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As the world becomes increasingly connected, retail brands know the key to success is to think local but act global.
The growing globalisation of retail is part of the reason NRF decided to launch a show in Asia – this year’s event being the second – and in September of this year in Paris, for the first time in Europe.
“We want to start a global conversation,” NRF senior VP Jill Dvorak told delegates on the opening of Day Two of NRF’25 Asia Pacific edition on Wednesday. With a membership spanning retailers of all sizes across 45 countries, NRF considers itself “a voice for every retailer, for every retail job, it’s educating and inspiring and communicating to this incredibly important group,” said Dvorak. “We know that retail communities not only act locally, but they also act globally.”
Building on a global vision
Fifteen years ago, Jamie Salter had a vision to redefine brand building. Since then, the founder, chairman and CEO of Authentic Brands Group has built the business into the world’s second-largest IP licensing company.
“The most important thing in Authentic today is to think local and act global,” Salter told delegates.
So when it looks at brands to buy, it eyes opportunities for international expansion. Dockers, for example, which ABG bought from Levi Strauss last month for US$311 million, derives 53 per cent of its sales outside the US, despite being an American brand.
“That was really important for us, because it had such a good platform around the globe, specifically in Latin America where it is incredibly strong, and in certain parts of Europe. The opportunity is, Can we expand this brand globally? And the answer is yes, because it has a global footprint.”
ABG is selling products in 150 countries, and about 40 per cent of its business is outside the US. Salter wants to drive that to 50 per cent.
Authentic’s annual turnover is around US$32 billion, with 50 per cent of its non-US retail sales through its own retail channel – around 6000 standalone stores and almost 24,000 shops in shops – dedicated brand spaces in department stores, (Remember, Authentic has more than 40 core brands, so a single Macy’s department store, for example, will have multiple stores under different banners).
A fashion business or a tech business?
At 63, the Canadian billionaire who created Hilco before launching Authentic, Salter admits he is “an older person in this business”. But he advises younger people eyeing a career in fashion to thinking about going into the technology business.
“We’ve been very smart about building Authentic as a technology company rather than a fashion company, because at the end of the day, it really is all about the data, and now people actually want to work at ABG, because we are really a digital company in the way we are running the business,” he said.
People don’t join the company to work for Reebok or Juicy Couture – they join “because they are going to work for Authentic Brands, and it’s the fastest-growing consumer company in the digital world that we are living in today”.
Wesley Chu, Apac president at Authentic Brands, who shared the stage with Salter, spoke more about the company’s international expansion strategy, stressing that it approaches each region differently, based on the ethos of ‘thinking local, acting global’.
“Apac as a region has been accelerating over the last two or three years. We really focus on two or three main things: One is being best-in-class operators on social and digital. Asia-Pacific consumers are among the most connected consumers. They know everything that’s happening, including what’s going on in the US, whereas, typically, a North American consumer is not really caring what’s happening in this part of the world. So these are the things that we really focus on, because we want to know our consumer.
“As a company, we focus a lot of our attention on what consumers want, and what consumers are worrying about. Where they are shopping, and what social media channels they are using. Then we push our partners to really focus on growth opportunities.
“The Korean market is different from the Japanese market. The Chinese market is different from the Southeast Asian market. Southeast Asia is 10 countries, 10 currencies, and 10 cultures. So, we need to have more boots on the ground and we have to be very strategic about that.”
That includes knowing how to tell our brand story in the local language. With that in mind, Salter and Chu head to Shanghai this week to open Authentic’s new Asia Pacific headquarters in Shanghai, with legal, marketing, and public relations teams to speak to partners directly and support them.
The rise and rise of Gen Z
When it comes to the Asian markets, acting local, thinking local means embracing Gen Z. As Anson Bailey, head of consumer and retail, Apac, with KPMG shared in another presentation, there are 300 million Gen Z consumers in China and another 270 million in Southeast and South Asia, “reshaping retail”.
Shyam Unnikrishnan, managing partner of India at Bain, described Gen Z as “digitally more savvy and spending more online”. Of the 200 million consumers who shop online for fashion in India, 60 to 70 million are Gen Z and they already contribute to nearly one quarter of the GMV.
He said Gen Z are heavily inspired by influencers, so retailers need to use technology, data and personalisation to reach out to them effectively and service them.
Nandita Sinha, CEO of Indian marketplace Myntra confirms Gen Z are India’s fastest-growing shopper segment, so Myntra needed to dive deep into understanding what really drives that generation of consumer and how they differ from their millennial counterparts.
First up, where millennials were ‘brand-first’ consumers, heavily into brands, Gen Z are more ‘trend-first’. Indian millennial consumers bought brands to signal their lifestyles were moving up the ladder. “But Gen Z consumers are looking for trends and getting inspired by social media, both global and local, and very, very fast adopt those trends, which has been eye-opening for us.
“Trends are transient, and therefore to adopt the trends, they need to be valued first also. So they are trend-driven, but value first, and that is something which is very unique about these consumers. I think the second thing is that they are very, very community-oriented.
“Social media for them is just not good scrolling, it’s not just looking through various pieces of content, but it is really where they find their community, their brand searches, trend searches, lifestyle choices searches actually start, or influencers start on social media and and they they get influenced and get informed by what they see around influencers and people that they trust. But they also feel heard in that community of social commerce.”
That means two-way engagement is essential to connecting with them. “They are not only passive consumers of social media, but also want to actively contribute.”
The third unique characteristic of Gen Z consumers is that they don’t want just exposure; they want engagement. “Again, if you look at the shopping journey and how cataloguing has been traditionally, I think we have to move a lot of those paradigms, because you had to create a lot of engagement-driven constructs with them, and authenticity is very important. They are not looking only at celebrities to influence them, but rather at people who are like them to inform their decisions.”
Another factor that has emerged – especially post-pandemic – with Gen Z consumers is well-being. “This is important, especially in a category like beauty, where they are placing a premium on well-being versus just beauty. A lot of the beauty trends are centred around how to really be the best version of yourself, rather than just adopting a trend which makes you look good in the moment.
And the final factor, she says, is localisation, which is very important in India. “While Indian consumers are very similar to their global counterparts, they are also very driven by what their local communities and local cultural moments are that are happening around them and local influencers.
She said Myntra’s most successful creator outreaches have been when the company has tapped into the local ecosystem of creators and created content, both on and off platform, which is very localised, driven by local cultures and local insights and point-in-time moments in the local ecosystem.
“There is a little bit of local, Indian and global happening all together with these consumers.”
AI’s presence
Typically, AI cropped up in the morning’s presentations again. Authentic Brands’ Salter explained how its 540 employees were actively encouraged to use AI tools.
“We’ve learned that technology drives growth and continues to drive the business. We try to tell our people don’t worry about your job, worry about getting smarter and faster. If you get smarter and faster, there’s a good chance you’re going to move up in this organisation. So when somebody comes in and says, I’d like to hire an assistant, and our response is, Can you do it with AI? And they look at us sometimes a little funny. I can tell you, in the last 24 months, we have been hiring far fewer people, because you can do it with AI.”
Authentic employs 27 lawyers writing contracts, but despite the growing brand portfolio it has not hired a lawyer in the past year because 95 per cent of its legal documents are now drafted using AI. “We have to finish them off, because AI is not perfect, but 95 per cent of that negotiation is actually done with AI.”
- Inside Retail’s coverage of NRF’25 Asia Pacific edition is brought to you by Centric Software.
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