https://verygoodretail.ai Fashion market intelligence, advisory and analysis from Pau Almar / VGR. en Fri, 03 Jul 2026 11:18:57 GMT https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/primark-q3-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/primark-q3-fy2026 Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Primark reported Q3 FY2026 revenue growth of +3% in constant currency. Underneath: LFL of −2.2%. The entire growth engine is new store openings — a +5pp perimeter contribution masking a per-store contraction in an estate that was supposed to be mature and profitable. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/hm-h1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/hm-h1-fy2026 Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence H&M Group reported H1 FY2026 revenues of SEK 130.7 billion, −6.8% reported and −1% in local currencies. At first glance, sequential improvement from Q1. The reality: the business did not move. The SEK did. https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/russian-state-of-fashion https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/russian-state-of-fashion Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY In the spring of 2022, the biggest names in fashion shut their Russian stores and walked. Zara, H&M, the whole Western shelf. Gone in a matter of weeks. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/inditex-q1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/inditex-q1-fy2026 Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Revenue +5.8% (+8.8% in constant currency). OPEX +6.4%. That gap is the whole question. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/richemont-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/richemont-fy2026 Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Richemont closed FY2026 with sales of €22.4 billion, up 5% reported and +11% at constant rates. Q4 accelerated to +13% CR. The headline is strong. The composition matters more. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/tapestry-q3-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/tapestry-q3-fy2026 Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Tapestry's Q3 FY2026 is a Coach quarter dressed as a group quarter. Net sales of $1.92 billion grew +21% reported, +19% constant currency. On a pro forma basis stripping out the divested Stuart Weitzman, growth accelerates to +25% reported and +23% CC. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/adidas-q1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/adidas-q1-fy2026 Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Some quarters are about numbers. Others are about momentum. This one feels like both — in a similar way to what we recently saw with Moncler in luxury. https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/lime-vgr-mandate https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/lime-vgr-mandate Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar PRESS RELEASE BARCELONA, 24th April 2026 — LIMÉ, Russian fashion leader, and VGR, the Barcelona-based fashion advisory boutique, today announced the conclusion of their three-year strategic advisory mandate — a partnership that transformed LIMÉ from the 13th largest fashion brand in its market into its undisputed https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/abf-primark-h1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/abf-primark-h1-fy2026 Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence ABF reported H1 FY2026 results with Primark revenues up +2%. Underneath that headline, the picture is more instructive: like-for-like sales fell 2.7%. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/moncler-q1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/moncler-q1-fy2026 Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence There are quarters where you read numbers, and quarters where you recognise momentum. Moncler's Q1 FY2026 is the second kind. https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/zara-vs-netflix https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/zara-vs-netflix Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY There is a conversation happening inside every major fashion brand right now, and most of them are having it wrong. The question they're asking is: how do we compete with Zara, or Shein, or whoever appeared in last quarter's market share report? The question they should be asking is different: how d https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/hermes-q1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/hermes-q1-fy2026 Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Hermès reported Q1 FY2026 revenues of €4.07 billion, down 1.4% in reported euros. The share price fell 12.3% on the day. Both the reported figure and the market reaction require context. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/kering-q1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/kering-q1-fy2026 Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Kering reported Q1 2026 revenues of €3.6 billion, down 6% in reported euros, flat at comparable rates. The comparables matter. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/fast-retailing-h1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/fast-retailing-h1-fy2026 Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Fast Retailing's H1 FY2026 is a record across every dimension that matters: revenue +14.8%, operating profit +31.7%, EBITDA margin at 25.1%, operating cash flow +67.3%. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/nike-q3-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/nike-q3-fy2026 Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Nike's Q3 FY2026 is a transition under financial pressure. Revenue was flat in reported dollars, down 3% in constant currency. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/hm-q1-fy2026 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/hm-q1-fy2026 Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence H&M Group's Q1 FY2026 results look very different depending on which currency lens you use. https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/why-zara-second https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/why-zara-second Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY There is a widespread misreading of how Zara works that costs its imitators years of wasted effort. The misreading goes like this: Zara is very good at spotting trends and moving fast. To compete with Zara, you need to spot trends and move fast too. https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/inditex-fy2025 https://verygoodretail.ai/intelligence/archive/inditex-fy2025 Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar Market Intelligence Inditex closed FY2025 with net sales of €39.9 billion — a record. Net income of €6.22 billion — a record. Net cash of €11 billion — a record. https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/structural-war-fashion https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/structural-war-fashion Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY There is a conflict running through the middle of almost every fashion company above a certain size, and almost no one who works there will say it plainly. It is not a personality conflict, though it produces those. It is not a strategic disagreement, though it generates those too. It is a structura https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/ai-native-brand https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/ai-native-brand Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar KEYNOTE INSIGHT The fashion industry has been talking about artificial intelligence for several years in a way that reveals more about its anxiety than its understanding. AI enters the conversation as a tool for trend forecasting, as a personalisation engine for e-commerce platforms, as a way to generate campaign i https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/western-fashion-vs-china https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/western-fashion-vs-china Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY In 2016, a Chinese influencer named Austin Li sold 15,000 lipsticks on a single livestream in five minutes. By 2020, livestream commerce in China had become a primary retail channel for fashion \u2014 not a marketing experiment, not a supplementary revenue stream, but the way hundreds of millions of https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/infinite-scroll-isnt-infinite https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/infinite-scroll-isnt-infinite Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY Infinite scroll sounds like a solution to a problem. The problem \u2014 how to keep customers browsing longer and increase the chance of purchase \u2014 is real, and scroll is a genuine improvement over the paginated product catalogue it replaced. A customer who never has to click "next page" keeps https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/selling-coats-in-august https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/selling-coats-in-august Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar ANALYSIS There is a Zara store on Larios Street in M\u00e1laga \u2014 one of the main pedestrian shopping streets in a city where the average August temperature is above 35 degrees Celsius. In August, that store sells coats. Not as a remnant from the previous season, not as a clearance operation, but as a de https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/inditex-marketplace https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/inditex-marketplace Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY It is a question that people inside Inditex are almost certainly discussing, and that very few people outside have thought through carefully. The surface argument for a marketplace is easy to construct: Inditex has extraordinary web traffic, a portfolio of eight brands covering multiple positioning https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/mango-next-move https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/mango-next-move Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY Mango's position in the global fashion landscape is unusual and underappreciated. It is a company large enough to compete on international scale \u2014 present in over 100 countries, with annual revenues above three billion euros \u2014 but structured as a privately held family business with the dec https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/co-ceo-question-fashion https://verygoodretail.ai/publications/co-ceo-question-fashion Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT Pau Almar CASE STUDY Most fashion brands are run by one person. A founder with a strong creative vision, or an operator who came up through the commercial side, or a professional CEO appointed by a board. This works well until it doesn't. The moment it stops working is usually recognisable in retrospect, and hard to see