Fashion
Aditya Birla’s fashion unit to open Galeries Lafayette store in India’s Delhi
By
Reuters
Published
October 15, 2025
Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail (ABFRL) said on Wednesday that French luxury retailer Galeries Lafayette will open a department store in India’s capital city of Delhi, as part of its existing partnership with the Indian retailer.
The retail and fashion unit of Aditya Birla group, which competes with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, also has exclusive tie-ups with other luxury brands such as Ralph Lauren, Hackett London, Ted Baker and Fred Perry in India.
The Galeries Lafayette store will house more than 250 luxury and designer brands from across the globe and add to Aditya Birla group’s sprawling portfolio as it bets on India’s growing luxury market.
“Our target is to at least be in four of the top Indian six cities in next three years. It will always be large-format stores in the Indian context,” said R. Satyajit, CEO International Brands at ABFRL. There are also plans to launch an online platform for Galeries Lafayette in the country, he added.
© Thomson Reuters 2025 All rights reserved.
Published
October 16, 2025
Recent news that Quiz Clothing has returned to growth (after a very bruising period in its history) was encouraging. Even better, this week it said it’s back in store expansion mode.
Following its wide-reaching operational streamlining strategy introduced in February, the Scotland-based group is planning between five and 10 new UK store openings over the next 12 months.
It unveiled the prototype for these new stores last month with the Braehead, Glasgow, store set to be its design blueprint. And it’s now looking for “a focused number of new sites to showcase the brand’s extended product offering”. The company is looking at regions across the UK but with a focus on London and the south.
CEO Sheraz Ramzan said: “We have evolved our retail formula and, encouraged by a strong uplift in [like-for-like] retail sales over the summer, we are confident the new strategy is working. The plan is to now expand in the right locations through units that provide the best possible backdrop for our extended product offering. This will be underpinned by an improved capex and return model with more flexible lease terms.”
The Glasgow store covers 1,800 sq ft and has a “softer design concept framed by white and gold fittings”. It introduces an “elevated and aspirational environment for customers, with in-store screens for video-led campaign content and enhanced digital offerings”.
Extended product ranges including coordinated separates, contemporary tailoring and day-to-evening dresses also expand the brand’s appeal and the company said “customer reaction has been very positive, with attention to fits, extended sizing options and improved fabrications helping to drive a 20% uplift in sales across the business in September”.
Retail growth is also “being supported by international franchise partners, an enhanced concession model and expansion of online partnerships”.
The brand currently has 40 stores in the UK and a network of UK and international franchise and online partners. And last month its said it saw an average 14% uplift in like-for-like store sales during July and August. In the same period, online sales also grew 5% like-for-like.
Copyright © 2025 FashionNetwork.com All rights reserved.
Published
October 16, 2025
Frasers Group on Thursday announced a deal that means shoppers will be able to “discover and purchase products from Frasers Group’s retail ecosystem directly within AI shopping channels such as ChatGPT” via the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP).
It’s linking up in an exclusive European retail partnership for agentic commerce with Commercetools and becomes the first European retailer to deploy the firm’s full agentic commerce suite. For those who’ve not heard of it, Commercetools is a major AI-first commerce platform for global enterprises.
It means shoppers of retail brands such as Sports Direct, Flannels and Frasers get a variety of benefits, including “richer personalisation” and being able to complete purchase via ChatGPT.
And the company said it makes it a sector leader in AI-first shopping with the link-up forming “a key part of Frasers Group’s broader AI strategy to reimagine the customer journey across its brand and retail ecosystems”.
“The digital customer ecosystem is evolving faster than ever before, and so are customers’ expectations,” said David Clark, chief customer officer at Frasers Group. “With this partnership, [we’re] now at the forefront of this evolution to deliver enhanced customer experiences across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity – including native checkout in ChatGPT. This marks a shift in our digital capabilities, delivering an even more intuitive and personalised shopping experience for our consumers. Crucially, it builds on our group-wide investment into cutting-edge MACH Architecture to lead the group into a new era of seamless agentic commerce.”
And Commercetools CEO Andrew Burton added that “the future of commerce is agentic, and it’s arriving faster than most retailers realise. Frasers Group understands that when customers start delegating shopping to agents or doing their shopping through an LLM, the retailers who will win will be those ready to deliver seamless, trusted, consistent experiences through those agents. As our exclusive European retail launch partner, [it’s] setting the standard for how established retailers can move at the speed of this transformation—preparing to deploy agentic commerce responsibly, securely, and at scale across a diverse brand portfolio.”
Copyright © 2025 FashionNetwork.com All rights reserved.
The December NY/ICE contract fell below key support levels near 66 cents per pound, reaching new life-of-contract lows below 65 cents before a mild recovery above that mark in recent sessions.
The A Index also eased slightly from 78 to 76 cents per pound. In China, the CC Index (3128B) dropped from 98 to 94 cents per pound in international terms and from 15,250 to 14,750 RMB per ton domestically, with the RMB stable around 7.12 RMB/USD, according to Cotton Incorporated’s Monthly Economic Letter – Cotton Market Fundamentals & Price Outlook for October 2025.
Cotton benchmarks weakened in October 2025, with the NY/ICE December contract dipping below 65 cents per pound before recovering slightly.
The A Index fell to 76 cents, while China’s CC Index declined to 94 cents.
Indian and Pakistani prices remained stable, cushioned by steady local currencies.
Softer trend signals ongoing global demand sluggishness across key cotton-producing and consuming regions.
In India, Shankar-6 cotton prices held steady near 78 cents per pound, or about ₹55,000 per candy, supported by a stable rupee at ₹88 per USD.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s spot rates remained around 68 cents per pound, or 15,600 PKR per maund, with the PKR steady near 281 PKR/USD.
The overall decline across global benchmarks suggests continued demand sluggishness and seasonal market softness as the 2025 harvest season progresses.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)
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