Young, distracted and styled just-so, Anissa Kheloufi is part of a growing genus of Instagram junkies. As the 21-year-old flits around the Paris suburb of Saint Ouen, she’s incessantly snapping photos and videos. Usually they’re of her friend Cynthia Karsenty, who preens for the camera in swanky clothes ranging from high-waisted shorts and pin-striped jumpers to big, fuzzy slippers.
It is, by all appearances, a parade of self-indulgence—a life over-edited and ultra-shared. But what the eye-rolling onlooker doesn’t understand is that Ms. Kheloufi is building an apparel empire one snap at a time, one that pulls in close to $40,000 (Dh147,000) a month. Her social media fodder sends a steady stream of shoppers to Belmiraz, the apparel company she founded after tiring of law school. It includes a web store as well as boutiques located in Casablanca and Paris. Mostly, however, Ms. Kheloufi’s customers purchase their items in the same way she sells them: by app.
“I think I have the phone sewn onto my hand,” Ms. Kheloufi told Bloomberg. “My loved ones are fed up with it.”
The future of retail isn’t e-commerce or omni-channel or pop-up shops or geo-fenced flash sales. The future of retail is palm-sized. As social media consumerism cultivates a growing crop of scrappy brands, these retail entrepreneurs are skipping the computer altogether (let alone brick-and-mortar shops), instead displaying and selling products exclusively via smartphone.
And the phenomenon is accelerating. Two big reasons for this entrepreneurial shift are video and Instagram (and video on Instagram). In recent years, both have had an increasingly outsized impact on how consumers shop, one that shows no signs of abating. Big retailers have grown wise to it, too, as more of them are lured away from a traditional focus on desktop transactions.
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Payment networks are expanding beyond mobile wallets
Retail shopping has been turned on its head by online ordering. Here's how it can survive
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Back in August 2016, Facebook-owned Instagram began letting its users click through the phone app to a brand’s retail site. It also added “Stories,” a Snapchat-like feed of temporary posts better suited for video. A few months later, Instagram let 20 select companies, including J. Crew, Macy’s and Warby Parker, tag products in Instagram posts and route people to a store link where they could “shop now.”
Just like that, a virtual shopping mall was born.
Unlike the old kind, replete with dingy food court and shabby Sears, Instagram doesn’t have any problems generating “foot traffic,” given the 800 million people actively scrolling through its portal every month. In May, the company took the next logical step, quietly enabling a feature for users to add credit or debit cards. Soon, Insta-crowds may not have to leave the platform at all to make a purchase.
Salesforce.com says 5 per cent of digital retail traffic now flows through social channels. ViSenze, a visual search company, found that, of people who use social media, one in three makes a purchase every month through a platform such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or Snapchat. At companies like Belmiraz, which mostly sell to young buyers, the numbers are far higher. Ms. Kheloufi says 90 per cent of her company’s revenue flows through Instagram, where she connects with 119,000 followers.
Not surprisingly, digital platforms that cater to aspiring e-commerce titans like her are hustling to tweak their products for iPhone-only use. Tictail, the do-it-yourself marketplace where Ms. Kheloufi’s Belmiraz sells her wares, overhauled its platform recently to allow vendors to post directly to Instagram’s Story forum. It also lets retailers add text “stickers” and links that make it easier for shoppers to click through to purchase or figure out their shipping costs. When Tictail rolled out a feature allowing sellers to directly post video product listings, the platform promptly saw engagement on those items almost quadruple, according to Chief Executive Officer Carl Rivera.
“It’s very Snapchatty,” he explains.
Tictail made the shift toward handheld retailing after noticing that mobile purchases had jumped from being 40 per cent of its transactions to 70 per cent in the span of 18 months. Rivera figured that if shoppers were switching to smartphones so fast, sellers would quickly follow. The transformation, he says, has everything to do with how mobile tech enables visuals to dominate internet retail.
“What it really is is a shift in what the main input type is,” he says. “If you sit in front of a computer, it’s easy to enter text and really difficult to enter photos and videos. With a phone, it’s the opposite.”
Shopify, which hosts digital stores for some 600,000 merchants, has made similar moves, launching its deep integration with Instagram in October. Half of Shopify’s clients are actively using a mobile app it built exclusively for merchants. Over the past year, the shopping site has seen a three-fold increase in retailers who do business entirely by phone, according to Lynsey Thornton, vice president of user experience.
“They’re not necessarily on the go. They simply want the flexibility to do whatever they need to do,” she says. “It’s the time pressure that’s actually pushing a lot of this: ‘How can I do things faster?’”
Miranda Kerr counts herself among these iPhone-touting entrepreneurs. In running Kora Organics, the Australian model says she rarely opens a computer—handling social posts, fielding conference calls and somewhat obsessively tracking order fulfillment via mobile.
Ultimately, social shopping platforms are bulldozing yet another of retail’s barriers to entry.
In the 1990s, e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com declared war on department stores and malls. More recently, drop-shipping services (in which sellers have third parties fill orders) began to take hold, empowering digital disruptors. A would-be Phil Knight no longer has to hustle for capital and retail partners—all they need is buzz and followers. With the rise of handheld retail, a virtually unlimited commercial space is opening up, one in which marketing, shipping and catalogs cost the wannabe retailer next to nothing; the only real overhead is the price of an iPhone.
The wave is growing. Of the almost 2 million people selling items on Etsy’s online marketplace, roughly half are using the company’s purpose-built vendor app. Meanwhile, Intuit says half of the almost 700,000 self-employed entrepreneurs using its Quickbooks accounting software are tracking their income and expenses via its mobile platform.
“They’re very experiential sellers,” Thornton, at Shopify, says of iPhone-focused entrepreneurs. “And they care a lot about building a brand.”
Without a smartphone, Anita Berisha would likely still be working a full-time job in marketing or inventory management—her jewelry-making habit confined to a mere “side hustle.”
About two years ago, she launched her eponymous brand and started posting a few pieces—delicate chokers and fine wire earrings bent into the shape of flowers. With a few well-timed and unsolicited endorsements, Berisha’s following grew from a few hundred people to almost 32,000. Now she’s making up to 30 pieces a day and collecting about $10,000 in monthly revenue—all from her apartment in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood.
“When I started, every single thing I did was through my phone,” Berisha says. “I had to explain to my husband: ‘I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’m working here!’”
How to avoid crypto fraud
- Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
- Use an offline private key, a physical device that requires manual activation, whenever you access your wallet.
- Avoid suspicious social media ads promoting fraudulent schemes.
- Only invest in crypto projects that you fully understand.
- Critically assess whether a project’s promises or returns seem too good to be true.
- Only use reputable platforms that have a track record of strong regulatory compliance.
- Store funds in hardware wallets as opposed to online exchanges.
Guide to intelligent investing
Investing success often hinges on discipline and perspective. As markets fluctuate, remember these guiding principles:
- Stay invested: Time in the market, not timing the market, is critical to long-term gains.
- Rational thinking: Breathe and avoid emotional decision-making; let logic and planning guide your actions.
- Strategic patience: Understand why you’re investing and allow time for your strategies to unfold.
Film: Raid
Dir: Rajkumar Gupta
Starring: Ajay Devgn, Ileana D'cruz and Saurabh Shukla
Verdict: Three stars
The specs
Engine: 2.9-litre, V6 twin-turbo
Transmission: seven-speed PDK dual clutch automatic
Power: 375bhp
Torque: 520Nm
Price: Dh332,800
On sale: now
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Cryopreservation: A timeline
- Keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic
- Ovarian tissue surgically removed
- Tissue processed in a high-tech facility
- Tissue re-implanted at a time of the patient’s choosing
- Full hormone production regained within 4-6 months
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%3Cp%3EDirector%3A%20Tim%20Mielants%3Cbr%3ECast%3A%20Cillian%20Murphy%2C%20Emily%20Watson%2C%20Eileen%20Walsh%3Cbr%3ERating%3A%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
FIXTURES
Saturday, November 3
Japan v New Zealand
Wales v Scotland
England v South Africa
Ireland v Italy
Saturday, November 10
Italy v Georgia
Scotland v Fiji
England v New Zealand
Wales v Australia
Ireland v Argentina
France v South Africa
Saturday, November 17
Italy v Australia
Wales v Tonga
England v Japan
Scotland v South Africa
Ireland v New Zealand
Saturday, November 24
|Italy v New Zealand
Scotland v Argentina
England v Australia
Wales v South Africa
Ireland v United States
France v Fiji
Game Changer
Director: Shankar
Stars: Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, Anjali, S J Suryah, Jayaram
Rating: 2/5
If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.
When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.
How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.
German intelligence warnings
- 2002: "Hezbollah supporters feared becoming a target of security services because of the effects of [9/11] ... discussions on Hezbollah policy moved from mosques into smaller circles in private homes." Supporters in Germany: 800
- 2013: "Financial and logistical support from Germany for Hezbollah in Lebanon supports the armed struggle against Israel ... Hezbollah supporters in Germany hold back from actions that would gain publicity." Supporters in Germany: 950
- 2023: "It must be reckoned with that Hezbollah will continue to plan terrorist actions outside the Middle East against Israel or Israeli interests." Supporters in Germany: 1,250
Source: Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
COMPANY PROFILE
Initial investment: Undisclosed
Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Core42
Current number of staff: 47
Company Profile
Name: JustClean
Based: Kuwait with offices in other GCC countries
Launch year: 2016
Number of employees: 130
Sector: online laundry service
Funding: $12.9m from Kuwait-based Faith Capital Holding
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