Foot Locker Inc. pushed back a plan to expand its sales to $9.5 billion by two years and now looks to hit that goal by 2028.

The retailer’s strategic plan, unveiled a year ago, involves diversifying brand offerings, opening new store formats and bolstering loyalty programmes. The company posted about $8.2 billion in annual sales in the fiscal year ended Feb. 3, down nearly 7 percent from the prior period.

The retailer predicted adjusted earnings of $1.50 to $1.70 a share for the full year, falling short of analysts’ expectations. The shares fell 8.9 percent in trading before US markets opened.

“We’re still committed,” CEO Mary Dillon said in an interview. “We believe that continuing to invest in these strategies are what is required to help us to make sure that we’ll be a modern, vibrant retailer.”

Comparable store sales — a key retail metric — were down 0.7 percent for the quarter, the company said in a statement, a much smaller drop than analysts anticipated. Management expects to return to positive comparable store sales, projecting a 1 percent to 3 percent rise in 2024.

New York-based Foot Locker’s performance last year heightened concerns that shoppers were reining in discretionary spending as costs of living soared, with the company leaning on heavy discounts to clear excess merchandise throughout 2023. Inventories fell 8.2 percent last quarter.

“Our consumers, they’ve been exposed to prolonged inflation, food costs, rents — those kinds of things reduce savings,” said Dillon. “But we do see that they are coming out for the right products at the right time.”

Foot Locker has “proactively reinvested in markdowns” to end the year with leaner inventory levels compared to company expectations, said Dillon.

Expanding Foot Locker’s reach in sneaker culture is a top priority and the retailer has been broadening its offerings to be less dependent on Nike Inc. shoes, said Dillon. Last quarter, Foot Locker reached its goal of having 40 percent of its business in brands other than Nike, she said.

By Kim Bhasin

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Foot Locker Raises Forecast on Strong Thanksgiving Week

The athletic retailer now expects a full-year comparable sales decline of 8.5 percent to 9 percent, compared with a previous forecast for a decrease of as much as 10 percent.

A top Louis Vuitton executive is set to join the LVMH fashion group, the division of the luxury conglomerate that houses labels including Celine and Loewe, as the company seeks to prepare the next generation of leaders.

Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou, currently executive vice president in charge of strategic missions at Louis Vuitton, will move to the unit overseen by Michael Burke, an LVMH veteran, said people familiar with the move.

Angeloglou, 49, previously reported to Burke when the latter headed Louis Vuitton. Burke, 67, took oversight of the LVMH fashion group earlier this year from Sidney Toledano, another longtime executive at the Paris-based company. The unit also includes brands Marc Jacobs, Givenchy and Fendi.

Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, the two biggest fashion labels of LVMH, are not part of the unit.

LVMH representatives didn’t immediately respond when asked for comment.

Angeloglou joined Louis Vuitton in 2019 as director for fashion and leather goods, as well as strategic missions, according to his LinkedIn profile. In his role, he’s overseen Louis Vuitton men’s products, women’s accessories, digital innovation as well as communication and events.

He previously spent more than two decades at L’Oréal SA, where his final role was global brand president at L’Oréal Paris. He graduated from business school HEC Paris in 1996.

LVMH, headed by billionaire Bernard Arnault, is seeking to prepare its next generation of leaders as some of the group’s most senior executives near the end of their careers. Arnault’s top lieutenants have also played a role in training his five children, who all work inside the luxury conglomerate.

Arnault turned 75 on Tuesday and the LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE statutes allow him to stay as chief executive officer until he’s 80.

By Angelina Rascouet

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Michael Burke to Succeed Sidney Toledano at LVMH’s Fashion Group

The former Louis Vuitton CEO will become chief executive and chairman of the unit that houses Celine, Loewe, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Pucci and Kenzo, effective February 1.

The UK business of the fast-fashion company Shein has failed to disclose its ultimate ownership, a breach of company law that could disrupt the firm’s reported plans to consider listing in the UK.

UK companies are legally required to declare their ultimate human beneficial owner – their “person with significant control.”

However, Shein Distribution UK Ltd’s filing with Companies House lists Roadget Business Pte Ltd, based in Singapore, as its PSC and not an individual.

The issue was spotted by Dan Neidle, the founder of Tax Policy Associates, a think tank established to improve UK tax and legal policy, who said that knowingly or recklessly making a false or misleading filing would be a criminal offence.

He called on Companies House to build a system that could automatically reject clearly unlawful filings.

Shein said: “We are grateful that this has been brought to our attention. Unfortunately, this error was not identified in the company’s registration process. We are currently working to rectify this.”

Shein, which was founded in China in 2008 by the billionaire Chris Xu and whose headquarters are in Singapore, is famous for its ultra-cheap clothing such as bike shorts, crop tops and bikinis, and has previously been associated with celebrities including Katy Perry and Rita Ora.

The company has risen from relative obscurity to dominate the fast-fashion market, and was most recently valued at $66 billion in a March 2023 fundraising round, down from $100 billion in 2022.

It has faced allegations of labour abuse and in late 2022 it pledged to invest in improving standards at its supplier factories.

Shein’s UK business made £1.1 billion in sales last year, and a pre-tax profit of £12.2 million in the 16 months to 31 December 2022, according to documents filed with Companies House. Globally, the group made $30 billion in revenues last year.

Shein is reportedly in the early stages of exploring a London listing because it believes it is unlikely that the US Securities and Exchange Commission would approve its initial public offering.

If it were to go ahead, it would be one of London’s biggest ever corporate listings and a boost to the country’s reputation as an international financial centre, after a number of companies including the British chipmaker Arm opted for the Nasdaq in New York, despite the UK government’s efforts to persuade more firms to list in London.

This week, Companies House received greater powers to tackle factually inaccurate information on its register and crack down on abuse, hailed by its chief executive, Louise Smyth, as the biggest shake-up in its 180-year history.

Companies House said it did not comment on individual companies. It said failure to provide accurate information on the PSC register and failure to comply with notices requiring someone to provide information were criminal offences, adding that evidence of anomalies was fully investigated and appropriate action taken.

Under company law, a relevant legal entity, a corporate body that owns or controls a company, can be registered as a PSC if it is the first relevant legal entity in that company’s ownership chain and keeps its own PSC register, is subject to the Financial Conduct Authority’s disclosure rules, and has voting shares admitted to trading on a regulated market in the UK or Europe, Switzerland, the US, Japan and Israel.

Neidle said: “This isn’t good enough. The filing is clearly wrong on its face. Identifying such errors automatically isn’t a difficult task, but it looks like Companies House doesn’t even try.”

By Julia Kollewe

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How Shein’s US IPO Became Endangered by China Rift, Explained

Investors are watching to see if Shein can break through the impasse — and what it means for Chinese IPOs in the US if they fail.

High levels of cancer-causing chemical benzene were detected in some acne treatments from brands including Estée Lauder’s Clinique, Target’s Up & Up and Reckitt Benckiser-owned Clearasil, said independent US laboratory Valisure.

Valisure has also filed a petition with the US Food and Drug Administration, calling on the regulator to recall the products, conduct an investigation and revise industry guidance, the New Haven, Connecticut-based lab said on Wednesday.

Estée Lauder shares dropped 3 percent following the report.

Benzene could form at “unacceptably high levels” in both prescription and over-the-counter benzoyl peroxide acne treatment products, Valisure said.

Other products that benzene was detected in include Proactiv, PanOxyl, Walgreens’ acne soap bar and Walmart’s Equate Beauty acne cream.

Target, Estée Lauder, Walmart and Reckitt did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. The FDA has not yet responded to Valisure’s petition.

The carcinogen has already been found in several consumer products, including sunscreens, hand sanitisers and dry shampoo, leading to recalls of products made by companies including Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson.

But the detection of benzene in the acne treatment products was “substantially different” from the other cases, Valisure said.

“The benzene we found in sunscreens and other consumer products were impurities that came from contaminated ingredients; however, the benzene in benzoyl peroxide products is coming from the benzoyl peroxide itself,” said Valisure co-founder and president David Light.

Valisure’s tests showed some products could form more than 800 times the conditionally restricted FDA concentration limit for benzene.

High levels of benzene were not only found in the acne products, but also in the air around incubated products, indicating that the carcinogen could leak out of some of the packages, posing a potential inhalation risk, Valisure said.

By Deborah Sophia; Editing by Devika Syamnath

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Thousands of Black Women Claim Hair Relaxers Gave Them Cancer

Following a study by the US National Institutes of Health associating hair relaxer use with uterine cancer, over 7000 lawsuits have been filed against cosmetics companies like L’Oréal and Revlon.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has backtracked on its decision to ban a Calvin Klein advertisement featuring the British singer FKA twigs, citing the “strength of public feeling.”

The ASA said that after “careful thought” it had decided that “the image was not sexually explicit, that the ad presented FKA twigs as confident and in control and, therefore, that she had not been objectified.”

The ASA had originally said the ad presented her as “a stereotypical sexual object.”

The poster featured the singer with a denim shirt partly covering her body, revealing part of her breast and the side of her buttocks, along with the caption “Calvins or nothing.”

The ASA initially described the advert as “irresponsible and likely to cause serious offence,” and made the decision to ban it after two people complained about the image, arguing it inappropriately sexualised her.

At the time, the ruling stated that “the ad used nudity and centred on FKA twigs’ physical features rather than the clothing, to the extent that it presented her as a stereotypical sexual object.”

The “image’s composition placed viewers’ focus on the model’s body rather than on the clothing being advertised,” the ruling continued, stating that the ad, which first appeared in April 2023, “must not appear again in the form complained of.”

The ASA did not ban two posters from the same campaign featuring the model Kendall Jenner, which attracted complaints on the same grounds. The ASA said those images did not focus on Jenner’s body in a manner that portrayed her as a sexual object, and that the level of nudity was not inappropriate for a lingerie ad.

FKA twigs defended the ad and responded to the ban with a statement on Instagram, saying that she “saw a strong beautiful woman” and did not identify with what the advertising agency “have labelled me.”

The singer also drew attention to “other campaigns past and current of this nature,” arguing that there were “double standards” at play.

Jeremy Allen White, best known for playing chef Carmy in the hit TV series “The Bear,” also featured in a Calvin Klein campaign, where he poses topless in boxer shorts. One of the images shows him pulling the underwear waistband down to reveal his abdominal muscles.

The ASA said it received three complaints about Allen White’s campaign, but that it is not yet investigating the TV and magazine ad.

A spokesperson from the ASA said the decision to revisit the original ruling “took place in the context of the significant strength of public feeling, including views expressed by FKA twigs”, and was also driven by “concern that our rationale for banning the ad was substantially flawed.”

However, the ASA Council has maintained its decision that the image in the ad was “overtly sexual” and was “not suitable for display in an untargeted medium.” The ban remains in place on that point, the statement said.

The statement continued: “We wanted to examine whether we had used inconsistent wording and if we had made the right judgment about objectification in the ad.”

Calvin Klein had defended the FKA twigs advert, saying: “The images were not vulgar and were of two confident and empowered women who had chosen to identify with the Calvin Klein brand, and the ads contained a progressive and enlightened message.” They argued the poses adopted by FKA twigs and Jenner were “natural and neutral.”

They also highlighted that FKA twigs and Jenner collaborated with the company and approved the images, and subsequently told interviewers “they felt a sense of empowerment and confidence from having participated.” Calvin Klein also highlighted that male models featured in the same campaign.

FKA twigs’s full statement read: “I do not see the ‘stereotypical sexual object’ that they have labelled me. I see a beautiful strong woman of colour whose incredible body has overcome more pain than you can imagine. In light of reviewing other campaigns past and current of this nature, I can’t help but feel there are some double standards here. So to be clear … I am proud of my physicality and hold the art I create with my vessel to the standards of women like Josephine Baker, Eartha Kitt and Grace Jones who broke down barriers of what it looks like to be empowered and harness a unique embodied sensuality. Thank you to CK and [photographers] Mert and Marcus, who gave me a space to express myself exactly how I wanted to – I will not have my narrative changed.”

The ASA said the republished ruling was final.

By Mabel Banfield-Nwachi

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Why Calvin Klein Ads Still Get People Talking

Steamy images of Jeremy Allen White and FKA Twigs pushed the brand — which has a well-documented history of courting controversy — to the centre of conversation once again, proving casting and timing plus a little bit of provocation can fuel relevance.

PARIS — “I have anger against everything in the world, especially against myself,” said designer Rei Kawakubo in the statement released after her Comme des Garçons show Saturday afternoon. Anger isn’t always a bad thing. It has energy, and energy is precisely what’s missing in today’s fashion world, where reheated marketing is plentiful and real creativity is scarce.

Demna pointed this out in a voicemail that accompanied his latest Balenciaga outing, calling creativity the new luxury. The collection ditched the oversized looks that took farcical form at Vetements, exploring new, lighter and more streamlined territory. It was a step forward (and the video set was utterly hypnotic) but was it creative enough to address consumer fatigue?

Speaking of creativity, was Saint Laurent’s foray into hosiery as dressing a creative act or a joke? Probably it was a bit of both, with a hefty debt to the sheer looks devised for Bianca Censori by Kanye West. As a marketing message, it worked, even if little of it will work on a sales floor. But that’s the way the catwalk works at most major brands these days.

It’s smaller labels like Vaquera and Ottolinger that take the risk of actually selling what they present in shows. Both were in top form this season, one delving into tropes of wealth, the other boss dressing and clothing as armour. The brutalised tailoring at Ottolinger, in particular, looked awkward but full of energy. At Noir, Kei Ninomiya delivered powerful, colourful, iridescent goods that made for one of his best collections: a personal take on the very Comme silhouette of stompy shoes and frilly doll-like skirts, that had a jolly kind of lightness.

The temperature was certainly high and the energy soaring at Chloé, where Chemena Kamali set the clock back twenty years or so, mining the halcyon days of the house as the epitome of boho chic, complete with Sienna Miller sitting front row. It was an assured debut that wiped away memories of a more chilly recent past, restoring Chloé's position as a temple of warm, carefree, seductive femininity. And yet, it was perhaps a bit too nostalgic, a bit too much of a replica. Going forward, it will be interesting to see more Kamali and less brand code.

At Chloé, at least the execution was flawless. The same cannot be said of the other big debut of the week. At Alexander McQueen, new designer Séan McGirr left one scratching one’s head. McGirr is on a mission to bring back founder Lee’s more confrontational, hard-edged McQueen, but the results felt a little sloppy and vacuum-packed. What’s more, there were too many nods to the work of McGirr’s former boss Jonathan Anderson. Of course, McGirr, who took the reins at McQueen in December, hasn’t had much time to get his feet under the desk.

Going back to the roots was a common theme this season: a way to reassure clients in difficult times but also a way for designers and houses to reassess their codes and assert a stronger sense of identity. Nowhere this was more evident than in Isabel Marant’s unquiet mix of leather, mini skirts, studs, enveloping volumes and full on 80s references. It was pure Marant, with a lot of sass.

At Chanel, Virginie Viard did Deauville, complete with oversized, floppy straw hats, delivering her most cohesive, if not progressive, show so far. Stella McCartney went back to the tailoring with sparkles of her beginnings, in new, slouchy volumes. Groundbreaking it was not, but the product looked excellent.

Rick Owens, too, went back to his roots. Stripped bare of theatrics — give or take the ghoulish makeup and the tube concoctions in the finale — the collection was a luxuriously fluid flow of neutral and pictorial tones and essential shapes that evoked the “glunge” (as in glamour and grunge) origins of the label in the best of ways with a slight hint of melancholia.

Same but different is a given at Yohji Yamamoto, whose nth exploration of black through prismatic construction and poetry in fabric was as exciting as ever. At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri was feeling kinetic youth in svelte shapes and easy dressing, but the message was carried by the “Miss Dior” graffiti painted loudly on many of the pieces.

At Hermès, Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski managed to bring a hefty dose of sensuality to the proceedings. She did so by mixing horseriding references with bold nods to motorbiking, and it worked. For his sophomore outing at Ann Demeulemeester, Stefano Gallici deftly avoided just repeating the brand’s codes, exploring new and exciting territories. If the show was weighed down by a sense of gloom, it was more the mise en scène and casting than the design. Letting in some light and stepping out of the black box could make the intricate beauty of the pieces more apparent. Victoria Beckham has left the days of skimpy dresses (and immaculate tailoring) behind her and embraced a new somberness that is surely a sign of maturity. The heavily conceptual, Margiela-indebted inflection, however, looked a little out of place.

Nowhere were the theatrics louder than at Mugler, where a devilishly perfect spectacle that played with the progressive unveiling of the set that ultimately exposed the backstage meant one almost forgot to look at the dresses, which were closer to un-dresses but still powerful. What designer Casey Cadwallader has achieved at Mugler is remarkable: he has brought over-the-top excitement back to the brand, and it works.

The breathing set and soundtrack over at Courrèges were impactful and poignant, the perfect topping for a collection that managed to perfectly merge the architectonic and the erotic, and featured some beautiful coiling, twisting, covering and revealing pieces that were intensely sexual without the cliches of sexy dressing. The strategically placed pockets that evoked masturbation achieved just that, but there was more: the way Nicolas Difelice charges his work with the raw energy of desire is unique, as sleek as it is soulful, and this makes him one of the most interesting, and yet underrated auteurs working in Paris today.

The goings got a little confused at Rabanne, where the brilliant Julien Dossena showed a captivating but messy mash-up of this and that (perhaps it’s time for Dossena to spread his wings and fly elsewhere). Confusion reigned at Off-White, too, where what was good about IB Kamara’s collection (the graphic bursts, in particular) got lost.

On the flipside, things were almost too focused at Valentino’s supremely elegant, if a bit uptight, exploration of black as both silhouette-maker and texture-enhancer, and The Row’s magnificent foray into couture shapes and Saturday morning ease with an exotic tingle.

Elsewhere, Dries Van Noten delivered an eye-watering, idiosyncratic journey into the beautiful oddities of bright, acidic colour and billowing shape, a mismatch of glitz and classicism, day and night. Marine Serre served up a fast-paced slice of life at the market with her signature crescent moon prints. Givenchy’s studio team presented a faultless take on chilly elegance. Schiaparelli found a newfound sense of camp strictness. Giambattista Valli concocted a well-edited homage to Lee Radziwill. Quira did expressive yet immaculately clean tailoring. And Louise Trotter’s Carven offered an abstract take on ladylike. The outing was clearly indebted to Phoebe Philo and The Row, but Trotter’s tenure at the brand is full of potential.

Celebrating his tenth year at Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière was very much in time-travel, retrospective mode: he went as far as reviving Marc Jacobs’ grunge heyday. As usual, the outing was a feat of showmanship and workmanship, but it was all so abstract, it looked like the nth virtuoso exercise with little meaning beyond the catwalk. When Ghesquière started at Vuitton in 2014, he brought an inspired pragmatism to his work that got lost along the way.

Leave it to Jonathan Anderson to blend collage and a quest for purity for a truly fashion-forward outing at Loewe. Sure, his work for the house at this point adheres to a kind of scheme, not exactly a formula, but it does so in a way that is always mind-expanding. This season the exploration of class was both hilarious, optimistic and sharp, never literal and yet immediately graspable, with a level of execution that felt like couture. Also remarkable in his collage approach was Jun Takahashi, who at Undercover ditched the theatrics — so touching but at times so distant — but kept the poetry to explore, in his own way, the notion of the everyday. Banal it was not: a feast of open, sliced, multipurpose shapes that was captivating.

Is anyone thinking about “body positivity” anymore? Some are, but it’s practically only Ester Manas who has kept empowering all womanly shapes through a beautiful vision that glorifies personality regardless of size. The work of Ester Manas and Balthazar Delepierre is not a gimmick, and the authenticity that oozes through makes it exceptional.

Duran Lantink has the verve of a sculptor in enhancing, distorting and morphing curves in quite an expressionist way, and is fast asserting himself as an auteur who can go beyond clothing that just looks good in photos. Similarly, Zomer, the collaborative effort of Imruh Asha and Daniel Aitouganov, was a foray into arty dressing (with quite a bit of Loewe) that, thanks to a playful kindergarten approach, felt fresh and light rather than pretentious. Sacai’s armour was graceful and just a tad martial, working as both physical and psychological protection, while Junya Watanabe the goings got wonderfully abstract. At both Uma Wang and Niccolò Pasqualetti (another new one to watch closely) there was a kind of totemic poetry to the distance between body and clothing, a design element polished by the exacting eye of stylist Samuel Drura.

Welcome bolts of creativity came, in particular, from Issey Miyake and Miu Miu. Satoshi Kondo, has proven to be the heir Issey-san needed, at once free to move forward but respectful of the Miyake method. Reflecting on the brand’s founding idea of “one piece of cloth,” Kondo explored the almost primaeval, certainly radical intention that sits at the bottom of the act of wrapping. It was dressing reduced to its rawest state and turned up to maximum power.

Meanwhile, at Miu Miu, Miuccia Prada was at her most seditious and bourgeois, delivering a comment on the classics that was about styling as much as it was about the freedom to be as one wants, at any given moment. She focused on age and ageing, delivering the energising reminder on the psychological power of clothing that everyone needed.