French ready-to-wear label Ba&sh is “growing again”. It saw a troubled 2024 at the end of which Ba&sh was forced to enter a fast-track protection procedure in order for the Paris trade court to approve the restructuring of its parent company Muse Holding’s financial debt. But Ba&sh announced its refinancing plan was completed on March 18, enabling the label to secure “the continued support of its partner banks.” Ba&sh also said that it has increased the value of its equity thanks to a €15 million injection of capital by its shareholders, to fund the ‘New Beginnings’ strategic and operational plan.
Ba&sh recently opened a pre-owned fashion store in Paris – Ba&sh
“This is a turning point for Ba&sh, the start of a new cycle in which we are going back to basics. Thanks to our partners’ support, and the positive trend in our business, we have strengthened our financial position with a view to continuing to grow, especially internationally. We are more than ever looking ahead to the future,” said Ba&sh’s three founders in a statement sent to FashionNetwork.com on March 24.
Last year, founders Barbara Boccara, Sharon Krief and Dan Arrouas took charge again of the label they had launched in 2003, deploying a four-pronged action plan to get the label back on a growth track. According to the figures provided to FashionNetwork.com, the plan’s initial measures are having some effect.
Ba&sh said that in 2024 it generated revenue of €300 million, of which 25% was online. The label has 1,400 employees and operates 320 stores. Ba&sh said that “as of March 15, our 2025 revenue in like-for-like terms has grown by nearly 2.6% worldwide compared to 2024, driven by positive results in Europe and Asia, while performance has been sluggish on the North American market.” Ba&sh added that revenue growth between March 1 and 19 was 11%. Since the start of the year, it said that full-price sales have increased by 21% compared to the same period a year earlier, while full-price sales online grew by 15%. Of course, Ba&sh will have to keep growing for the entire fiscal year, but its management has made significant changes to boost this.
In North America, the label has hired a new managing director to replace Desirée Thomas, who had taken charge of the region in 2021. The new executive is the former head of USA for ready-to-wear brand Iro, who later set up a jewellery brand in Los Angeles, and also introduced French cuisine concept Caviar Kaspia in the US.
At the new Parisian headquarters, Ba&sh said it has also hired a new head of retail, following the departure of Marie-Dominique Marpault, who joined APC. It is a crucial role for Ba&sh, which has heralded a streamlining of its store fleet and is keen to boost its online business.
In 2024, Italy consolidated its position as one of the world’s favourite tourist shopping destinations, the first in Europe. Tax-free spending by non-EU visitors in the country continues to grow, having risen by 15% last year, and by 20% if we take into account the impact of the new minimum threshold of €70 to qualify for VAT rebate, introduced by Italy’s Ministry of Tourism in 2024. Among the nationalities with the highest share of tax-free spending in Italy, US tourists led with a 25% share, followed by Chinese (11%) and Middle Eastern tourists (10%). These are some of the findings of the survey presented in Milan on Tuesday, March 25, by Global Blue, the international shopping tax refund company, during the Trend&Insight 2025 event. For the occasion, Deloitte also presented its first exclusive report on tourism and retail in Italy, which analysed domestic and European tourist flows as well as non-EU ones.
A panel at the Trend&Insight 2025 event in Milan – Global Blue
Tax-free shopping in Italy recorded a CAGR of 6.6% between 2019 and 2024, with notable year-on-year spending growth recorded by Turkish tourists (up 39%) and Chinese ones (up 35%). (U)HNWIs, i.e. those who spent more than €20,000 on tax-free purchases in 2024, contributed significantly to the results. (U)HNWIs accounted for only 3% of total shoppers, but for 30% of total spending. Significantly, one third of (U)HNWIs worldwide chose to shop in Italy in 2024.
In terms of product categories, 34% of tax-free spending in Italy in 2024 was on ready-to-wear, with a 12% increase over 2023 and an average spend per shopper of €1,200. Leather goods and handbags followed with a 24% share, a 4% rise and a €1,300 average spend, while jewellery recorded a 9% share, with a 5% rise and a €1,500 average spend. Despite accounting for only a 7% share, spending in the watches category increased by 32% over 2023, with an average per shopper of €6,600.
Chinese tourists’ spend at pre-Covid levels, notably in Japan
The 20% growth in tax-free shopping spending in Italy was consistent with worldwide trends. Tax-free spending in Europe as a whole rose by 16%, while Asia was the real global driver, recording a 61% spending growth in 2024, chiefly thanks to Japan’s record performance.
Tax-free spending rebounded slowly in the initial post-pandemic years, but in 2024 its performance overtook that of the luxury market as a whole, currently going through a weak patch. In the 2019-2024 period, the luxury sector posted a 5% CAGR, and the tax-free shopping sector an 8.5% one. The tax-free sector’s resilience was the result of three factors: a 13% increase in travellers and a 29% one in tourist shoppers worldwide; more affordable prices stimulating purchases; and a higher-spending consumer base than the luxury market as a whole, with a 68% share of aspirational shoppers vs a 36% one.
Nationality-wise, in 2024 Chinese tourists returned to and even exceeded, by 12%, their 2019 spending levels. They accounted for 24% of global tax-free spend, thanks to an 81% increase over 2023. Notably, their purchases were chiefly concentrated in Asia: 55% of Chinese spending took place in Japan (whose share was up by 13 points over 2023), equivalent to a whopping 139% spending increase in the country, while Chinese tax-free spending in Europe rose by ‘only’ 35%.
US tourists accounted for 14% of global tax-free spending in 2024, a 20% rise. This was the result of the US dollar’s appreciation, the US stock market’s performance, and the increased global popularity of the many brands that decided to open stores in the USA in 2023. Besides, US shoppers are increasingly high-spending: American UHNWIs increased their spend by 50%, contributing to 10% of total spending.
Category-wise, spending grew for both lifestyle and premium/luxury brands, with the latter’s CAGR in 2019-2024 at 9.5%, vs 6.3% for the former. Proof that tax-free shopping is still a key growth driver for the luxury market, which is generally struggling to increase its revenue, as Global Blue noted. Interestingly, shoppers who bought across the luxury, premium and lifestyle categories increased their spend by 39%, with an average spend of €3,400.
Expectations for 2025
US consumers will be the market’s driving force in 2025, owing to their strong desire to travel (91% of US respondents in a Global Blue survey said they want to visit Europe this year), a record increase in passport numbers (50% of Americans have one, up 5 points over 2019), and a desire to increase luxury spending. Conversely, Chinese tax-free spending will continue to grow at a slower pace, given also that visas for tour groups are harder to come by, though the situation could change in the second half of the year.
The Deloitte study
During Trend&Insight 2025, Global Blue presented part of the exclusive ‘Travellers’ Retail Market in Italy’ study commissioned to Deloitte. The study found that Italy’s current macroeconomic environment is favourable to international tourism, with rising foreign demand playing a positive part in the country’s 2024-2025 GDP growth.
According to the study, in 2024 the offline retail market’s value in Italy was estimated at approximately €240 billion, of which 27% (€63 billion) was attributable to product categories related to discretionary shopping, whose revenue returned to pre-Covid levels thanks to a 1% CAGR in 2019-2024.
About 85% of discretionary shopping revenue (€54 billion) was generated by categories of interest to tourists in Italy, including fashion and apparel, perfume and cosmetics, footwear, leather goods, handbags and accessories, watches and jewellery.
As for tourist flows, approximately 152 million tourists (both domestic and foreign) visited Italian destinations in 2024, up 1% over 2023. The number of international tourists visiting Italy did not reach pre-Covid levels, but grew by 3% in 2024. Domestic tourism instead posted a 3% decrease compared to 2023, also due to the decrease in Italian household purchasing power.
In 2024, about 35 million people visited Italy on holiday, spending on average more than those who visited the country for other reasons. The average length of stay in Italy by foreign tourists was slightly lower than in 2023, from 4.5 nights to 4.1 nights. However, there was a shift towards higher-end hotels, in line with the positive revenue trend for 5-star and 4-star hotels, where spending per stay grew by 11% and 10% respectively.
Excluding accommodation expenses, the total expenditure incurred by international tourists in Italy in 2024 was about €54 billion, up 5% over 2023; of this, 26% was devoted to shopping, the second expenditure category after food & dining, which had a 42% share. Shopping spending posted double-digit growth over the previous year, rising by 10.6% in 2024.
Looking to the future, the propensity of foreigners to travel has continued to increase in early 2025, while for the next three years, the Italian offline retail market for the main product categories in which tourists typically spend their money is expected to grow modestly.
“[Tax-free spending] growth [in Italy] in 2024 was significant, thanks also to the positive contribution of the lower spending threshold to qualify for VAT rebate. The upward trend has been confirmed in early 2025. It will be crucial for brands to follow the market’s evolution via increasingly comprehensive and in-depth data analysis,” said Stefano Rizzi, managing director Italy of Global Blue, a NYSE-listed company that connects thousands of retailers, buyers and hotels with almost 80 million consumers in 53 different countries, with tax-free shopping, payments and post-purchasing solutions. With over 2,000 employees and a revenue of €422 million in fiscal 2023-24, Global Blue generated €28 billion of in-store sales in the same year through its solutions.
Tommaso Nastasi, partner of Deloitte Italy, said that “international tourism is a strategic driver for the retail trade in Italy, within an unstable macroeconomic environment. Investing in an ad hoc value proposition would enable brands to exploit a high-added-value sector and bolster market growth for the coming years.”
For the last few years, Nike Inc. prioritized a multi-billion-dollar sneaker franchise that helped the world’s largest sportswear company reach its lofty revenue goals. Now that franchise is sputtering.
Nike
Sales of Nike Dunk, a 1980s basketball shoe worn more on the streets these days than on the court, are expected to plummet 70% over two years as new leadership dials back the company’s dependence on its classic sneakers and makes way for other fresh sneaker designs, according to new estimates from analysts at Piper Sandler.
That drastic drop signals a fundamental realignment in how Nike does business as new Chief Executive Officer Elliott Hill, a company veteran who came out of retirement to take the top job in October, tries to stage a comeback after a grim year of falling sales and corporate layoffs. One of Nike’s biggest problems: too many Dunks.
“We will return to the discipline of franchise management that I was a part of for so many years,” Hill told investors in December shortly after becoming CEO. He wants to renew the longtime Nike tactic of keeping goods just scarce enough that shoppers still clamor for more. “We’ve already started managing the inventory in our marketplaces.”
Prior to its Dunk problem, Nike had shown remarkable prowess managing its product lines, cycling in and out of fashion trends by retiring or reducing some styles in favor of others — only to bring them back when the time was right. In 2020, for example, Nike capitalized on docu-series The Last Dance, which featured Michael Jordan, with a line of retro Jordan releases that renewed the franchise.
Hill is steering Nike back toward performance shoes used in sports and training, and has vowed to reduce the size of three lifestyle sneaker lines — Air Force 1s, Air Jordan 1s and Dunks — to balance the retailer’s product offerings. Demand for these classics has waned over the past year.
Of these franchises, Dunk is set to face the “most aggressive actions,” Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend said earlier this month. A representative for Nike declined to provide additional comment on the matter.
In fiscal 2024, Dunks accounted for about 18% of Nike’s total footwear sales, or about $5.85 billion, according to the Piper Sandler estimates. Analysts predict that the business will shrink to just $1.75 billion in Nike’s next fiscal year, which begins in June.
“If you don’t innovate and become overly reliant on what’s worked, you lose share,” said Anna Andreeva, a Piper Sandler analyst who co-authored the report. Analysts examined projected sales for the fiscal year ending in May 2026 compared with estimated sales two years earlier. “That’s essentially what’s happened in the last few years. The current leadership is trying to correct it, which we think is the right thing.”
Nike Dunk had been the world’s hottest sneaker franchise under previous CEO John Donahoe. Last year, Friend told investors that Dunk represented virtually zero sales prior to 2020. A series of hit collaborations with the likes of Travis Scott and the Grateful Dead, then the rise of the black-and-white Panda Dunk, sparked a renaissance for the decades-old line.
As demand rose, Nike looked to sate consumers by releasing new Dunks constantly in every possible color combination and lined up collaborations with everyone from the Wu-Tang Clan to the Powerpuff Girls. Sneaker reseller Goat Group Inc. now has nearly 4,700 different Nike Dunks listed on its marketplace.
“Nike was putting up numbers with the Dunks,” culture magazine Complex wrote. “Nike was making these paint-by-number, every-shade-of-Pantone Dunks by the boatload, with nearly a new one coming out every week.”
By September 2023, it was among the largest sneaker lines in history and had spearheaded Nike’s growth to $50 billion in annual revenue. In the 2024 fiscal year, the Dunk business was as large as Air Force 1 and Jordan 1 combined, according to Piper Sandler data.
The strategy worked until shoppers got sick of the shoes. Last March, Regis Schultz, the CEO of Nike’s key European retail partner JD Sports, warned his investors that demand for Nike Dunk was dwindling. By June, sales were sinking.
This month, Hill said that Dunk and the other classic shoes will retain an important place in Nike’s lineup, but they’ll be a smaller part of the streetwear portfolio. He pointed at shoes like the Air Superfly and LD-1000 as prospective hot sellers. Friend added that in most regions, growth in areas such as running, training and basketball shoes nearly offset those declines in lifestyle footwear.
“The teams are taking all the right actions against those key footwear franchises,” said Hill.
Luxury skiwear brand Perfect Moment has teamed up with BWT Alpine Formula One Team to launch an exclusive capsule collection that merges Perfect Moment’s refined ski lifestyle with the team’s cutting-edge, racing performance.
Perfect Moment unveils exclusive capsule collection with BWT Alpine. – Perfect Moment
The Perfect Moment x BWT Alpine Formula One Team capsule features a curated selection of technical outerwear and lifestyle pieces, including signature ski jackets, suits, and performance-driven ski pants reimagined in BWT Alpine’s bold racing colors, versatile base layers and statement knitwear designed for both the slopes and the racetrack, as well as limited-edition hoodies, T-shirts, and accessories.
“This collaboration is an exciting milestone for Perfect Moment blending the energy of BWT Alpine Formula One Team with our signature style and technical excellence,” said Jane Gottschalk, Perfect Moment co-founder and creative director.
“We wanted to create something truly special for fans of both worlds – high-performance apparel that looks as good as it performs on the slopes and at the track. The French heritage of BWT Alpine Formula One Team and Perfect Moment is a natural fit, for me, it just made sense and we can’t wait to launch the collection soon.”
The collection launches with a campaign and pop-up experiences that will be unveiled ahead of selected Formula One races.
BWT Alpine Formula One Team added: “We are excited to join forces with Perfect Moment for this unique collaboration and bring the worlds of Formula One and luxury skiwear together. The technical outerwear produced by Perfect Moment resonates with BWT Alpine Formula One Team’s innovative objectives, and we are looking forward to launching the collection very soon.”
The collection will be available exclusively online at Perfect Moment’s web-store.
Entertainment8 years ago