If you're involved in the fast fashion business it seems that fast is not really what's happening right now.

With every retail business around the world hitting a Covid brick wall since February and March this year there has been a potential Tsunami of overstock that continues to build up.

                              "Landfill cannot be the answer"

In a recent piece of research it seems that the apparel sector alone will see a massive US$395.6 billion in lost sales, according to analytics firm GlobalData, which represents a 19.5-per-cent decline on last year’s figures. The sector will account for 29.1 percent of the total $1.3617 trillion impacts of lost revenues by the retail industry during the period. 

The figures are the result of an industry examination undertaken by GlobalData, which found that the apparel sector is still the worst affected by the outbreak, continuing to be hit by store closures and poor consumer demand. Rising unemployment and a possible recession is likely to worsen the situation for players in the industry. (link below)

According to research conducted by the firm, 60 percent of consumers surveyed said that trustworthiness, risk-free and familiarity are factors currently influencing their choices of products/services.

“Brands need to continuously engage with consumers through social media channels and personalized messages to stay in contact and engage with their customers,” said GlobalData Retail analyst Vijay Bhupathiraju.

When I see the continued rise of 'social commerce', and in particular 'live streaming'  I wonder how much the so called developed parts of the western world are looking at this and wondering "hows this going to change what we do as a business?"

In February 2019, Alibaba took on a 10.8 percent stake in Bilibili (Tencent holds a similarly sized stake), whose e-commerce business was growing sluggishly in comparison with the exponential growth of its live-streaming revenue. Content-to-commerce integration between Bilibili and Taobao swiftly followed.

This is real, this is happening now, what's your plan to rethink social media in a strategic way?