-making tool for department stores. Finally, the 2025 topic was: How to become better merchants: from intuition to data-driven decisions.

For more than a century, the department store merchant has been defined by mastery of numbers and product: margin discipline, inventory velocity, vendor leverage. Those skills built retail empires. Today, they no longer guarantee relevance.

This IADS Exclusive outlines the insights the Academy cohort studied, considered, and developed throughout the journey to their final presentation. The Academy examined the paradox at the heart of contemporary department stores: organisations rich in data, experience and infrastructure, yet constrained by misalignment, inertia and outdated success metrics. As traditional optimisation logic collides with 21st-century uncertainty, the role of the merchant is being quietly but fundamentally rewritten. From curator of product to Experience Architects, from data accumulation to decision clarity, the next era of merchant excellence demands a redefinition of skills, scope and accountability, to learn when to trust data, when to trust intuition, and how to orchestrate both in service of the customer.

IADS Exclusive: 2025 IADS Academy - The Experience Architect: redefining merchant excellence 

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Twenty-seven years after the last plane departed from Hong Kong Kai Tak airport, the area is landing again, this time as an ambitious experiment in mixed-use reinvention. Kai Tak isn’t your typical Hong Kong retail story of luxury flagships and tourist-driven consumption. Kai Tak’s developers are betting on a different vision: that Hong Kong’s future shoppers want integrated lifestyle destinations where retail is just one layer of a richer experience. They bet that families, sports enthusiasts and residents, not just mainland tourists, can anchor successful commercial developments.

As Hong Kong faces retail challenges with local consumers increasingly shopping and spending time in mainland China, Kai Tak represents a bold bet on experiential retail and community-centric development. To find out, the IADS visited the Kai Tak area and its retail anchors, Kai Tak Mall, Airside, and The Twins. Pictures are attached to this article.

IADS Exclusive – From runway to retail engine: in Hong Kong, Kai Tak bets on community

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The 2026 edition of the NRF Big Show took place from 11 to 13 January 2026 (a day shorter than the previous editions). It was, again, a record-breaking show, with more than 41,000 visitors from 100 countries and 564 speakers. Notably, this was the largest Expo ever, with 33,500 sqm dedicated to 1,025 exhibitors. This constant expansion might explain why the NRF is now a global fair, with an Asian edition (Singapore, launched 2 years ago), a European edition (Paris, launched last September), and, soon, a Middle East edition in Riyadh (planned for March 2027).

The recent changes in U.S. international policy did not deter foreigners from coming: more than a third of visitors were non-US, with the largest foreign delegation from Brazil. The total number of foreigners has decreased, however, compared to the previous editions.

As usual, there was a strong sense of excitement, fuelled by good overall retail sales and a good holiday season: according to the CNBC/NRF retail monitor, the strong December numbers brought total 2025 retail sales to an increase of 5.08% over 2024.

One could wonder however if the NRF Big Show still addresses retailers: while the event opened with the chairmen of BJ’s Wholesale Club and DICK’s Sporting Goods, one of the most commented keynote was the one gathering the CEO of Walmart, John Furner, with the CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, and in the Expo, “agentic AI” was on everyone’s lips. Also, Microsoft’s and Google’s booths were spectacularly larger than their spaces in previous editions. While, as usual, the energy was palpable during the event, at least in the first two days, there was also a sense that many retailers based in the city did not show up due to a lack of time, or simply because the real retail conversations were increasingly taking place in side events. It felt as though tech and retail were no longer moving hand in hand, but were increasingly taking parallel trajectories, with tech eating retail, best illustrated by the large ChatGPT advertisement atop an iconic small store in the Village.

This focus on tech, for sure, continues to leave room for other global fairs interested in the “traditional” side of retail, such as Euroshop.

What follows is a subjective selection of conferences, news, and stores that we believe could be interesting to our members, as we try to cut through the noise and self-promotion. All conferences include a short recap of our 3 key takeaways.

IADS Exclusive – IADS Exclusive: IADS Exclusive: NRF Big Show 2026: IADS report

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According to the Institut Français de la Mode (French Fashion Institute, IFM), ultra-fast fashion from the Asian trio SHEIN, TEMU and AliExpress now accounts for 6% of clothing purchases by volume, with SHEIN the fifth-best-selling brand in France by volume. While traditional fashion houses struggle to adapt to shifting trends and global trade tensions, SHEIN is thriving, selling millions of $2 T-shirts in over 150 countries, excluding China. However, a month or so after the landmark opening of SHEIN at BHV Marais in Paris, very few shoppers continue to flock to the department store, as word-of-mouth suggests customers aren’t finding what makes the brand successful. For BHV, what was presented as a winning strategy and a tremendous business opportunity appears to be fatal.

What was intended as strategic validation for SHEIN instead became a test case of whether ultra-fast fashion can coexist with traditional retail. The French battleground raises questions that extend far beyond just a store. Can SHEIN’s hyper-efficient online model translate to brick-and-mortar success? Will European markets mount effective resistance to business practices they deem harmful? And most provocatively: if SHEIN’s model can deliver unmatched value in the eyes of cost-conscious consumers, should it be stopped at all?

IADS Exclusive – The SHEIN paradox: when digital ultra-fast fashion meets physical reality

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