Now that its deal with private equity firm Sycamore Partners has been terminated, Victoria’s Secret plans to concentrate on new merchandise, marketing and the readjustment of the c-suite. The innerwear business, owned by parent company L Brands , will focus on establishing Victoria’s Secret as a stand-alone company. The Bath & Body Works division will be separated.

The Victoria’s Secret team has been very active in improving the quality of fashion and the quantity of inventory, managing expenditures, examining all costs and being in the best position; changing the mix of merchandise, brand marketing and again, carefully managing inventory as we emerge from the pandemic and get back to normal so the Victoria brand can be in the best possible position.

But much like the rest of the retail industry, Victoria’s Secret has suffered amid the pandemic, the crisis that caused both its stores and those of Bath & Body Works in North America to close in March. The Victoria’s Secret and Pink e-commerce businesses also briefly went dark.

Giving relief to a clothing industry starved of sales, the South African government has published a more detailed list of clothing that can be sold in the first phase of easing its lockdown. On May 1, the country rolled back one of the world’s strictest COVID-19 lockdowns, seeking a balance between containing the disease and providing much-needed relief for the economy.

Under regulations, the government permitted sale of categories including all children’s and baby wear, maternity wear, adult sleepwear, underwear and footwear, outwear items such as exercise apparel and winter clothes such as knitwear. The list was welcomed by the National Clothing Retail Federation, which includes retailers likeTFG, Mr Price, Truworths, Woolworths, Pick n Pay Clothing and Queenspark, and by the Apparel & Textiles Association of South Africa (ATASA).

ATASA Deputy Chairperson Herman Pillay said the move would help its manufacturer members recover from lockdown and give “employees the opportunity to be gainfully employed yet again. Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ebrahim Patel said that resumption of sales would help greater production and commerce in the sector.

Though initially clothing and general merchandise retailer Pepkor expects reasonable sales, levels are expected to taper off due to increased unemployment as a result of the impact of the coronavirus on companies.

Marks & Spencer has launched a huge half-price clothing sale as the high street shutdown leaves retailers with mountains of unsold spring and summer fashion. The retailer has called the promotional blitz a rainbow sale and is handing 10 per cent of takings to NHS charities. The sale promises shoppers discounts of at least 50 per cent across the store. The womenswear offers include summer dresses reduced from £40 to £15 and half-price jumpsuits at £29.

M&S is donating 10 per cent of the purchase price, excluding VAT, of all rainbow sale items to NHS Charities Together. Shoppers can get online orders via a contactless home delivery service or from collection points in stores situated next to food halls. They will also be able pick up bargains in the retailer’s 290 shared clothing and food branches, which have kept sections of their fashion floors open to sell clothing essentials.

The retailer has also confirmed its new clothing and homewares boss, Richard Price, will arrive in July. He has worked at M&S before, for seven years, but left in 2012 after becoming disillusioned with the retailer’s strategy at the time.

Price is returning to M&S as the pandemic sends shockwaves through the retail industry. High street retailers have been scrambling to cancel stockorders for next season as the impact of the crisis points to weak demand for the rest of the year.

Messe Frankfurt, the organizers of Techtextil North America and Texprocess Americas, has rescheduled both the events to October 1 to 3, 2020 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Due to the worldwide spread of Covid-19, the organizer had initially postponed both the events to December 2020.

The new dates have received an overwhelmingly positive response from the exhibitor base thus far. The team is looking forward to aiding in the global recovery of the Technical Textiles, Nonwovens, and Sewn Products industries by providing a platform where industry professionals can once again gather to exchange knowledge, new ideas, and business.

In an open letter, luxury retailers have urged the fashion retail sector to rethink attitudes towards seasonality and discounting post COVID-19. The retailers also called on the industry to also consider offering a more balanced flow of deliveries throughout the seasons. The consortium included Selfridges, Liberty London and Harvey Nichols, who urged the sector to delay end-of-season promotions to January for autumn/winter collections and to July for spring/summer.

The consortium agreed the current environment although challenging, presents an opportunity for a fundamental and welcome change that will simplify their businesses, making them more environmentally and socially sustainable and ultimately align them more closely with customers’ needs.

The retailers hope to achieve this by adjusting the seasonality and flow of both women’s wear and menswear goods, starting with the autumn/winter 2020 season. Their other initiatives include reviewing and adapting fashion shows, less fabric and inventory waste and utilising digital showrooms.

Signatories to the letter include: Acne Studios chief executive Mattias Magnusson, Liberty buying director Sarah Coonan, Mytheresa president Michael Kliger, and Brown Thomas fashion director Shelley Corkey, etc.

A venture called Viva China will buy 1.09 billion shares in Bossini, paying just HK$46.6 million ($6 million) for 66.6 per cent of Bossini’s issued capital. After the deal concludd, the buyer will be required under Hong Kong stock exchange rules to offer to buy out the remaining shareholders, which would lead to the company’s privatization. However, in a stock-exchange filing, Viva China said it intends to maintain the company’s listing.

The offer for Bossini’s shares represents a discount of 71 per cent to the 14.8 cents Bossini shares last traded at and an 87.39-per-cent discount to its December net asset value of $560.2 million. The offer reflects the deteriorating financial performance of Bossini Group and its widening loss in the latest financial years,” says the filing. A further loss is expected in the current trading year, with the company recording a $93 million deficit in the first half.

Viva China Group is principally engaged in sports competition, event production and facilities management, sports, sports-talent management and last year expanded into the development, design and sale of sports, health and leisure consumables. The group currently owns about 13.42 per cent of Li Ning Company, the sports apparel retail brand established by its namesake, a former Chinese Olympiad. Li Ning facilitated an introduction between Bossini and Viva China and is effectively underwriting the purchase through companies he controls.

Karachi Cotton Brokers Forum (KCBF), in their budget proposals for the year 2020-21 sent to Prime Minister Imran Khan, have demanded a separate cotton ministry to look after the affairs of the cotton trade exclusively. According to the proposals, KCBF demands the government should impose ban on cultivation of paddy and sugarcane and setting up of sugar mills in the areas already earmarked for cultivation of cotton. A system should be evolved for monitoring of the cotton at district level. The government should fix the support price of cotton in order to encourage the farmers.

The government should mobilize all resources at federal and provincial level to increase per acre yield and to bring more area under cotton cultivation particularly in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It should also encourage farmers who are taking interest in cultivation of organic cotton in Balochistan.

Also, the government should ensure the supply of certified cotton seed/BT seed to the growers. Awareness should be created among growers for using modern integrated pest management system. All the cotton research institutes of the country should work hard to make virus resistance cotton seed varieties.

KCBF also demands that government should made necessary arrangements to import pure and certified seeds in small packing instead of importing in bulk. It is pertinent to mention here that large quantity of cotton crop was destroyed every year due to the supply of adulterated pesticides to the growers.

India has initiated an anti-subsidy investigation for imposition of countervailing duty (CVD) on imports of jute products, including jute sacking bags, jute sacking cloth and jute yarn, from Bangladesh. Director General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) of India has already invited Bangladesh for consultation, a condition prior to starting such an investigation. A country can impose countervailing duty on import of subsidized products from any other country to offset injury caused to local products due to the import of subsidized imports. The consultation is supposed to be held through video conferencing by May 15. Bangladesh commerce ministry has already requested India to defer the consultation until June 15 considering the prevailing situation of COVID-19 pandemic.

According to trade officials, this move would come as a huge threat to export of jute products to India, which is a large market for jute products, where Bangladesh’s export of the products has been dwindling since 2017 following imposition of anti-dumping duty by the country.

India in April, 2017 imposed anti-dumping duty ranging from $19 to $351.72 a tonne on import of jute products including jute yarn, twine, hessian fabric and jute sacking bags from Bangladesh for five years. Bangladesh annually exports jute and jute products worth around $200 million to India. Trade officials and industry insiders said that India has been creating barriers one after another to import of the products to hamper Bangladesh’s export. Imposition of this duty will severely impact export of the products.

A new study from Bain & Company states in the next three months, though the luxury industry’s total earnings are likely to spiral down by 60 per cent, increased spending by Chinese consumers will lead to the recovery of the market. Around 50 per cent of luxury purchases are likely to come from mainland China. The country accounted for almost 35 per cent of global luxury spending last year, but Bain suggested it will increase exponentially despite the recent lockdowns and the threatening presence of COVID-19.

Popular brands are reportedly seeing a surge in demand as well as China finally eased stay-at-home measures. The number of store visits, on the one hand, fell half compared to last year.

Bain expects by 2025, the market would reach new high levels between €320 billion and €330 billion. China would account for half of the global luxury spending worldwide, while the rest of Asia will follow closely. On the other hand, the United States, Europe, and Japan will experience a dip and stabilisation phase before recovery.

Founders of the Italian fashion group Dolce & Gabbana, said that the group is likely to lose a lot this year, after the coronavirus emergency.

The unlisted group is one of Italy's 10 largest fashion groups by revenue, with sales of €1.38 billion in the year that ended in March 2019.

The COVID-19 crisis, which hit China late last year before spreading to Europe and the United States, has kept customers at home and forced retailers to shut stores, putting a crushing halt to a decade of spectacular growth for high-end brands.

Global sales of luxury goods are expected to decline by 50 per cent to 60 per cent in the second quarter of the year, consultancy Bain said recently.

Dolce & Gabbana said that after the pandemic the fashion industry would have to adapt to the new lifestyles of customers, with fewer fashion shows and more on-line shopping.