Unilever has sold off its Russian operations to a local manufacturing group after pressure from campaigners who claimed that the presence of the Dove and Ben & Jerry’s owner in the country was supporting the war in Ukraine.

Arnest Group, a Russian manufacturer of perfume, cosmetics and household products will take control of Unilever Rus, which includes four factories, as well as the group’s interests in Belarus. Arnest is owned by the businessman Alexey Sagal and bought the brewer Heineken’s business in the country last summer.

Unilever Rus, which employs about 3,000 people, owns the local rights to brands including Knorr stock cubes, Dove washing and beauty products, Domestos cleaning fluids and Axe – which is known as Lynx in the UK.

Unilever has faced sustained pressure to sell the subsidiary since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after it failed to follow an initial stampede of British multinationals out of the country.

The terms of the deal, which must be approved by the Russian government, were not disclosed. However, it has been reported that the sale could be worth more than €500 million ($547 million) to Unilever.

“Over the past year, we have been carefully preparing the Unilever Russia business for a potential sale. This work has been very complex, and has involved separating IT platforms and supply chains, as well as migrating brands to Cyrillic,” Hein Schumacher, the chief executive of Unilever, said in a statement. “The completion of the sale ends Unilever Russia’s presence in the country.”

Unilever ceased all imports and exports of its products into and out of Russia in March 2022 and has said it stopped all media and advertising spend and capital flows. It said last summer it had been unable to find a way to sell the business that “avoids the Russian state potentially gaining further benefit, and which safeguards our people”.

However, the group has come under consistent pressure to exit Russia, where it continues to make and sell “essential” products from shampoo to ice-cream, after evidence emerged that it paid Moscow $331 million in taxes in 2022.

In July last year, the Marmite maker was labelled “an international sponsor of war” by the Ukrainian government after it became subject to a law in Russia obliging all large companies operating in the country to contribute directly to its war effort.

A group of activists, the Ukraine Solidarity Project, erected a billboard outside the Anglo-Dutch consumer group’s London headquarters featuring pictures of wounded Ukrainian soldiers – posing in the style of the Dove beauty brand’s advertisements – and the slogan: “Helping to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

“It’s about time Unilever chose to stand on the right side of history, but let’s not forget it took them more than two years – and millions in Russian taxes paid into Putin’s war machine. Closing operations now doesn’t erase the past,” Valeriia Voshchevska of the USP said. “To show genuine accountability, we’re calling on Unilever to donate their Russian profits to aid Ukraine’s rebuild and recovery. Actions, not headlines, will tell us if they’re serious.”

Many western brand owners including Diageo and Levi’s have paused exports to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, and some, including McDonald’s, Heineken and the beauty brand Lush, have sold their operations in Russia to local operators. The brewer Carlsberg was in the process of selling its Baltika Breweries subsidiary there when it was taken over by the state last year.

Schumacher promised to look at Unilever’s presence in Russia with “fresh eyes” when he took over as chief executive last year.

A year ago, Unilever said it “continued to look at out options” after “recent regulatory developments in Russia.”

Schumacher said this summer that Unilever’s goal was to “minimise economic contribution” to the Russian state, adding that it continued to monitor operations in the country “very closely. This is a very tough situation and very much on my mind.”

By Sarah Butler

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Fast Retailing Co. is filling up closets in American and European homes with its Uniqlo brand of apparel, a feat that’s helped the Japanese retailer pull off record annual revenue despite a slowdown in China.

Growing demand from North America, Europe and rest of the Asia-Pacific region pushed Fast Retailing’s revenue in the fiscal year ended August to ¥3.1 trillion ($20.8 billion). That’s given the company the confidence to target an operating profit of ¥530 billion in the current fiscal year, surpassing analysts’ estimates.

Much of that confidence stems from strong growth momentum seen across all of Uniqlo’s international markets but China — thus far the company’s biggest overseas market where sales dipped and profit contracted sharply over the past two quarters.

That trend underlines Fast Retailing’s expansion into the West to realise founder Tadashi Yanai’s dream of turning the Japanese clothing brand into a global fashion leader. The company expects another year of strong revenue and profit growth from North America and Europe, Chief Financial Officer Takeshi Okazaki said at a briefing in Tokyo on Thursday.

“Uniqlo’s brand awareness is increasing globally,” he said, citing greater acceptance among locals, as also tourists, in each of the markets it’s present in.

Revenue and profit generated from Uniqlo stores in North America and Europe rose substantially in the 2024 fiscal year as the brand’s functional basics gained more consumer recognition there. For China, the company reiterated a plan announced earlier this year to close under-performing stores and revamp bigger and better-located ones to drive sales.

Operating income last quarter was ¥99.1 billion, ahead of the ¥76.05 billion average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Net income came in at ¥59.16 billion during this period, beating an estimate for ¥40 billion.

Fast Retailing shares rose 1.3 percent on Thursday after it reported sales that beat estimates. Earlier in the day, the stock reached a record high of ¥51,380.

Other than Uniqlo, Fast Retailing’s casual wear GU brand also reported a robust profit increase during this period thanks in part to a successful expansion into the US.

Fast Retailing’s North American business only started to emerge from losses two years ago, after Yanai tapped company veteran Daisuke Tsukagoshi — who previously led Uniqlo’s expansion in China and later promoted to chief operating officer of Uniqlo — to engineer a turnaround with a hefty marketing push.

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This week, Uniqlo appointed Clare Waight Keller the creative director of its main line, while Stefano Pilati signed on for a collection with Inditex flagship Zara and Zac Posen staged a New York Fashion Week bash with Old Navy. The jury is still out on whether hiring designers from high-fashion will drive retail results.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Lazada is courting top European fashion and design brands to help fend off Asian rivals and eventually reach its goal of $100 billion in e-commerce volume by 2030.

Executives met this week in Milan with founders and managers of more than a hundred Italian brands interested in tapping Southeast Asia through LazMall Luxury, a recently launched platform. Those included Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferragamo and Tod’s, chief business officer Jason Chen told Bloomberg News.

That courtship is one aspect of a campaign to try and fend off Sea Ltd.’s Shopee, ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok and PDD Holdings Inc. in a Southeast Asian online commerce arena expected to reach $186 billion by 2025. TikTok and Shopee in particular have vied fiercely for merchants and shoppers in key markets from Indonesia to Singapore.

“Lazada is ready to ramp up as entering this new phase of e-commerce development, where profitability, commercialisation and long-term gains are priorities for the business,” Chen said in an online Zoom interview. “The current push to broaden our luxury segment will further fuel these efforts as we reinforce our brand positioning.”

Lazada and AliExpress are at the heart of Alibaba’s business outside China, now among its fastest-growing divisions because of an economic downturn back home.

Alibaba, which under new management is recovering from a years-long crackdown on its business by Beijing, is now driving expansion in the Asian region. One of its biggest rivals there is Sea, which in August raised its retail sales outlook in a sign it’s making headway in that market.

High-end demand is key to Alibaba’s effort, Chen said. Along with India and the Middle East, Southeast Asia is regarded as one of the world’s faster-growing markets for luxury, especially as China grapples with a sagging economy.

Unlike rivals, Lazada can offer brands more control over pricing and marketing, he argued. Alibaba’s Tmall Luxury Pavilion, created in 2017 and now a repository for some 200 brands, offers a template for Lazada, Chen said.

“When a company decides to open its own online store on our platform, it manages all the operations, from pricing to logistics,” he said. “This is particularly important for the fashion houses, which are keen to keep control of the entire selling process.”

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Veteran fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone remembers a time when it was frowned upon for brands to advertise their end-of-season sales.

“It just used to be something for people in the industry,” said Cutrone, founder and chief executive of public relations agency People’s Revolution. “Media outlets and editors wouldn’t dare promote them.”

Today, however, the once-exclusive events to offload unsold inventory and design samples are ubiquitous, with brands from Maison Margiela to Cult Gaia to Reformation and Everlane staging sales to clear their stockrooms.

Sample sales aren’t just coming out of hiding; they’re increasingly viewed as another tool in brands’ marketing arsenal, especially now that they routinely go viral on TikTok. But they still retain enough of their in-the-know sheen to serve as a more glamorous way to offload unsold inventory than a messy sales rack inside a store, or dumping merchandise on an off-price retailer.

“I never buy anything full price,” said Emily Glaser, 23, an assistant buyer at Macy’s based in New York. “I just think it’s kind of dumb. You can easily search that an item is full-price here or on sale there. And sample sales tend to always have the best prices.”

How Sample Sales Work

Brands looking to hold a sample sale often go with a specialist. The biggest in the US is 260 Sample Sale, which began running the logistics of sample sales for designer brands in 2003, counting Diane Von Furstenberg as an early client. The business now boasts eight locations across New York City and Los Angeles and has expanded to Dallas, Chicago and Miami and held 346 samples sales this year.

Meanwhile, a crop of social media-savvy start-ups such as Sensoria, Sample Sale London and Alfargo’s Marketplace have also entered the scene, moving the experience online, improving customer service with sales floor personnel and bringing a personal touch to marketing them as an option that doesn’t dilute brand clients’ premium positioning in the market.

No More Stigma

Other brands host sample sales in-house, seeing the events as an opportunity to connect with a new set of shoppers.

Los Angeles-based retailer Lisa Says Gah has permanently removed the sale section from its online shop and retail stores, instead hosting two sample sales a year in its Los Angeles and San Francisco locations, according to founder Lisa Bühler.

While the label previously worked with 260 Sample Sale, Bühler realised that when hosted in-house, the events are a way to build stronger relationships with shoppers. She often introduces herself to customers while they wait in line.

“The sales also create a lot of buzz for the brand because more people stop in and passersby wonder what is going on,” she said.

By discounting less frequently, Bühler hopes that her customers will shop the brand at full price in between sample sales.

All the Trimmings

Some sample sale platforms are pitching themselves to brands as elevated alternatives to off-price channels, breaking the stereotype of disorganised, chaotic sales floors with minimal customer service.

Alfargo’s Marketplace, a sample sale operator that specialises in menswear, hosts its sales at members-only club NeueHouse in New York, and offers tailoring and custom embroidery services on site.

New York start-up Sensoria shoots new product content for the overstock it sells online. Sensoria has its own team of photographers and stylists to present last season’s stale merchandise in a fresh light.

The traditional hush-hush type of sample sale still works for some labels like The Row and Khaite, as long as the client list remains highly exclusive.

“For the Khaite sale, I had to get on a mailing list and I tried calling the sale operator but it was ultimately through word-of-mouth and personal recommendations that I was allowed in,” said Rachel Mohler Roberts, 32, a New York-based political-technology founder who snagged a few discounted sweaters. “It’s quite tedious but it makes the sales feel a bit more special. Otherwise, you’re just shopping at a glorified TJ Maxx.”

Where big pharma goes, the wellness industry follows closely behind. Next stop: GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Called glucagon-like peptide-1 in full, the term “GLP-1″ on a supplement bottle would likely have confused the average shopper a few years ago. But that was before the rise of medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, the brand names for semaglutide, which mimics the hormone GLP-1 that reduces feelings of hunger. Originally prescribed for type 2 diabetics, semaglutide can also slow digestion and curb cravings, leading to dramatic weight loss for many users.

More recently, their widespread adoption has also created a cottage industry of products, from supplements to nutrition plans, designed to complement and enhance the effects of the injections. Others are positioned as alternatives to GLP-1 agonist medications – Kourtney Kardashian’s supplement brand Lemme, for example, unveiled its GLP-1 supplement on Sep. 12. Made with plant extracts, the product’s description says it “supports your body’s GLP-1 hormone, reduces hunger,” and “supports healthy weight management.”

Lemme joins a growing group of supplement makers hitting the market with products claiming to either increase or “support” GLP-1 levels in the body, using careful language and scientific study findings to back up their claims. Pendulum and Codeage both sell a GLP-1 Probiotic, and Supergut offers a Gut Healthy GLP-1 Booster. Some leave out explicit mentions of GLP-1, but clearly allude to it: Arrae’s MB-1 supplement for “metabolic burn” is described on its product listing as a “natural faux-zempic” without mentioning the hormone directly.

Others, like weight management wellness brand SoWell, are releasing products intended to be used alongside GLP-1 agonist injections. SoWell founder Dr. Alexandra Sowa, an internal medicine physician focused on obesity treatment, launched the brand’s GLP-1 Support System in August 2024, which includes packages of fibre, protein, and electrolyte powders meant to help ease common side effects like nausea and dizziness.

There is massive opportunity in the so-called “Ozempiconomy.” Last year, Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk surpassed LVMH as the company with the highest market cap in Europe. Circana found that weight management was the third most important wellness concept for US consumers, after improved overall physical health and reduced stress, and between August 2023 and 2024, searches for “GLP-1 supplement” swelled 792.1 percent, according to data from the trend analysis platform Spate.

Wellness brands who are able to hop on the trend successfully have the potential to tap into several customer groups, including those wary of pharmaceuticals for weight loss, those with cost concerns or severe side effects from the drugs, and those on the drugs themselves.

But there’s a fine line to tread in doing so: experts, including doctors, say that the use of the hormone in product names amounts mainly to a marketing tactic capitalising on skyrocketing public interest.

“This is a lot of marketing,” said Dr. Rekha Kumar, the founder of weight loss telehealth startup Found. “The biggest reason people stop GLP-1s happens to be nausea, and now you’re seeing tons of things out there that help with nausea. Those are real side effects, and they do need to be addressed, but you will see people trying to make money off of it.”

Over-the-Counter ‘Faux-Zempic’

While GLP-1 receptor agonists have been shown to be highly effective in weight loss, there are multiple reasons consumers seek out alternatives.

Lemme launched in 2022, and since then, the brand received “thousands of messages from people who were looking for natural alternatives to GLP-1 medications,” said Simon Huck, co-founder of Lemme, who observed “a lot of hesitancy” among potential customers.

Brand-name GLP-1 agonists can be cost-prohibitive, especially when patients don’t meet the BMI threshold set to qualify for insurance coverage.

The Vitamin Shoppe, for example, offers GLP-1 medications in partnership with a telehealth company WellSync. The cost of its brand-name drug injections, including Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, range from $1,174 to $1,524 a month, while compounded versions — created by pharmacies when brand names are in short supply — run between $174 to $194 a month. But even cheaper are supplements claiming to boost GLP-1 levels: The Vitamin Shoppe sells the SuperGut GLP-1 Booster probiotic at $29 for 15 packets, or less than $60 a month.

These supplements, which typically come in the familiar gummy, pill, or powder formats, are also a more approachable concept for customers wary of injections.

“There are just some people that are opposed to pharma because they worry about what the impact of that might be or the expense,” said Muriel Gonzalez, the president of supplement retailer The Vitamin Shoppe.

But customers seeking a direct alternative to the new class of GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs via supplements will be disappointed, said Kumar.

While GLP-1 drugs are artificial mimickers of the hormone, supplement brands are targeted toward boosting the natural GLP-1 that is produced in the body through a wide range of different ingredients. But natural GLP-1 is broken down quickly by enzymes, while GLP-1 drugs are not — hence why they are so effective at curbing hunger for long periods of time, said Kumar.

One plant extract, berberine, has been touted as a GLP-1 drug alternative; Google searches for it have grown 31 percent over the past year through August 2024. But those claims have been debunked. Berberine sales for The Vitamin Shoppe peaked in June 2023 with 110 percent sales growth, but sales have flattened since the second quarter of 2024.

“The medication took 30 years to create because it is different from our natural GLP-1,” said Kumar. “There’s many food products, extracts, supplements, things out there that we can correlate to an increase in the level of GLP-1, but that’s completely different and really not related to what the impact of GLP-1 receptor agonists have on someone.”

The New Normal

It’s not just semaglutide alternatives that are gaining traction, but products designed for those who are taking the shots themselves. It’s a market that seems to be growing by the day: As of May 2024, one in eight Americans have taken a GLP-1 medication, according to health policy research organisation KFF.

These offerings cater to all parts of a patient’s semaglutide journey, starting with the early days of using the drug — 26 percent of patients taking a GLP-1 drug discontinue use within three months, according to a recent study published in JAMA. While cost can be one reason for stopping, experts say that many patients are quitting due to the severity of the side effects such as nausea and dizziness. New products like SoWell’s latest launch are meant to help ease those side effects.

“If you just stop drinking, eating, just because the drug over-suppresses your appetite, you’re not going to feel well. You’re not going to have success on these medications,” said Dr. Sowa.

A variety of companies are getting in on the GLP-1 support market. Upscale gym chains including Equinox and Life Time have rolled out strength-focused training plans for members on GLP-1 drugs; Life Time also provides GLP-1 agonist injections at an onsite clinic. WeightWatchers, which recently acquired Sequence, a telehealth company that prescribes GLP-1 medicine, created a special diet plan for those on the drugs. Weight-loss brand Atkins, food and beverage company Nestlé and the nutrition arm of healthcare brand Abbott have created food products designed for GLP-1 agonist users.

Soon enough, there will be “tons of options available for the consumer,” said Huck.