Hello and welcome back to our international briefing with my fabulous co-host Jill from the NRF. Hello Jill. Hello. Thank you Alex for having me back. Absolute pleasure. So on today's show we're going to do a fast quick look at what we're going to cover. We're going to start with Starbucks and what's happened in Korea with um some of some news around what what what's what they've had to do in Korea. Then we'll look at some of the new federal um I guess federal laws. Yeah, exactly. In in Canada, is that right? Yep, and uh Halifax and Ottawa. Yep. Fantastic. Then we'll go on to look at what's happening within the world of beauty and L'Oreal in Japan. Moving on to Lefties, which is Zara, Inditex, part of that family of group, talking about their growth internationally. And then finishing off on our favorite Actually, we don't have favorites, but one of our favorites, um lifestyle brands, Adidas, and what they're doing in Bangkok. So we're going to start with you, Jill.
Tell us about the what's happening here. Yeah, so Starbucks is making a really big move in Korea. It's, you know, a a couple weeks ago they announced that they are going to close all of their stores in Korea so all of the employees can watch a recorded lecture about, really, it's sensitivity training. And it's not only for the store employees, it's for the corporate employees as well. This is going to cost them over a million and a half dollars in kind of US or 2.1 in, you know, Korean uh currency. This was triggered by a PR crisis that happened, unfortunately. There was a a tank, I'm using air quotes, tumbler uh promotion, and unfortunately what it reckoned back to was a 1980 massacre in one of the cities there. So there was a lot of discontent and a lot of, you know, emotion around that, of course.
And, you know, it's just it's the same thing that we're facing in the US, all over the world, that, you know, sometimes marketing campaigns are great ideas and they sound fun, but what happens is, unfortunately, they can be linked back to things. And if you don't have the right people in the room, if you don't have people who, you know, all generations, all ethnicities, who can kind of really have that broad perspective, you can make these snafus. And it's nice to see how Starbucks is kind of fixing it. Absolutely. Okay, moving on, staying with you. Yeah, so, you know, in the US here, we've had a lot of talk and discussion and so far success in combating retail crime. Canada is now looking to do the same thing. So, retail crime can be a lot of things. It can be theft from store, it could be even employee theft, but a lot of it is cargo theft and theft on the back end in the supply chain. And we all know the supply chain is global and we all know that, you know, one impact has a really large ripple effect.
So, right now in Canada, it's a bill that is up, it's called Bill C-14. It's in the Halifax region right now and really they want more done. There's theft happening in the cities. It's very closely linked to a lot of other crime, to car theft and even to human trafficking. So, you know, a lot of these networks are not just doing one thing. They are pervasive and global. So, it's really nice to see kind of Canada trying to follow kind of in the US footsteps of really pushing this. And in the US it's called CORCA, it's Combating Organized Retail Crime Act. Passed the House about a month and a half ago, early May, and we're waiting for it to go into the Senate. And fingers crossed it passes there as well. Fantastic. By the way, if you want to read further on this, the first article on Starbucks, you can get more information on the Guardian newspaper.
Go and support them because obviously they fantastic journalism. And then this one's on Global News. The show links will be in the show notes, but please support the people who are doing the original reporting. Moving on, staying with you, fascinating technology announcement. This is really cool. So, L'Oreal owns a brand called Shu Shu Uemura. And, you know, of course, practicing, I knew how I pronounced it well, but I'm going to bungle it now. Anyway, Japanese brand, unbelievable, so it the Tokyo one of the Tokyo stores, not only do they have kind of an AI mirror now, but what's really, really neat is this mirror learns. So, it knows you when you come back, it tells you about not only what colors and skews are going to work. We've seen that with Sephora and some other, you know, um Shiseido has done that as well. But, what this is doing is it's analyzing the skin for potentially moisture, dryness, oily, and then recommending products based on that. So, I love this. I mean, talk about an upsell. Holy moly. But, it it can be one-on-one, or it can be, obviously, your friends can be around, so it still has that kind of social shopping feature that a lot of the Asian countries really have excelled at.
Yeah, as part of one of the projects I worked on, I had to do a shift in the beauty hall at Boots in the UK. Um and it was super fascinating in terms of how we take for granted personalization around skin, because, you know, for for some people, they they haven't they're very lucky and have normal skin. For a lot of people, they have really sensitive, specialist skin. And so, it's fascinating to see how technology is sort of lending itself on that journey and how I don't know, sooner or later, how this will plug into health care, because we've seen it with GLP-1s, right? And, you know, weight loss. I reckon that that there's another opportunity here with beauty and how it works plugged into your health. And I That reminds me, we will we will talk about what FairPrice is doing in their Singa- one of their Singapore shows about this. So, I'm going to tease that up for our next one because you just reminded me of something.
Okay. Fantastic. All right, moving on. Lefties. So, you may or may not know Lefties. There's roughly about 215 stores across 19 markets. Basically, this is Zara's value offering. Again, they do if you're used to seeing or have seen Primark, very similar to Primark. And what the the sort of new story here is they're opening a store, their first store in One Liverpool, obviously in Liverpool in the United Kingdom. Then they've got Lakeside in Newcastle, October and November. But, I I think in terms of how value retail is becoming another sort of operational and technology environment. And so, why do I say that? Lefties, if you've been into a Decathlon or into quite a few retailers, where you drop your products in the bin, all the products are then recognized.
They will have that technology in the stores and they'll be I don't know if that is new technology or not anymore, right? But, very few US retailers have have put it in. It really, if you go into Uniqlo or Zara, they're the only ones that really have it here. And of course, they're not US brands. So. Yeah, okay. So, there's going to be a mix. So, my point here is it's value retail, right? Where we expect margins to be smaller, so then the store has to be uglier or not as pleasant as others. And that's absolutely the opposite. This is almost premium luxury feel when you go into the store. They have high-end technology and they're also looking at generating value for their customers. So, I think we'll see about There's also a Chinese player that's coming into the UK, but I'm not going to talk about that on this show as as Jill saying, tease it up for later maybe.
[laughter] All right, finishing off. Staying with me, Adidas. We You and I have spoken about Adidas so many times about how they get it right. A new podcast listener would have heard me talk about retail in the first three speeds. Retail at the speed of intelligence, retail at the speed of culture and community, and retail at the speed of experience. Adidas doing a phenomenal job. Let me press play so you can see what they're doing in Bangkok in their partnership with Arabica. You know, loads of local product, loads of local customization, coffee shop, everything that you would expect, but it's a community hub. They want you to come. They want you to dwell. They want you to spend time. Obviously, they want you to buy, but I think it's a perfect example of retail as community and seeing the growth of that. And with that Amazing.
that brings us to the end of our fabulous international briefing. And until next week, Joe. Sounds amazing. Bye, everyone.
