Courage

Sarah Holbrook

About Sarah Holbrook

Sarah Holbrook is a media marketer and a candidate for an advanced degree in Foresight at the University of Houston's Graduate School of Technology. She is a graduate of FIT's Global Fashion Management Master's program. She writes about future trends, innovative technology, and their significance to the retail and fashion industries.

Is the Time Right for a North American Supply Chain?

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Powerful forces are weighing on existing supply chains. We needn’t look far to notice the effects that shipping delays, rising costs, geopolitical headwinds, climate instability, and the need for secure access to goods have inflicted on our industry. Rather than moaning or gnashing our teeth, we should view these systemic disruptions as an opportunity to create change. While we excel at avoiding disruption and uncertainty, when backed against the wall, we innovate. Experts Converge In a session at the Milken Institute Global Summit 2022, …

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A New World Order for Retail

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The retail industry has been a major beneficiary of the waves of globalization iterations in recent decades. We have optimized our supply chains, barely raised prices in years, and consumers have rewarded retailers by buying far more than they need, sometimes shedding goods in a Marie Kondo inspired purge, only to go out and buy more and more stuff. Until now. Early in the pandemic, consumers experienced a shift in the staples system as our Costco, normally dense with Lysol Wipes or buffeted by mountains of toilet paper packs, became …

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What’s in Your Vending Machine?

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The jury is still out on the long-term value of NFTs as a digital ownership model, but SXSW 2022 was steeped in NFT hype. The conference hosted 20+ sessions anchored in serious consideration of the topic, while in another room NFTs of digital art objects were available (to download) for a price. A quick NFT refresher: "A non-fungible token is a blockchain-housed identifier (or piece of individual code) that represents the terms of a smart contract granted upon the exchange of a singular digital object. This object could be a virtual property …

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SXSW Rises Again

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The masked and the unmasked joined forces in Austin after a two-year South by Southwest (SXSW) drought. The sidewalk terror normally caused by the Lime scooter brigades was diminished by smaller crowds overall, yet the conference was surprisingly robust. An array of 15 tracks were staged this year. Retail and fashion didn't earn stand-alone track status but held sway in selected technology and futures talks. Megatrends A few megatrends dominated the conference sessions. I will briefly describe the trend, then consider the implications …

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Balmain, Barbie and the Blockchain

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Barbie may have struggled with math in the 1990s, but now she is minting NFT's and logging some entries to the blockchain. Barbie's latest luxury collaboration is with Balmain, but don't expect to find a decked-out plastic doll in the new Macy's-ified TOYS"R"US. If this Barbie is your desire, Mattel is holding an online auction where you can bid on a digitized one-of-a-kind replicant, with a doll-sized equivalent of the clothes to dress your own Barbie if you place the winning bid. There are three Barbie/NFT items being auctioned. The site …

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One Step Closer to Circularity

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As an industry, we have long averted our eyes from the nasty environmental side effects of the manufacturing processes and the distribution of the things we sell. We continue with business as usual, giving a nod to sustainability as the overwhelming scale of the problem has stunned us into inertia. Our immediate business survival overrules the difficult systemic change that climate change and environmental pollution demand. But honestly, how can any of us sidestep the issue (while munching on avocado toast) as we operate in a period of …

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Let the Games Begin

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The breathless hype of Facebook's name-change announcement, Microsoft's Mesh introduction, and Nvidia's Omniverse keynote leave us in anticipation of a big metaverse reveal one day in the future. But the metaverse has been out there for some time now. The experimentation and activations currently underway by technology-forward retailers, fashion brands, and gaming platforms have begun to seep into the commercial landscape. Ecommerce will be complemented by M-commerce as the technology develops. For now, meta-hype has nearly snuffed out the …

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Brands Dip into Resales

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That 2015 Balenciaga teddy bear faux fur coat that I decided against haunts me to this day. While the luxury resale market is expanding along with the rest of the category, that coat in my size is still hanging in someone else's closet. It is not alone; a recent report from BoF Insights estimates that approximately 95 percent of resaleable fashion inventory is hanging in the homes of the original buyer, much of it sitting idle. Pay It Forward The global addressable inventory represents $2 trillion in potential earnings for resale platforms …

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