The Fall of Global Retail [Report]
The world of global retail is changing and doing it quite quickly. Early this year, I published this report to highlight some of the key changes happening right now, and if you’re a retail business, better you’re on top of them, as these changes are happening very fast.
Temu, SHEIN, and TikTok face both explosive growth and major challenges in 2025.
And they are not the cause, but only the tip of the iceberg of a global retail environment that is changing fast.
Temu’s GMV is expected to hit $41 billion, possibly reaching $60 billion in 2024 and $140 billion by 2027, with the U.S. as its largest market (40% of downloads).
However, growth rates are predicted to drop due to high customer acquisition costs, product quality issues, and potential regulatory changes like increased tariffs and de minimis rule revisions.
SHEIN targets $58.5 billion in revenue by 2025, doubling its 2023 figures, with the U.S. market contributing 28.2% of its sales.
However, concerns over labor practices, environmental impact, and a delayed IPO in London could slow its momentum.
TikTok generates 42% of its revenue from the U.S., which is projected to reach $7.7 billion in 2024. Yet, it faces a possible U.S. ban by January 2025 unless it separates from ByteDance.
These are just headlines, of something much bigger.
Instead, and that’s the key point, you might find your business caught in the middle of a broken supply chain.
Thus, I’m reposting this for you to take action. And if you need help navigating, ping me.
Various transitions have occurred in the retail industry over the last fifty years, fundamentally changing it.
In the last decade, I had the chance to witness some of these key trends and work at a strategic level with many retail and e-commerce brands to grasp what would be coming next.
A paradigm shift is occurring in the retail industry, and we’ll see it play out in the next few years.
If you operate in the retail industry and want to connect with me to discuss these shifts, reply to this email. I'm happy to chat about it!
A few significant threads and trends influenced these transitions, and I believe these can be summarized as follows:
From a regional to global order, where supply chains could, for the first time in the history of humankind, develop freely in a globalized environment, accessing manufacturing from markets (especially China), which completely reshaped the face of retail.
Faster and faster manufacturing cycles followed up optimized supply chains above to enable quick turnovers within retail stores, thus providing at the same time variety and convenience at scale.
The introduction of global digital platforms enabled the market discovery process to become faster, thus unlocking fashion trends that before took years to slowly/organically develop.
Thus, a global market, coupled with optimized supply chains and the introduction of digital platforms, created a whole new kind of retail, what today might be defined as real-time.
However, real-time retail is only the last evolution of a trend that started in the 1990s with the rise of fast fashion.
Is real-time retail the last stage of retail trends? If not, what’s next? Let’s see.