Joann Cheng, the chairman and CEO of Lanvin Group, the Chinese luxury firm that owns Lanvin, Wolford and Sergio Rossi, is stepping down. She will be succeeded in the CEO role by Eric Chan, a senior executive at a subsidiary of Lanvin-parent Fosun Group. Huang Zhen, another Fosun Group director, will take over as chairman.

Despite its ambitions to grow into a luxury powerhouse, Lanvin Group has failed to win over investors. It went public on the New York Stock Exchange in December of last year via SPAC, a process in which investors pile money into a blank-cheque company and later look for a target company to merge with. However, some 97 percent of shares in the SPAC were redeemed once Lanvin Group was identified as its merger target, meaning investors overwhelmingly asked for their funds to be returned and that they did not view Lanvin Group to be a good investment.

The company’s growth ambitions have been stymied by frequent leadership changes on both the executive and creative side. This year alone, the group changed its chief financial officer and co-chief operating officer, as well as the designers at Lanvin and Wolford and the CEO of Sergio Rossi. That instability, combined with macro issues like continued sluggish luxury demand in China, has seen the company’s share price sink 68 percent over the last 12 months. Since November, Lanvin Group shares have traded at around $3 apiece compared to a $10 debut.

In August, the company reported first-half revenue of €215 million ($231 million), a 6.4 percent increase over the same time a year ago. But it remains unprofitable.

It sought to put a positive spin on the its chief executive’s sudden departure Friday. In a statement, Cheng highlighted the appointment of a new CEO at Sergio Rossi last and teased the imminent appointment of a fresh creative director at Lanvin as positive developments for the group.

“I am pleased to be stepping away from the group, with a clear creative direction set, and all the building blocks in place for the next phase of growth,” Cheng said Friday.

Chan, the incoming CEO, joined Fosun in 2018 and is currently co-chairman of its subsidiary Greater Yuyuan Commercial Development Group. He previously held roles at Secoo Group, a Beijing-headquartered luxury lifestyle e-commerce platform, Hong Kong developers K11 Concepts and Wharf Group and real estate broker CBRE among others.

On a chilly October day in Paris in 2010, Bertrand Puech got an unexpected call on his cellphone from Bernard Arnault, the founder of luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE and one of the world’s richest men. Arnault told Puech, the family patriarch at rival Hermès, that his company had amassed shares in the maker of the iconic Kelly and Birkin bags. The investment was friendly and aimed at offering Hermès strategic and operational help, Arnault would later say.

But to Puech and other Hermès heirs, his objective was clear: Arnault, whose often-ruthless takeovers of storied heritage brands have earned him the moniker “wolf in cashmere,” was out to conquer. For the fifth and sixth-generation Hermès owners, ceding their empire to a competitor would have been bad enough, but losing it to what they saw as Arnault’s flashy, marketing-driven group was “revolting,” Patrick Thomas, who was Hermès’  executive chairman, said at the time. Against formidable odds, the heirs repulsed Arnault’s advances, handing one of France’s most acquisitive businessmen a stunning defeat and preventing Hermès from becoming just another label in LVMH’s stable of about 75 brands that includes Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior.

Since that October day 13 years ago, Hermès International SCA shares have risen more than 1,000 percent, smashing the 600 percent gain at LVMH. Hermès’ market value has soared to more than €200 billion ($216 billion), about 60 percent of LVMH’s — with roughly one-seventh the revenue. Once vulnerable to predators as complacent family members got involved in other endeavours, Hermès’ success has provided the group its best defence. It has made the family, which now counts more than 100 members, Europe’s richest, with a combined fortune this year of about $151 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s up about 59 percent from last year, making it the world’s third-wealthiest and putting it ahead of the US’s Mars and Koch clans, the House of Thani — the ruling family of Qatar — and the Al Sauds of Saudi Arabia.

“Hermès has been successful by keeping its originality and singularity,” said David Dubois, an associate professor of marketing at business school INSEAD, who teaches a class on value creation in luxury and fashion. “The family is one of the secrets and principal assets of the brand’s success. They are the keepers of its heritage and know how to make it evolve without a revolution.”

While Hermès has gained along with other major purveyors of high-end luxury goods — from Arnault’s LVMH and Richemont’s Cartier to the Wertheimer brothers’ Chanel Ltd. and Prada SpA — the family’s fortune has grown faster and is also proving more resilient as the sector’s post-pandemic boom begins to fade. Demand for high-end goods has cooled with the global slowdown, especially in once-sizzling markets like China, wiping more than $188 billion in market value off the sector’s top seven players since an April peak.

But Hermès — which can’t keep up with demand for some of its coveted handbags — has been largely spared so far. Its revenue has been growing in the double digits, unlike LVMH, where it has slowed to single digits.  Hermès is “in a league of their own,” Thomas Chauvet, an analyst at Citigroup Inc., said after its strong third-quarter growth, including in China. A focus on craftsmanship, a finely calibrated perception of exclusivity and a mastery of scarcity — real or managed — have converged into a winning strategy for Hermès.

“We are proud of our model, but remain modest; it’s the result of the commitment and talent of our teams across the world,” executive chairman Axel Dumas, 53, a sixth-generation scion, said in an emailed response to a request for an interview. He declined to say more.

Hermès is by far the luxury sector’s best performer this year, with a 35 percent gain in its shares, compared with a 5.3 percent rise for LVMH and a 15 percent slump at Gucci-owner Kering SA. Most industry analysts still rate Hermès a “buy,” “hold” or “neutral.” But with the stock trading at a multiple more than double that of its peers, the market slump may eventually catch up with it, said Jelena Sokolova, an analyst at Morningstar. “I wouldn’t say that deceleration is completely unthinkable for Hermès,” she said. Morningstar has one of the few “sell” ratings on the stock because it’s considered expensive relative to future earnings.

Hermès seems unperturbed by a potential slowdown, and is determined to keep to the family’s well-trodden path.

“During tough financial times, there’s a flight to quality,” Dumas told analysts in July when asked how Hermès had managed to clock in a 20.5 percent jump in sales in the second quarter in the Americas when rivals took hits. Its performance was similar in the most recent period.

The crown jewel of the €362 billion global personal luxury goods industry, Hermès has thrived in large part due to its controlling family’s penchant for doing things in quaint ways that hark back to its nearly two-century-old heritage. Its top leather bags, which can go for anywhere between about $8,000 to well in the tens of thousands of dollars for a model with exotic skin like crocodile, are all handmade in ateliers dotting France.

Also, unlike competitors, the maison echews the bling of famous models and social media influencers, like Kendall Jenner at Gucci or actress Kristen Stewart for Chanel. When stars wear creations from Christian Dior or Balenciaga at red carpet events, the brands are quick to publicise it. Not Hermès. In a world of celebrity excess, Hermès’ advertising is conspicuously free of recognisable faces — something that’s spared them the turmoil when such personalities fall out of favor. Yet customers have been known to wait months — and sometimes years — for its Birkin and Kelly bags, which are nevertheless named after famous actresses.

“We don’t look too much at the competition because we might be influenced,” Dumas quipped during the July results presentation. When he listed the firm’s four core values, “independence” came first.

Created in 1837 by harness-maker Thierry Hermès — a Protestant in mostly Catholic France — the company has always been independent, run for the most part by family members. Known across Europe from its very early days for the exquisite craftsmanship of its creations, Hermès was passed down from son to son as it expanded from harnesses to saddles and other leather goods, sumptuous silk scarves and watches.

In 1951, Robert Dumas, a son-in-law of the third-generation Émile Hermès  — who only had daughters — took the helm, and is credited with many of the company’s successes, including the Kelly bag — created almost 100 years ago, but made famous after Grace Kelly was shown carrying it in a photo on the cover of Life magazine. Robert’s son, Jean-Louis Dumas, followed him in 1978, and was the creator of the Birkin bag, inspired by the late British actress and singer Jane Birkin, who sat next to him on a flight and complained that she couldn’t find a handbag she liked. By then the company’s horse-drawn-carriage logo and signature orange boxes had become emblems of high fashion and class.

At the onset of the battle with Arnault, the Dumas, Guerrand and Puech branches of the family — descended from the daughters of Émile — held about 73 percent of the company. As a Société en Commandite par Actions, or SCA — a limited joint stock partnership that gives a shareholder with even a relatively small stake huge sway — Hermès was already well protected against predators. But LVMH had managed to stealthily accumulate about 23 percent of the company’s shares.  LVMH, which now owns just under 2 percent of Hermès, declined to comment on the episode.

Just weeks after Arnault’s phone call, about 50 Hermès descendants got together and unanimously agreed on the creation of an even tighter ring-fence. To protect against heirs who might be tempted to sell their stake to a potential raider, they created a holding structure that now has around 54.3 percent of Hermes’ shares and the right of first refusal to buy from an additional block of shares that family members own.

That fortification put in place over a decade ago is still led by Julie Guerrand, the sixth-generation director who abandoned a banking career at Rothschild & Co. in 2011 to help mount the defence against Arnault. At the end of 2022, the clan owned nearly 67 percent of Hermès, according to its annual report. Their grasp appears ironclad and the company’s lofty market capitalisation — nearly twice that of plane maker Airbus SE, a symbol of European engineering prowess — makes a hostile takeover remote.

“The Hermès family is a fantastic case study in the potential pitfalls of succession,” said Irina Curbelo, co-founder of family business consultant Percheron Advisory. “They were lucky to have been able to come together; many don’t.”

While the Hermès descendants came out on the winning side, the lessons learned from the fight continue to reverberate. Late last year, the heirs took a further step to unify their swelling fortunes by bringing together eight family offices and investment vehicles from various branches into a single entity called Krefeld Invest. Named for the village in western Germany where founder Thierry Hermès was born, it is charged with investing the personal wealth of its constituents.

The family declined to provide any information about the strategy of Krefeld. But a company representative commenting on Bloomberg calculations of the clan’s wealth said the constraints on the family’s ability to sell shares means any estimate of its fortune needs to factor in a discount of about 30 percent.

The fight with Arnault also jump-started the grooming of the next generation to run the company, with the executive committee now counting  three heirs. Faced with an intruder, the clan was quick to join forces, but family members have sometimes clashed over what they have seen as the dominance of some. With the two top jobs at the company — that of the executive chairman and the chief creative director — both going to the Dumas branch, there have been jealousies at times from the other two branches, a person familiar with the matter said. In a bid to fend off criticism, Pierre-Alexis Dumas at first shared the artistic director role with cousin Pascale Mussard from the Guerrand lineage before she was edged out, according to the person.

But the group’s success and its generous dividends —  €852 million in 2022 —  have largely kept the family united. Under Axel Dumas, the nephew of Jean-Louis who’s been at the helm for a decade, sales have tripled and the share price has risen seven-fold. A former banker who has said he reluctantly joined the company, Dumas has cemented Hermès’ reach abroad — last year, the company opened a new Maison Hermès on Madison Avenue in New York.

Dumas has stuck close to the company’s heritage of quiet luxury rooted in artisanship rather than logos and monograms plastered all over products — like Louis Vuitton or Chanel. The only logo on most of the company’s handbags is a discreet “Hermès Paris” on the clasp. While Louis Vuitton has signed music superstar Pharrell Williams as a menswear designer, the creators of Hermès products tend not to be household names, and many of them have been at the luxury house for decades —  Véronique Nichanian has been its menswear designer for 35 years.

“Others have been dependent on changes of CEOs, designers; in the case of Hermès, its signature on products, communications and people has always been consistent,” said Stefania Saviolo, a lecturer in fashion and luxury management at Bocconi University in Milan.

The company stubbornly indulges in practices that sometimes raise eyebrows. In a nod to its origins, this spring the main window display of Hermès’ flagship store on Paris’ fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré included some horse dung. It wasn’t just any manure, Dumas told an audience at the equestrian competition Saut Hermès. It came from horses in la Garde Républicaine, an elite unit of mounted police officers who often protect dignitaries at official ceremonies.

The eccentricities don’t end there. The company’s earnings presentations are in French, an oddity in the world of high finance and at big companies, where English dominates — that’s even though Dumas, who attended an executive program at Harvard University, speaks English.

Attempting to perpetuate the myth of the company’s above-the-fray ways, Dumas told business school students in 2019 that Hermès doesn’t “do marketing.” Never mind that the company, like others in the industry, advertises and promotes products. Profitability could be vastly increased if changes were made in the way the company is run, but that’s not the Hermès way, Dumas said.

During the fight against Arnault, the family warned that if Hermès were part of LVMH, pressure for profits would undermine the craftsmanship and traditions that have defined the brand. Over the years, Arnault has changed the face of Louis Vuitton, bringing in the likes of Marc Jacobs, a young designer who updated the products with quirky designs, and pushing to produce more as demand soared.

At Hermès, each bag is still made by a single artisan who can spend up to 20 hours on one Kelly model, folding and sewing together pieces of calf or crocodile skin. People familiar with the firm say the clan’s Protestant culture permeates the strategy, infusing a sense of individual responsibility for, say, a bag that will make the artisan proud.

Unlike many rivals, Hermès regularly updates investors on its manufacturing capacity. Its stated goal is to boost the output of its leather goods by around 7 percent annually — with the opening of one plant a year in France. That’s even though demand has created a backlog of orders for some sought-after purses that far outstrip this increase.

The company’s ability to boost production is capped by the need for the right skills and savoir-faire, Dumas said during the opening of an atelier in the town of Louviers in Normandy, in northwestern France, in April.

“Training takes time,” he said. “Our best artisans become trainers so they’re no longer in production.” That’s why one opening a year is “optimal to not disrupt what we do while still growing.”

The group doesn’t reveal how many bags or scarves it makes each year, and shortages haven’t prompted it to hike up prices as much as it could. That in turn has spawned a juicy resale market for Birkin, Kelly and Constance models, consistently drawing rich mark-ups.

“Clients will pay a premium for these pieces as the handbags stand the test of time,” said Rachel Koffsky, the international head of handbags and accessories at the auction house Christie’s. “These pieces are considered classic, not trendy,” and have become “investment-worthy,” she said.

Two years ago, a Hermès bag broke a record at auction to become the most expensive handbag ever sold. The hammer came down at more than $500,000 for a diamond-encrusted Himalaya Kelly, a crocodile-skin handbag in mother-of-pearl white. At a Christie’s bag auction last month, 60 percent of the lots were sold above the highest estimates, with the auction house singling out the performance of Hermès, a sign of the brand’s client-following.

On a recent afternoon in front of the company’s flagship boutique in Paris, Kiki Liu described herself as a loyal customer, one who over the past decade has bought a number of Hermès bags, including Birkin and Kelly models. The Chicago resident on a family vacation was pleased about landing an appointment with a Hermès sales person to inquire about a purse.

“I have many different bags from various brands but I feel like the Hermès ones keep their value and are timeless,” Liu said, as she left the store with her children. “They’re a good investment and I feel like I can pass them on to my girls.”

By Tara Patel and Angelina Rascouet

Expensive beauty hauls are a thing of the past for Evelyn Zhu. The Chinese branding professional says she now only spends on skin care essentials, joining millions of other consumers who have cut back on cosmetics in the world’s second biggest market.

“In recent years we all bought so many products,” the 32-year-old from the affluent eastern city of Hangzhou said. “My bathroom cupboard is full, it’s hard to say I need much more.”

This restraint, which has taken hold amid a slowing economy, spells bad news for global firms such as L’Oreal, Estee Lauder and LVMH who for years banked on China’s $52 billion beauty market for growth.

Regional brands such as Japan’s Shiseido, which counted China as its top market for years, are also struggling.

But while the economic woes have certainly weighed on sales, analysts say the main issue facing the multinationals is their slowness to adjust to the shifting priorities of consumers, who have become more discerning about what they buy and are increasingly finding that local brands are more suited to their needs.

“What Chinese consumers are still keen to spend on are high efficacy products,” said William Lau, chief executive of multibrand beauty retailer Bonnie and Clyde, which stocks luxury international brands including Chantecaille and 111skin.

“What you’re seeing is a downgrade in lifestyle-driven luxury and premium brands,” he added.

Botanee Biotech’s sensitive skin care brand Winona is one of the beneficiaries of this paring back.

The Chinese brand, which is priced at around the same level as L’Oréal products, is known for combating redness, a concern that marketing firm iResearch reported affects two-fifth of women. Analysts from CMB International estimate Botanee’s revenue will grow almost 18 percent this year to 5.9 billion yuan ($824 million), with Winona responsible for most of these gains.

By comparison, sales for the global beauty giants are expected to fall.

Deep Discounts

An analysis from brokerage Jefferies showed first half China sales down 8 percent at LVMH’s beauty division, while sales at Estée Lauder Companies, which counts on China for one-third of its business, fell 12 percent over the same period.

Shiseido reduced its full-year profit forecast in November on slower China demand, which has also been hit by a boycott by some consumer of Japanese products following the release of treated radioactive wastewater in August.

L’Oréal, Estée Lauder and Shiseido did not respond to a request for comment.

These results also come off the lower base of 2022, when the combined colour cosmetics and skin care markets in China lost 9.5 percent of their value, data from Euromonitor shows.

While the market research firm expects growth of around 6 percent this year, it forecast won’t get back to its 2021 market size of $54.4 billion until 2025.

So far, the multinationals have responded to the slowdown by offering deep discounts of up to 40 percent and gifts during peak shopping events such as the annual online Singles Day festival, but analysts say the data shows even that isn’t really helping.

Luxe skin care brand La Mer, which rarely discounts, gave so many gifts-with-purchase over Singles Day that every sale resulted in almost the same amount of product being given away.

Independent data firm Syntun estimated that GMV, or gross merchandising volume, of beauty and personal care fell 6 percent year-on-year across all online shopping platforms. GMV is commonly used proxy for sales among e-commerce operators.

“The biggest global names have seen their Tmall GMV decrease by about 40 percent on average during 11.11,” said Jacques Roizen, the Shanghai-based managing director of consulting at Digital Luxury Group, a digital agency for luxury brands.

“Now we see you don’t have discounting as an acceleration lever you can press to go deeper or wider, because they’re already maxed out,” Roizen added.

Gregoire Grandchamp, co-founder of Next Beauty, a brand management partner for niche beauty players looking to grow in the China market, said the discounts offered by the beauty brands online this year have been “insane”.

But while these larger brands are better able to compete online than smaller companies that lack their marketing budgets, they are not immune to the slowdown in demand.

According to Grandchamp, the sooner they adjust to China’s new normal of single-digit growth rather than chasing the growth of yesteryear with brand equity-eroding discounts, the better.

“I think the way groups like L’Oréal will react will be to say, Okay, maybe it’s better not to have this euphoric growth, but to be more in a more rational market,” he said.

By Casey Hall; Editor: Miral Fahmy

In the role, Stanely will work closely with Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike and digital director Jenny Hollander to develop the publication’s editorial direction and digital and event strategy.

Stanley, who will begin the role effective immediately, was previously the features director at Cosmopolitan and senior editor at Seventeen.

The US edition of Marie Claire, which was previously owned by Hearst through a join venture with French firm Marie Claire Album, was purchased by British media company future in May 2021. It ceased regular print operations later that year.

Learn more:

Marie Claire US to Cease Print Publication

The American fashion magazine, which was partially owned by Hearst until May, will become a digital-only publication, according to the New York Post

When Rita Ora walked the red carpet at the Fashion Awards in London this week, the singer donned a black floor-length maxi dress with an ultra low back and elevated square-neck.

At a quick glance, the gown wasn’t so different from many of the looks Ora has stepped out in over the years (the prosthetic spine she wore on her back is another matter entirely) — except for its price tag: £50 ($64).

The item is one of 260 pieces featured in Ora’s Primark collections — the first of which launched in September as part of a multi-year partnership between the performer and the fast fashion retailer. The second line landed last month, comprising mostly evening and festive wear. The collections, priced between $5 to $70, are sold in 430 Primark stores across 16 markets.

Like many celebrities who have debuted fashion lines, Ora is doing her part to hype the collaboration. She’s been wearing the garments at events, posting about them on Instagram and TikTok (26 times in October alone, per data from Trendalytics), and creating video content on YouTube chronicling her meetings with Primark’s design teams.

“I wanted it to be different, so I became really hands on in the creation,” she told BoF. “You’ll never see anything in the collection that I wouldn’t personally wear.”

Celebrity partnerships are a right of passage for fast-fashion retailers. H&M’s past collaborators run the gamut from Madonna and Kylie Minogue to David Beckham and The Weeknd. Boohoo has sold collections from Megan Fox, Kourtney Kardashian Barker and others. Zara got into the game with British actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg in 2021 and the model Kaia Gerber last year.

Primark’s first celebrity collaboration is more elaborate than most. Ora’s collection includes nearly 10 times as many items as Gerber’s Zara collab, and has a prominent tab on the retailer’s website, sandwiched between “women” and “kids” in the US version. The stakes are arguably higher: A household name in the UK and across much of Europe, with £9 billion ($11.2 billion) in sales for its fiscal year ending in September, Dublin Ire.-based Primark has been slowly building its presence in the US. Ora provides an opportunity to become known for something more than a slightly exotic alternative to other ultra-affordable mass retailers.

“In the US, our prices are doing a lot of the talking for us — but we’re a lot more than that,” said Jermaine Lapwood, Primark’s director of innovation. “There’s a huge personality behind our brand and a lot of emotional connection.”

Whether the collection delivers will hinge on Ora’s star power, how much consumers’ buy into the authenticity of her connection with the retailer, and the extent to which Primark can build on the partnership, most importantly via brick-and-mortar expansion, experts say. (Primark’s first US store opened in Boston in 2015 it now has 24 locations, mostly in the Northeast; H&M has over 500.)

“The biggest challenge Primark is going to have in expanding in the US is stealing market share from very established fast fashion retailers like H&M, Zara and Forever 21,” said Erica Grant, partner and head of the leadership and talent practice at business advisory firm Lotis Blue Consulting. “Its [competitors] have a far more expansive physical presence. Primark … is going to have to put a lot more investment effort into driving visibility in other ways.”

Why Rita Ora?

To resonate with consumers, it’s critical that the brand and celebrity “feel like a good fit,” said Karen Harvey, founder and chief executive of business consultancy Karen Harvey Consulting Group.

Born in Kosovo, Ora’s parents fled from the war-torn country to the UK when she was an infant. She said she spent much of her youth shopping at Primark’s flagship store in Hammersmith, West London. Ora had been spotted pairing high-end designer garments with Primark accessories as far back as 2014, well before inking a deal with the retailer.

“I’ve been so embedded with Primark for so many reasons — it’s just such a cultural representation of where I’m from,” she told BoF.

Ora is an expert at drumming up buzz, or “talkability,” as Lapwood puts it. A tabloid fixture for her outfits and red carpet appearances, she has 16 million followers on Instagram and 2.7 million on TikTok. She also has a history of collaborations that proved to have legs, including a deal with Adidas starting in 2014 that spanned three years, and several collections for the lingerie brand Tezenis starting in 2016.

That puts her at a mid-tier level of fame – surveys by Marketing Evaluations, the company behind “Q Score” ratings of celebrities’ popularity, has consistently found about 31 percent of US respondents know who Ora is. Within that group, 9 percent are superfans, considering her one of their favourite personalities (near-universally known and beloved celebrities, such as Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks, score above 30 percent in that last metric).

But, increasingly, retailers need to think beyond sheer popularity and take into account the extent to which a celebrity’s relevance reaches other areas like philanthropy, politics and issues such as sustainability and diversity and inclusion, Grant said. Companies must also consider how many “reinforcing characteristics” a potential celebrity partner shares with the brand and its customers in these areas, she added.

“The differentiator for this partnership is in the alignment between Ora’s own kind of philanthropic efforts, her own values and how she grew up, and her empowering women – and what Primark stands for,” Grant said.

Primark has already garnered some social media buzz from the partnership: Ora’s posts about the collaboration in October drove nearly $900,000 in earned media value for Primark, Trendalytics found. (Earned media value is the estimated dollar amount of all exposure generated from third-party websites, social media, or other types of media.)

The retailer has also had several pieces “sold out in weeks” and has seen “queues outside many of our stores,” Lapwood said.

Hot Right Now

Primark opened 11 US stores in the past year, with plans to reach 60 locations by 2026. For now, the retailer is leaning heavily on Ora, alongside deals with Disney and the NBA. The retailer will soon need to build on its early success with collaborations by teaming up with other potential partners, whether it’s athletes or creative directors at high-end fashion brands, Harvey said.

The goal should be to avoid relying too much on one particular personality or celebrity archetype, which could narrow Primark’s appeal, especially in the US where consumers’ attitudes toward its brand aren’t yet fully formed.

“Rita Ora is … a good play, but that can’t be the only play,” Grant said. “National retailers need to be thinking omnichannel … to attract attention but also to develop a brand presence and a business model that is sustainable.”