Latest / The Retail Podcast / Gulf Luxury Boom, LVMH “Cruise” Flagship, Aussie Bargain Surge, Shein × Reliance, Live‑Commerce Wave

Transcript

Gulf Luxury Boom, LVMH “Cruise” Flagship, Aussie Bargain Surge, Shein × Reliance, Live‑Commerce Wave · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to another fantastic edition of
• 0:03
  Five Things Friday 8 pack edition with my wonderful Co
• 0:07
  host Reef Quail and Laura Doonan.
• 0:10
  Hi, guys. Hello, Alex.
• 0:12
  How are you? Hello.
• 0:14
  Good. How are you both?
• 0:15
  Doing I've I've actually for after.
• 0:17
  After a month of the event being passed, almost a month past the
• 0:19
  event, I've finally succumbed to a cold.
• 0:22
  I've got a head cold. OK, it took it took took three
• 0:25
  or four weeks, but I'm there now I'm I'm, I'm finally I have, you
• 0:30
  know, that was I, I felt like a decompressed enough to have a
• 0:34
  shave. And and Laura, how are you
• 0:36
  doing? I'm good, I'm good.
• 0:38
  OK, So I'm going to start this week.
• 0:40
  So the one thing that is super interesting is this Middle East
• 0:45
  focus on luxury and how luxury sales defies the global slowdown
• 0:50
  in luxury. And so while stall, while sales
• 0:54
  stall in places like China and the US, the Gulf region is still
• 0:58
  going ahead. Luxury spend rose 6% year on
• 1:01
  year in 2024, reaching 12.8 billion.
• 1:05
  And as the global market contracted by 2%, forecasts for
• 1:10
  the region have sales at 15 billion by 2027, which again, I,
• 1:16
  I, I sure understand why there's so much focus in, in the region,
• 1:21
  but more in, again, when you break that down and you look at
• 1:24
  malls and you heard me talk about malls or shopping centres
• 1:29
  as dopamine villages. Well, these are malls as
• 1:32
  cultural cornerstone and growth drivers, which sort of physical
• 1:36
  retail still remains dominant. Great news for all across the
• 1:40
  Gulf, with Saudi Arabia expected to see over 80% of fashion and
• 1:45
  luxury transactions happen in malls.
• 1:48
  By Saudi that is going completely crazy.
• 1:52
  It's a real there's a real transformation at me in the
• 1:54
  Middle East it. Might be an appropriate time to
• 1:57
  drop a plug for the five things Friday made the least edition
• 2:01
  that will be coming out as well. Fantastic.
• 2:04
  Well, there is a There's a lot of cool things happening out
• 2:06
  there. Yeah.
• 2:07
  So I've got a couple of people who are 1 based in Saudi, 1
• 2:10
  based in Dubai and we're going to look at that anyway.
• 2:12
  I'm not going to talk about that, but that that will be
• 2:15
  coming. So when you look at Dubai Mall
• 2:18
  and the picture that you're looking at is the new extension
• 2:21
  to the Dubai Mall. It attracts and standing 111
• 2:26
  million visitors in 2024, which sort of capturing virtually all
• 2:31
  international tourists in the city.
• 2:33
  And it's a luxury mall expansion which is around 408 million
• 2:39
  dedicated to new high end retail spaces.
• 2:41
  So there is no stock. This is just continued growth.
• 2:44
  And I think the world's millionaires need somewhere to
• 2:47
  go above and beyond the South of France.
• 2:51
  When you look at when we zoom into Saudi Arabia, going back to
• 2:54
  what Reef was said, you see that in Riyadh.
• 2:57
  It's a sort of rapidly appearing as a luxury destination with
• 3:02
  landmark developments, again, physical developments, a
• 3:05
  solitaire, which we'll be launching this year and feature
• 3:08
  luxury brands and experiential retail And the Avenue Malls of
• 3:12
  Saudi, which is very similar to again what you were heard me
• 3:16
  talking about the Dopamine villages, which is Westfield's
• 3:19
  up and coming entries in the Saudis ambitious retail future.
• 3:24
  And then all of these are sort of underpinned with VIP
• 3:27
  experiences that are sort of enticing the elite consumers who
• 3:33
  now expect specifically culturally, they expect privacy,
• 3:37
  they expect personalization, they want prestige as a
• 3:41
  standard, not as an option. So, you know, culturally, they
• 3:45
  do, you know, female shoppers have to shop separately, but
• 3:50
  these, these things have always been like an added option.
• 3:52
  And now that's just expected as an, as an, a standard for
• 3:56
  transformational experiences and even digital first brands like
• 4:00
  Onassis that have established VIP physical suites to match
• 4:04
  this type of demand. And, you know, you would think,
• 4:08
  you know, all of this focus on physical.
• 4:11
  Does that mean tech is not happening?
• 4:13
  But they're still leaning into tech innovation Wick in the sort
• 4:17
  of in this new luxury paradigm, which looks at AI stylist NFT
• 4:21
  based products, immersive digital experiences beyond the
• 4:26
  knob, you know, beyond what we see as sort of these sort one
• 4:29
  off marketing activations with 55% of the MENA region, a
• 4:36
  population under the age of 30, luxury to this sort of find
• 4:40
  themselves having to integrate digital, sophisticated and
• 4:44
  cultural experiences. But sorry, having cultural
• 4:47
  sensitivity to main relevance and leadership.
• 4:51
  And so, you know, GG has transitioned from peripheral
• 4:54
  luxury market into a trend setting market.
• 4:57
  And I think we're just going to see that more and more over the
• 4:59
  next three or four years, which will sort of define how luxury
• 5:04
  brands such as LVMH approach personal immersive experiences,
• 5:10
  which I think they can sort of borrow and take to the world.
• 5:13
  So that's specifically on on on Dubai and the and the Mall of
• 5:19
  Dubai and its expansion. But another I'll just share this
• 5:22
  video with you, which is just mind blowing.
• 5:24
  Thanks to this is the Shanghai eye on YouTube.
• 5:28
  So you know, go get over to YouTube and watch their video,
• 5:32
  but I'll share it here with you. And this is Louis Vuitton's
• 5:36
  flagship store appearing in downtown Shanghai.
• 5:39
  And this is not a rendered, you know, CGI.
• 5:44
  This is the store. It is a luxury cruise line of
• 5:49
  Etsy meets a height structure. And you know, they interview
• 5:52
  these two local. This is a French guy who
• 5:55
  tourists who they just sort of you know, he was pretty much
• 5:59
  mind blown. And for those who are based in
• 6:02
  Europe, they may have been to chance Alizee.
• 6:03
  They may may have seen the LVMH flagship store in Paris, which
• 6:09
  is the iconic Louis Vuitton suitcases stacked together, but
• 6:14
  this is just taking it to a complete different level.
• 6:17
  It's just incredible when you look at why they're doing that,
• 6:20
  the sort of top five strategic insights behind what's going on
• 6:25
  here. This is LVMH experience over
• 6:28
  product, which is the sort of new luxury blueprint LVMH is.
• 6:33
  And it's sort of peers in the industry are prioritising
• 6:37
  creating emotional resonance between their experience over
• 6:42
  product. And I think again, I noticed
• 6:44
  this when I flew out to NRF, going through the airport where
• 6:49
  they're lending their names to sort of experiential things such
• 6:53
  as cafes, restaurant, restaurants, cultural
• 6:56
  engagements, merely overselling just product, right?
• 7:01
  That's by the new LVMH handbag or, or whatever luxury trainers.
• 7:06
  This is about having those engagement moments, the sort of
• 7:10
  strategic pivot address to consumers, deeper desire for
• 7:14
  fulfilment and emotional connection be beyond the that
• 7:18
  that product, which is still important.
• 7:20
  But China's luxury boom sort of has faltered.
• 7:24
  So there's prompted these strategic shifts.
• 7:27
  And when you look at how the sector shrank over the last
• 7:31
  three years, and I think it shrank 18% in 2023 and it's sort
• 7:37
  of stagnated in 2024-2025, that the property market limited that
• 7:43
  growth. They're not going to be opening
• 7:45
  thousands of more stores. They're going to be opening
• 7:48
  these massive flagship points. And on what?
• 7:51
  The Middle East, it's so interesting to watch and it
• 7:55
  actually makes me uncomfortable because what you see there
• 7:59
  that's it's really catering to this the, the mega elite, the
• 8:04
  Super wealthy. Like you can just imagine Jeff
• 8:07
  Bezos and his wife, after they've done their, they've done
• 8:12
  their Venice thing, they'll go there for their shopping trip.
• 8:15
  It's so extravagant, it's so excessive and it actually starts
• 8:20
  to make that Shanghai experience look kind of more normal now.
• 8:24
  It's it's so interesting seeing this, this Popeye up and it
• 8:29
  really makes me think like Europe still as when I think
• 8:32
  about fashion is still, it's still there, but there's this
• 8:36
  different echo chamber coming out of this the Middle East.
• 8:40
  I've stayed in Dubai. I remember like that was years
• 8:42
  ago and what the seven star, the Atlantis, this all the shops in
• 8:47
  there. I remember going in and being
• 8:49
  like, I need to leave. Like this was, I didn't even
• 8:51
  know these brands and these price points existed.
• 8:54
  So it's I feel like it's always been there and now they're just
• 8:57
  putting it in the face and they're really making it their
• 9:00
  destination for that, that that elite crew.
• 9:04
  Yes, it's it's really something else, which I was thinking about
• 9:08
  as I feel like, and the more the more common, the more normal
• 9:12
  brands and the the commoners out there.
• 9:15
  There's been a lot of like, you know, the yeah, it was called
• 9:19
  more normal or relatable. There's been a lot of these like
• 9:22
  let's do it for the gramme. Like activations pop up and
• 9:26
  we're moving in a bit of a they're going to drop off
• 9:30
  because a lot of them have just been noise and it and we've
• 9:33
  matured past that. And then you've got these kind
• 9:36
  of flagship the the the shop that looks like a boat.
• 9:39
  I reckon these more mid tier brands that have done their do
• 9:42
  it for the gramme, the activations, the funny, the
• 9:44
  silly things probably now have to think about what what's real
• 9:49
  like what is that experiential retail look like for them?
• 9:52
  And where do they actually put some stake in the ground and and
• 9:56
  and make it a real presence rather than just a pop up?
• 10:01
  Yeah, yeah. But Ruth, I think that the the
• 10:03
  whole, the thought you've mentioned it was the gramme is
• 10:05
  really interesting. And if you're going to the Gucci
• 10:08
  Cafe in the airport lounge, you're it's going to the gramme,
• 10:12
  you know, like it's, it's, it's those, it's almost like these
• 10:16
  luxury brands are creating gateways towards them.
• 10:19
  And so I can't buy the handbag, but I can, I can go part of the
• 10:23
  way. And so experience.
• 10:25
  I have an experience, but more importantly, have an earned
• 10:28
  media, create earned media for that their, that their consumers
• 10:33
  or the aspirational consumers want to see.
• 10:35
  Right. Yeah.
• 10:36
  You know, you know, to to be in the airport going through Dubai
• 10:39
  and go to a Gucci Cafe and share the experience because you're
• 10:42
  gonna because you're excited, because you're on a plane.
• 10:44
  Yeah, that's pretty cool. And that and and Gucci may have
• 10:49
  not got that share if they just stayed totally in retail.
• 10:53
  When you look at the brands in terms of LVMH curing, Richmond,
• 10:57
  Hermes, they're all recalibrating their strategies
• 11:01
  for China to sort of adapt to these new market realities.
• 11:06
  As luxury within China grows and luxury Chinese brands grow,
• 11:12
  they're faced with these pressures, but sort of labouring
• 11:15
  the point, experiential luxury outpaces physical goods.
• 11:20
  So through global personal luxury good sales, as as I
• 11:25
  mentioned, that dropped by 1 to 3% in 2024, experienced luxury
• 11:30
  sector like hospitality, curated events that grew by 5%.
• 11:36
  And that's driven by young consumers increasingly
• 11:39
  preferring so at least memorable experience.
• 11:42
  Like you were saying, Gucci Cafe, you take your camera out,
• 11:44
  you put it on Instagram or TikTok and it provides that
• 11:47
  dopamine validation or that validation for for the consumer,
• 11:51
  which challenges that whole physical possessions.
• 11:54
  But both of them are still there.
• 11:57
  And then just the sort of finish of flagship stores as cultural
• 12:00
  icons, very similar to what we've seen in Dubai we're seeing
• 12:04
  in China and the LVMH store sort of see this And my prediction
• 12:09
  this will spread out like Formula One for cars where the
• 12:13
  technology there sort of goes into mainstream cars.
• 12:15
  This will happen and it will have a massive impact because
• 12:19
  what we'll see that store closures specifically in China
• 12:24
  aren't sort of retreats. This signals the strategic
• 12:27
  direction of retailers going for few powerhouses and reducing
• 12:33
  their network of stores and luxury sort of leading in that
• 12:36
  luxury houses or redirecting investments to these the smaller
• 12:40
  stores. And in summary, you know, LBMH
• 12:43
  involves strategic priorities, reducing the noise, enriching
• 12:48
  meaning, and then looking at how to cultivate that cultural
• 12:53
  resonance. And I think the future
• 12:55
  definitely belongs, as you've seen in Dubai and as you've seen
• 13:00
  in China to those retail brands that can enrich that personal,
• 13:05
  enrich the personal experience, but it takes it just beyond
• 13:12
  product acquisition and hence why culture becomes such a key
• 13:16
  thing. I think Laura, you're you were
• 13:18
  going to go next in your. Oh, it's not.
• 13:21
  All right, I've just got one for you guys today and I was reading
• 13:26
  The Australian, Is it the Australian Bureau of Statistics?
• 13:31
  I was laughing and they said, yeah, well, I will.
• 13:33
  I was. I was reading the high highlight
• 13:35
  reel. What do you sleep?
• 13:37
  I was laughing at the the word surge.
• 13:39
  So it it looks like the retail sales year on year for last
• 13:44
  month have surged 3.3%. I don't know if I'd call it a
• 13:48
  surge, but that's what they they said.
• 13:50
  And so retail sales are reaching 37.3 billion in Australia.
• 13:56
  So read it without them mentioning specifics.
• 14:00
  But it doesn't take a rocket science to figure it out.
• 14:04
  It was saying 11% growth has came from online bargain
• 14:07
  shoppers. So it's just a little bit
• 14:10
  potentially skewed wrong, right. Like it gives the sentiment that
• 14:14
  retail in Australia is doing well, but it's actually we're
• 14:17
  we're at a bit of a crisis point where rents, rates and
• 14:21
  businesses are quite worried. Local businesses 11% growth
• 14:26
  online without bargain shopper is 100%.
• 14:28
  Coming from the team you and the the Shen and the likes.
• 14:32
  You know, we know that their massive focus on this market
• 14:35
  last year, their sales were from Sheenwood 1.2 billion to
• 14:39
  Australian consumers. So, yeah, and, and it was, it
• 14:44
  led me down a little bit of a rabbit hole and the Australian
• 14:48
  Fashion Council, the CEO has been very vocal about
• 14:53
  potentially needing to put some guardrails around Australian
• 14:55
  retail. At the same time, one of the
• 14:58
  issues we have is 987, we say fashion items sold in country
• 15:04
  come from offshore. So it, you know, like I think,
• 15:09
  yeah. Yeah, and guardrails don't work,
• 15:11
  though. Like, I know, you know, Alibaba
• 15:14
  dropped a billion dollars in infrastructure in Korea.
• 15:17
  The Korean retailers are up in arms lobbying the government to
• 15:21
  put protectionist measures in place.
• 15:24
  But if they're arguing about that, they've already missed the
• 15:26
  boat. If we're worrying about
• 15:27
  protectionist measures, they've already missed the boat.
• 15:29
  It's already done. Yeah, the the one thing I quite
• 15:33
  liked about what she was saying, I know that in France, I think
• 15:36
  they've put like a bit of a a tax back on fast fashion.
• 15:41
  The one thing that I think that's it's great, however, I
• 15:45
  start to question who who pays for it because if you put a $5
• 15:50
  tax to the consumer of the by fast fashion, but the
• 15:53
  alternative here is not really there.
• 15:55
  They're going to pay the extra $5 and the only person that is
• 16:00
  as you know is affected as a consumer.
• 16:02
  So I do like the fact that the assuring fashion council are
• 16:06
  like actually going first we need to look at what's going on
• 16:09
  in a backyard and have a bit an assessment and how we build up
• 16:13
  some kind of manufacture. Can we go back to some level of
• 16:16
  manufacturing control and country.
• 16:18
  And it really just talks, I mean, Alex, complete extremes,
• 16:22
  right? You're talking about Dubai and
• 16:24
  the Middle East, this super luxury and then just this back
• 16:27
  to the normal world, which as the retailers with physical
• 16:32
  retail, you know, they're they're they're they're hard at
• 16:36
  it right now. So yeah, so it's spend is up and
• 16:40
  sentiment is in the middle of the road with the consumer and
• 16:45
  they're spend, the sales are up and it's been driven by more
• 16:50
  Chinese goods coming in and flooding the Australian market.
• 16:54
  So we'll have to just watch how that plays out.
• 16:57
  That's. And I haven't got good, well, I
• 16:59
  haven't got good news then for the Australian Fashion Council
• 17:02
  because my little, my first one today is a little bit about
• 17:06
  something that's happened earlier this year and that is
• 17:08
  the re entry of Chinese technology to India.
• 17:12
  And we've seen in March, April this year, the launch of a
• 17:16
  partnership between Reliance Retail.
• 17:19
  So Reliance is probably one of the largest retail conglomerates
• 17:21
  in India and Xian. So Xian's been banned for five
• 17:26
  years in that partnership, right?
• 17:29
  Operational control rests with Reliance data localization.
• 17:33
  All the data is stored in India. So XI N doesn't have access to
• 17:36
  data and addresses all the privacy issues and technology
• 17:40
  and technology. The technology operate under
• 17:42
  licence by Reliance. But the key thing about this
• 17:46
  partnership, apart from the scale it can then take to the
• 17:50
  Indian market is that all the stuff that's been sourced for
• 17:56
  the first time, it has been made in India.
• 17:58
  So you think about that because she and then go, OK, cool, we
• 18:01
  can do fast fashion Chinese sourced, but for us in
• 18:05
  Australia, it's going to be Chinese sauce and Indian
• 18:09
  sourced. So all of a sudden we have two
• 18:13
  global powerhouses coming together, right?
• 18:16
  And this is really like this is, this is not just an implication
• 18:21
  for India domestically, but for the Xi'an platform in every
• 18:25
  market in which they operate. So from an Australian point of
• 18:28
  view, to your point, Laura, we're going to say a lot more
• 18:31
  product because there's going to be a lot more supply because
• 18:33
  we're coming from two production mad, you know, mega houses of
• 18:39
  India and China as opposed to just one.
• 18:42
  So this is a big change, a big change.
• 18:44
  And this happened this year. And it's like, you know, you
• 18:49
  automatically achieve scale if you're alliance and you're in
• 18:51
  India, but then you take Xi'an's distribution around the world
• 18:56
  and their ability to source product from both India and
• 18:59
  China. And this is game changing in
• 19:02
  global fast fashion. So that's number one.
• 19:05
  The number two thing I have today is I'm going to talk about
• 19:09
  the first technology in retail that's going from East to West
• 19:14
  rather than West to East. And I'm talking about live
• 19:19
  commerce now. So for many of us in Western
• 19:22
  countries, you just you really don't get the scale of this.
• 19:27
  So to put you in perspective, coming out of just before you
• 19:31
  know, 221 of the world's largest at that time live commerce
• 19:36
  events was Alibaba's Singles day.
• 19:39
  So 11th of November day in 2020, they generated their pre sales
• 19:44
  campaign generated 7.5 billion US in 30 minutes, all live
• 19:52
  commerce enabled. OK, so you go OK, cool, that's
• 19:56
  China, but it's not us. It's massive, but but that's
• 20:00
  still pretty massive. But then let's bring it closer
• 20:02
  to home. So let's talk about L'Oreal now.
• 20:05
  Now L'Oreal is a live commerce aficionado in the region.
• 20:10
  So when I talk about L'Oreal, L'Oreal came out of COVID when
• 20:13
  you know what, we're going to do something online.
• 20:15
  So they launch live commerce in Malaysia.
• 20:19
  So they. Produced and they have a
• 20:21
  obviously a virtual beauty festival.
• 20:23
  They extended to brands like L'Oreal, L'Oreal, brands like
• 20:26
  Garnier, Maybelline, obviously in L'Oreal Paris for example,
• 20:30
  there were eight brands they used when they launched this
• 20:33
  campaign. So Malaysia's 3540 million
• 20:36
  people, it's not so much bigger than Australia.
• 20:38
  So it's a mid sized country. It's not massive.
• 20:40
  They did more sales for L'Oreal in 24 hours through live
• 20:44
  commerce than they would normally do for a whole month.
• 20:49
  This is in recent. Times, you know, this is insane.
• 20:53
  So we're not seeing this technology arrive here.
• 20:56
  But the thing I would say is that Gen Z, right, are the most
• 21:02
  global, global demographic of all time.
• 21:06
  So I can guarantee you they all know no matter where they're
• 21:09
  domiciled, what each other are doing.
• 21:11
  So it will happen, right? It will happen in London, it
• 21:14
  will happen in New York and it will happen in Sydney.
• 21:17
  The second one at L'Oreal case study, which is amazing.
• 21:20
  L'Oreal is so committed now to live commerce in Southeast Asia
• 21:25
  that in Indonesia, in Jakarta, they have 4, so 14, not 414 live
• 21:32
  live commerce studios running 24/7 beebing content around the
• 21:38
  region around Southeast Asia. Every market in Southeast Asia
• 21:42
  is doing double digit e-commerce growth.
• 21:45
  So they're running L'Oreal is running 14 continuous streams
• 21:51
  simultaneously, everything from makeup tutorials to hair care
• 21:56
  product to usage. And this is going completely
• 22:00
  nuts now there. And so obviously Indonesia, say,
• 22:03
  is like 300 million people in the fourth most populous country
• 22:05
  in the world, but they're actually streaming that all out
• 22:09
  around the region as well. So Vietnam experiencing double
• 22:12
  digit e-commerce growth, you know, all these markets.
• 22:14
  So this is wild, right? This is the yeah.
• 22:19
  So this is going to happen in all markets around the world
• 22:21
  because Gen Z will drive this and the next generation
• 22:23
  generation alpha will be all over this.
• 22:26
  Reflex do you think? Because I know that they, they
• 22:29
  shop very different, right? And they've all had these, it's
• 22:32
  been driven by apps and it's always been available to do.
• 22:36
  And then we've not really had it available to do.
• 22:39
  But then do you think it will like, I think it will have a
• 22:44
  place, but I think we've got TikTok shop and like UK and the
• 22:47
  UK. So I'm not with these platforms.
• 22:51
  The content is being produced. They're agnostic of platform.
• 22:54
  It's TikTok shop. So TikTok, Byte Dance, more than
• 22:58
  50% of Talkopedia. Now Talkopedia is the eBay in
• 23:02
  Indonesia. So we're seeing the sale of the
• 23:05
  product live commerce as being the platform, but it's being
• 23:08
  distributed, been sold through Talkopedia, through shopping and
• 23:13
  through and through L'oreal's own own branded channels.
• 23:18
  OK, So you as a consumer, you've got a choice.
• 23:21
  We're not saying we're not saying it's TikTok shops is just
• 23:24
  one of them, right? What we're saying is they're
• 23:27
  producing the content and pushing it across multiple
• 23:29
  platforms. Right.
• 23:30
  Like, and again, this may be a dumb question to me, live
• 23:33
  commerce is it's a theme. Are you saying it's a tech?
• 23:37
  No, it's not a tech. It's it's a basically this
• 23:40
  content stream that is really they're not.
• 23:43
  They aren't really. L'oreal's not fussy if it if a
• 23:46
  consumer sees it via Talkopedia, or a consumer sees it via
• 23:49
  Shoppy, or a consumer sees it via their own owned media brand
• 23:53
  channels. Yeah, I think the likes of like
• 23:56
  doing it right now and let's use Australia, the US and UK, we've
• 24:00
  got like TikTok is like where we can get a lot of that.
• 24:04
  Then the websites I guess could be doing more live commerce, but
• 24:08
  then we're limited in the platforms that do it, whereas
• 24:11
  Asia has been so overly indexed and that's the way they love to
• 24:15
  shop. I said that that's going to be
• 24:17
  the barrier, but I totally, I totally get you.
• 24:20
  And only brands that scale can actually do this.
• 24:24
  Yeah, I think, I think you've got platforms, you've got plat,
• 24:29
  you've got a, there's a distribution piece, an audience
• 24:31
  media distribution piece and there's a platform piece.
• 24:33
  It says the other two pieces. But if you, I mean in Australia
• 24:38
  you saw Live Commerce Australia launch all the work with Oz Hair
• 24:42
  and Beauty, right. Oz Hair and Beauty have got a
• 24:44
  programme running non-stop now in Australia.
• 24:46
  So they're doing it. So Guy Napper and his and his
• 24:50
  crew, so they've been doing it, you know, so this is out there
• 24:53
  in Australia. It has not, it hasn't not
• 24:55
  happened to you. And for them, I don't know how
• 24:59
  many they're talking about hundreds of thousands of social
• 25:02
  media followers. They could mobilise them and
• 25:04
  create a movement like that. So I think to your point, Laura,
• 25:08
  it's not just it's, yeah, there's got to be platform and
• 25:11
  technology capability in the market, but there's also got to
• 25:15
  be audience around those platforms to actually make it,
• 25:19
  if you know what I'm saying. You know, the thing about Oz
• 25:21
  hair and beauty is that they've got a huge following socially, I
• 25:24
  think probably on the ground, right, which allows them then to
• 25:28
  go push back out to the gramme and then push them back to their
• 25:31
  own channels, right? So yeah, you're right.
• 25:35
  But I think those channels that we'll establish, but I think,
• 25:39
  you know, consumers, that people are people, right?
• 25:42
  So, and as we've talked about Gen Z before, they are the most
• 25:45
  connected globally of any generation, right?
• 25:49
  They know each other's good and Australia's a good example,
• 25:51
  right? You know, most kids going to
• 25:54
  university, English is their second language in their home in
• 25:58
  Australia, right? Big population of Asian, Indian
• 26:02
  all around the region, right? We are not, you know, we are not
• 26:07
  European LED country as much as we think we are.
• 26:11
  There is, and this generation particularly is enormous and
• 26:15
  they are already connected and orientated this way.
• 26:17
  And so we're just waiting, we're waiting for the technology
• 26:20
  platforms to become available and we're waiting for the
• 26:23
  distribution mechanism. And, and I, and I, I mean, you
• 26:26
  don't, it's not live commerce, but you only have to look at
• 26:28
  what Jane Lew's done with a show PO in terms of the way she's
• 26:31
  used social media. It's a small step, you know it's
• 26:34
  not a big step. I, I definitely think in the
• 26:36
  more like, I think we'll, I think the aspects of it the that
• 26:41
  all work really well and they haven't been adopted to where
• 26:44
  they have. I just think we've got such a
• 26:46
  different. I remember when live commerce
• 26:49
  tech popped up a few years ago, a lot of the details found and I
• 26:52
  think that it's changed it's changed since then is that the
• 26:56
  people wanted video content but they weren't that and either
• 27:01
  live by right now. However, I've seen one in my.
• 27:05
  I work with a business called TSN which is like.
• 27:09
  I know them well. Shopping Radio.
• 27:11
  The TV shopping channel and when you look at how the consumers
• 27:15
  behave watching TV, it's it's live shopping, right?
• 27:18
  They're literally buying. It's showing them a countdown on
• 27:22
  screen. It's been so fascinating to work
• 27:24
  with a business like that that's aimed at an older demo
• 27:27
  demographic. It's television, but it's got
• 27:30
  all the aspects and the customers love it.
• 27:33
  So with you, I think it's going to pop.
• 27:35
  I just, I think it'll pop a lot differently and what it's done.
• 27:39
  100% I think culturally are different.
• 27:41
  I think, I mean, one of the things we see in Asia around the
• 27:44
  region is when grocery, when grocery shopping, particularly
• 27:47
  after COVID became a mainstream thing to do online, the rising
• 27:52
  tide lifted all boats and you now can't compare live commerce
• 27:56
  in China to anywhere else in the world.
• 27:58
  It's just another world away, right?
• 28:00
  But the thing that's happening in live commerce is grocery in
• 28:03
  China. And what that will do is change
• 28:07
  the nature of every category for live commerce because when
• 28:10
  because grocery shopping is a routine, it's not a novelty,
• 28:14
  it's not a one off. It's not yeah, it happens every
• 28:17
  week. And so when you see that
• 28:19
  behaviour change, you see a lift in all e-commerce.
• 28:23
  And one of the things might I hypothesise coming out of COVID.
• 28:26
  And you think about what Woolworths did with click and
• 28:28
  collect in Australia, right? How how that whole world just
• 28:31
  changed, right? e-commerce soared because all of
• 28:35
  a sudden e-commerce became part of the daily routine.
• 28:39
  And I think that that connection with something we do every day
• 28:43
  meant that then no shopping experiences, which were, you
• 28:47
  know, once a month or once every three months became now, well,
• 28:50
  like, I won't even go. I'll just, I'll, I'll, I can
• 28:53
  just buy that now. And so, yeah, I think it's a
• 28:56
  fascinating time. And I really, I think the way we
• 28:58
  turn up as Australians in live commerce is going to be very
• 29:02
  interesting. And I think it's not going to be
• 29:03
  led by us. But I'm too orphans.
• 29:05
  But but you're going to see some Gen Z shoppers ripping this
• 29:07
  apart, you know? Yeah, I think on on that
• 29:10
  bombshell, I'm just conscious of time.
• 29:12
  Anything else before we close out?
• 29:14
  Not much for me. I I I I've had this week was a
• 29:17
  good fun is good fun topics. Luxury, rampant consumerism, in
• 29:21
  in in fast fashion and and live commerce.
• 29:25
  All pretty exciting stuff. That's all for me.
• 29:27
  I probably the only thing I I find super interesting is that
• 29:31
  just think it's making mine go well, like India and China
• 29:35
  partnering. You wouldn't have thought that
• 29:37
  like they've been like, like India I think is the second or
• 29:43
  third biggest man of global manufacturer for apparel.
• 29:47
  I think they're #2 so the fact that they, they're like, almost
• 29:50
  like joining forces, it's, it'll be interesting.
• 29:55
  It's it's the scale is insane. The tides are shifting and
• 29:58
  that's why I, I think retailers are always looking for what
• 30:02
  what's happening to try and stay ahead of all of these changes.
• 30:05
  And with that, thank you. I'm just look forward to seeing
• 30:08
  you guys next week. Absolutely all about next week.
• 30:11
  I'm I'm away Alex. So I will, I'll you will have to
• 30:13
  do without me. So it might be you might have to
• 30:16
  do 3 and two because I'll be, I'll be skiing in New Zealand.
• 30:20
  Oh, nice, nice, So. Yeah, I'll do it.
• 30:23
  Doing it tough. Take care.
• 30:26
  Hey, guys, bye.