Ginette Moulin, the owner of French department store group Galeries Lafayette, died on Sunday at the age of 98, the group confirmed to the AFP agency on Tuesday.
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Moulin was the granddaughter of Théophile Bader, who founded the department store with Alphonse Kahn in Paris in 1894.
With her family, Moulin was ranked 34th in Challenges magazine’s list of French billionaires, with a business fortune worth €4.05 billion.
In August 2024, Moulin handed over the reins of the family holding company Motier to her son-in-law Philippe Houzé, assisted by her grandchildren Nicolas Houzé, Guillaume Houzé and Arthur Lemoine. The group said the handover had been planned “well in advance.”
Moulin was a key figure in the family history of Galeries Lafayette. She personally knew the members of the five generations that successively took the helm of the iconic Parisian store with its flagship on Boulevard Haussmann.
She was born on February 7 1927, the daughter of Max Heilbronn, a resistance fighter deported during World War II to Buchenwald, Germany, where he met Etienne Moulin, the man who later was to marry his daughter.
As of January 2025, the Galeries Lafayette group operated 57 branches in France, of which 19 are directly owned and 38 operated by franchised partners.
In January, the group said it is planning to close by the end of 2025 its two branches in Marseilles, which “have been posting recurring losses for several years,” and pledged to “promote the redeployment of the 145 employees concerned.”
At the end of 2023, the group sold another iconic Parisian department store, the Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville (BHV), ceding it to a small property company named Société des Grands Magasins (SGM).
Philippe Houzé, who was named Galeries Lafayette board chairman in 2005 and will succeed Moulin as president of Motier, is the husband of Christiane, one of the Moulin couple’s three daughters.
“He will be tasked with overseeing the growth of the Moulin family’s assets, which include the Galeries Lafayette group, [French e-tailer] La Redoute, and a significant stake in the Carrefour group,” said Galeries Lafayette in January.
The Galeries Lafayette owners have been major shareholders of French grocery distribution giant Carrefour since 2014, even if they are not the main shareholder from March 2024, when Carrefour bought 25 million of its shares from Galfa, a company owned by the Moulin family.
In this capacity, Philippe Houzé is vice-chairman of the board of directors at Carrefour, which also includes Patricia Moulin Lemoine, Ginette Moulin’s eldest daughter.
Three of Ginette Moulin’s grandchildren, Nicolas Houzé, Guillaume Houzé and Arthur Lemoine, were also appointed vice-presidents of Motier.
“Planned” handover
This governance change came at the end of a chaotic period for the Galeries Lafayette group, which for several years has been impacted by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on its global business.
The pandemic and related travel restrictions deprived the group of large parts of its clientèle, and business was severely undermined by the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
In mid-December, event sales website BazarChic, owned by Galeries Lafayette, began a “winding down procedure” that various media outlets said would threaten about 100 jobs, unless a buyer is found.
Last June, Galeries Lafayette indicated that in 2024 it wanted to recapture its 2019 revenue level, equivalent to €3.85 billion generated by the chain as a whole. Galeries Lafayette, which celebrated its 130th anniversary in 2024, reported €3.6 billion worth of sales by the chain in 2023, of which €1.9 billion by the Boulevard Haussmann branch alone.
Beauty consumers prefer shopping in-store for cosmetics, demand for international beauty products is surging, and 39% of parents have taken skincare advice from their children. These are a sample of findings from retail giant Boots’ latest annual Beauty Trends Report.
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The trends “set to shape the industry in 2025 and beyond” and taken from over 16.9 million active Boots Advantage Card customers, combined with 1,300 of its specialist in-house expert trend analysis reveal six themes “set to take the beauty industry by storm in the year ahead”. They include:
Under the heading ‘URL to IRL: Beauty without borders’, the report says digitally native beauty brands are quickly gaining viral fame online and making their way to high street stores at unprecedented speed.
Demand for international beauty products is surging, with one Korean skincare product selling every 30 seconds at Boots, and it now represents over 10% of the retailer’s ‘Everyday Skincare’ category’s sales.
Although social media platforms remain popular for product discovery, 94% of beauty consumers prefer shopping in-store for cosmetics.
The ‘Intergenerational Beauty’ category shows a flow of beauty advice reversing with 39% of parents having taken skincare advice from their children. Spending over eight hours a day online, Gen ‘Zalpha’ is “shaping industry trends and influencing purchasing decisions beyond their generational bounds”.
Meanwhile, more men are exploring the beauty category, with a 14% increase in men shopping for beauty products at Boots in the last year alone, the report says.
Under the ‘Science of Slumber: Beauty Sleep Elevated’ header, tiredness is ranking as the highest factor for negatively impacting skin and consumers are investing in their night-time routine to unlock their skin’s full potential.
Driven by trends like #morningshed and #sleepmaxxing on TikTok, consumers are seeking beauty hacks and wellness practices to optimise their beauty sleep. And its No7 brand scientists and the University of Manchester have discovered novel insights into skin cell rhythms at night, emphasising the importance of supporting skin during sleep.
Under the ‘High/Low Beauty’ banner, it says shoppers are investing in classic, luxury staples while simultaneously experimenting with fleeting trends and affordable brands.
More than a third of Boots Advantage Card members shopped both budget-friendly make-up and premium cosmetics in 2024, with a 14% year-on-year increase in premium beauty sales at its stores. Consumers are also seeking budget-friendly beauty to help their money stretch further, with one product from Boots’ own-brand skincare range selling every two seconds.
‘Moonscapsing: Scent as Self-Care’ shows fragrance “is becoming a powerful tool for self-care, mood enhancement and an expression of identity”. The survey reveals 78% of UK consumers believe that fragrance can improve mental wellbeing, highlighting the growing awareness of the mind-body connection. Boots Advantage Card data also reveals 42% of shoppers bought more than one type of fragrance in a year, as opposed to opting for just one signature scent.
Finally under ‘Enter the Health Hackers’, the healthcare and aesthetics industries are merging, with Med Spa-inspired technologies and ‘prejuvenation’ practices influencing beauty routines. Some 78% of consumers believe prevention is better than cure and are actively seeking to improve their health.
And there’s an increasing demand for advanced beauty devices led to a 536% spike in sales of LED masks at Boots in 2024.
Premium formalwear brand LK Bennett has posted a loss with its accounts for the year to last January. The London-based womenswear, footwear and accessories retailer said in a Companies House accounts filing that it made a pre-tax loss of £3.1 million in the 12 months compared to a pre-tax profit of £2.3 million in the previous period.
LK Bennett
We don’t yet know any details of how it’s fared since then with its accounts filing for its next financial year not likely to come until later this year or early next.
The company swinging to a pre-tax loss came as it also saw revenue falling to £42.1 million from £48.7 million during the year. The gross margin also fell quite sharply from 61.9% in the previous financial period 254.9% this time. The net loss for the year was £3.5 million after a net profit of £1.8 million in the previous year.
It said it was affected by the tough economic climate in the UK as well as global events that added to inflation and the overall cost-of-living crisis.
While it operates stores in mainland Europe and Ireland, the UK is an important part of the company’s business both for its physical stores and it’s online store and it added that it’s important that it “reacts to the marketplace and relevant changes in consumer spending as rapidly as possible”.
What that meant was an intention post period end “to review customer requirements and ensure the product range matches these expectations”. In practice that has included adding relevant new categories and adding to its size range.
At the time, the directors also added that they were remain confident about the businesses ability to react positively to the challenges out there.
UK online spending rose 2.9% year on year to hit £8.1 billion in January, according to new data from Adobe Analytics. It followed annual growth of 19.9% in December, although this was impacted by Cyber Monday falling in December 2024 against November 2023.
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Overall, spend increased 5.9% during the whole festive period and with the almost-3% January rise, Adobe said it indicated “continued consumer confidence and online spending power following 2024’s record holiday spending period”.
So what were people buying last month? Health & wellbeing were key, we’re told.
“Shoppers looking to start the year well, focused their spending [here]”, Adobe explained. “Consumers browsed online to upgrade their home gym, with online purchases of exercise equipment rising by 60% when compared with the previous month. Health and nutrition were top of mind, as online spending on natural supplements including multivitamin powders and pills increased by 26% and fruits and vegetables by 24%”.
Consumers also enjoyed discount deals across categories including apparel (-5.2%), sporting goods (-1.9%), furniture (-2.9%), and appliances (-1.2%), “as retailers kept prices competitive to stimulate demand after record spending between November [and] December”.
But while they may have been spending freely, shoppers were also still reliant on buy now, pay later (BNPL) services to boost their spending capabilities. In January, £1.26 billion was spent via BNPL, accounting for 15% of total January spend, and up 3.3% compared to January 2024.
Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights at Adobe commented: “After indulging in deep online discounts during the holiday season, shoppers kicked off 2025 by putting their money where their health is and spending on items to boost their wellness and fitness. Consumers also took advantage of continued discounting in January with online retailers dropping the prices of apparel, sporting goods, furniture and appliances in an effort to avoid a post-Christmas spending hangover.”
The Adobe Digital Insights team used Adobe Analytics to analyse hundreds-of-millions of visits to retail sites from UK consumers in January 2025, tracking 100 million stock-keeping units (SKUs) across 18 product categories.
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