Fashion Museum, Belgium – United Colors of Benetton will be
present together with other labels from the international fashion
scene to celebrate the importance of knitwear in high fashion
across the last centuries.
Micro Blogging Coming Soon To Style-and-Fashion.com
Colleagues at Asda stores and depots up and down the UK will share an annual bonus pay out this week as the UK based supermarket celebrates a successful year.
As Asda’s US parent Walmart prepares to announce its full year results later today, Asda has confirmed a bonus pot of £26.9 million for colleagues working in its stores and depots.
Colleagues with over six months service at Asda will receive their annual bonus this Friday. The payout will see full time colleagues working at one of Asda’s 386 stores and 19 distribution depots receiving a bonus of up to £350.
Over 20,000 colleagues in stores and depots that have exceeded their annual target will receive a bonus of up to a £437 – or ‘superbonus’. The Greenhithe store in Kent was the best performing store in England, whilst Stenhousemuir came top in Scotland. The Bangor store achieved the highest performance in Northern Ireland along with Llangefni in Wales.
The bonus recognises the efforts of colleagues across the country over the last 12 months, including ‘Go Getters for Forgetters’ who clocked up 22 million steps fetching items for shoppers during the festive period.
Andy Clarke, CEO and President of Asda comments; “There is no doubt in my mind that the colleagues working in our stores and depots are the heroes of our business. They have worked incredibly hard this year to deliver the best for our customers – taking everything from the difficult economic climate to the great British weather in their stride. I take my hat off to them.”
“Our bonus payout is directly linked to our stores’ performance, so to be able to offer a bonus to our colleagues during challenging times, is testament to the fact that we are giving consumers what they want – quality, value and service every day.”
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| HELP RETAIL DELIVER GROWTH – BRC TELLS CHANCELLOR |
| February 28, 2011 |
| Retailers are already in the process of absorbing £670 million pounds of extra Government-imposed costs. The Chancellor should protect the sector from further burdens in his Budget.
The key new burdens affecting retailers over the next 12 months are the knock-on effects of last October’s 2.2 per cent National Minimum Wage increase (with another yet-to-be announced increase this October), Business Rates and National Insurance increases due this April and the costs of the Carbon Reduction Commitment tax from April 2012. They total £670 million. On top of that there is the unknown cost of absorbing a significant share of the £12 billion a-year VAT rise introduced on 4 January. In its submission to the Chancellor ahead of next month’s Budget, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) points out that 80 per cent of the new jobs announced at the Prime Minister’s January Jobs Summit were in retail, showing the sector is central to growth and jobs. In particular, one third of retail staff are aged under 25 so the sector has a pivotal role in providing work for young people – who face some of the biggest challenges on the jobs market. Retailers accept ‘we are all in this together’ but they are already ‘in this’ more than many. The sector is not asking for handouts but is saying any new impositions will undermine its ability to maintain and create jobs, costing the Exchequer. In the submission the BRC sets out a 20 point plan for retail-led recovery. British Retail Consortium Director General Stephen Robertson said: “Our absolute priority is to be at the centre of the recovery – to be able to go on maintaining and creating jobs. Sadly, a million young people are without work. Retail already employs one million young people, starting their careers, and we’d like to be able to take on more. “While it may be true that ‘the broadest shoulders should bear the biggest burden’, the retail sector, which operates on slim margins, is already seeing its load increase sharply. New impositions can only hinder retail’s ability to invest. “The Prime Minister’s Jobs Summit showed just how reliant on retailing this year’s economic growth will be. We’re not asking for handouts but we do need an environment that eases costs, supports job creation and boosts consumer confidence.” The BRC’s 20 point plan for a retail-led recovery includes calls for the Chancellor to: - Help employers plan by providing for 18 months notice of all future National Minimum Wage increases, rather than the present six months. This October’s increase should be no more than 1.7 per cent and future increases should not exceed long term average earnings growth. - Make future Business Rates increases more predictable and affordable by basing them on the Consumer Price Index (as used for pensions) or an annual-average of the Retail Price Index. - Reduce the impact of rising transport costs on household finances, shop prices and businesses by suspending the fuel duty increase due in April and waiving commercial vehicle road tax for a year. This could be funded from tax windfall income the Government is receiving as a result of higher fuel prices. - A moratorium on new employment legislation until growth is firmly establishment. Now is not the time to add to employers’ costs by, for example, complicating maternity/paternity leave rights. - Make it easier for micro businesses to take on their first employees by making employment law simple. - Help retailers further increase apprenticeships by minimising bureaucracy. For example, a requirement to send hard copy documents by post cannot be justified in this internet age. - Ensure localism plans clearly define where local decision making begins and ends so it doesn’t get in the way of business growth and keep costs down by sharing good practice. |
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Giorgio Armani S.p.A. presents the latest Armani Jeans collection for Spring-Summer 2009 with a state-of-the-art technology project which Saatchi & Saatchi reserved exclusively for Giorgio Armani and will be used for the very first time online. A fusion of experimentation and innovation gives life to a unique experience of its kind. This project overturns the traditional surfing concept and gives users total interactivity. Thanks to a video experience, users can actually enjoy their first total interactive web moment, moving in a dynamic 3D space which is not created with three-dimensional models but filmed with special cameras. Within this filmed reality, users are in full control of the experience and can see the entire Armani Jeans collection, picking different garments to create a new look every day to reinvent their personal style. ‘Take control of your style!’ is the online byword at www.armanijeans.com. For further information, please…
www.armanijeans.com
View letter NRF submitted to the Federal Reserve
Retailers Say Federal Reserve Proposal to Lower Debit Card Swipe Fees Doesn’t Go Far Enough
Washington, February 23, 2011 – The National Retail Federation told the Federal Reserve this week that a proposal to cap debit card swipe fees at 12 cents per transaction does not go far enough, and that banks should honor debit transactions at or close to face value, the same as checks.
“History has shown that by adopting at-par presentment for checks, Congress and the Board got it right,” NRF said in comments filed with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors on Tuesday. “A century later, Congress has provided the Board with the opportunity to get it right again by renewing the principles embedded in the Board’s at-par checking rules. When every party bears its own costs, the free market will force all parties to strive to minimize their costs and every party will have the potential to win.”
Under swipe fee reform included in last year’s Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Fed was instructed to establish regulations that would result in “reasonable” debit card fees proportional to banks’ cost of processing debit transactions. Debit swipe fees are currently one to two percent of each transaction but the Fed proposed in December that they be capped at a flat fee of no more than 12 cents per transaction. Financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets would be exempt. The Fed is currently reviewing comments on the proposed rules, with an April deadline to approve a final version so the reforms can take effect in July.
NRF said the proposal’s “only shortcoming is its failure to carry the principles through to the extent necessary to achieve true market correction in a realm long lacking transparency and competition.” NRF noted that banks in their own filings with the Fed have claimed only 4 cents as their cost of processing a debit transaction, and that a study by the payments system consulting firm BetterBuyDesign estimates the cost at one-third of 1 cent for PIN debit and 1.36 cents for signature transactions.
NRF said it “strongly urges” the Fed to further reduce the cap “toward a level that more accurately reflects the actual costs.” NRF argued that debit cards are merely plastic checks that draw on the same bank accounts as paper checks and therefore should be treated the similarly. The Fed has required paper checks to be cashed at face value since being directed by Congress to do so in 1916, reasoning that if each party involved with a check had to absorb its own expenses they would have an incentive to reduce the cost, and merchants, customers and banks would all benefit.
The introduction of debit cards a generation ago dramatically lowered banks costs of giving customers access to their checking accounts, and some banks even paid retailers as much as 5 cents per transaction to accept the cards. But instead of continuing such practices, the banking industry has turned debit cards into a profit center, charging fees that “have increased the price of everything our customers buy and dampened merchants’ profitability as well.”
Debit card swipe fees currently total about $20 billion a year, and card company practices compel merchants to pass these fees along to customers through higher prices. The Fed estimates that its proposed cap would save merchants and their customers about 70 percent, or about $1.2 billion a month.
The Fed’s proposal also offers two alternatives intended to give merchants a choice of at least two unaffiliated, competing card processing networks to use when swiping a card. The first option would require that one PIN network and one signature network be available while the other requires that two of each type be available. NRF said it “strongly supports” the second option to ensure that true competition to give merchants the lowest costs will exist.
NRF’s National Council of Chain Restaurants division filed separate comments raising concern that the 12-cent cap is too high because it is a greater percentage of the small-ticket transactions often conducted by restaurants than it would be on the larger sales typically made by general merchandise retailers. Like NRF, NCCR called on the Fed to lower the 12-cent cap to a figure more in line with banks’ actual “reasonable and proportional” costs.
As the world’s largest retail trade association and the voice of retail worldwide, NRF’s global membership includes retailers of all sizes, formats and channels of distribution as well as chain restaurants and industry partners from the United States and more than 45 countries abroad. In the United States, NRF represents the breadth and diversity of an industry with more than 1.6 million American companies that employ nearly 25 million workers and generated 2009 sales of $2.4 trillion.
For two weeks a year all eyes are on London, as the Fashion Show train comes into town and designers get ready to show off their collections.
It’s not just the catwalks though, the front row is as much of an event as the show itself! Our pick of the front row from this season is below, we love Diana Vickers simple but stylish cardigan dress, glammed up with heels. The next look is classic Alexa, check out her diminutive bag, a microtrend for Spring.
Ex-Sugababe Keisha Buchanan rocks a gorgeous mix of corals and nude tones, the red lippie really finishes it off. Lastly Nicola Roberts does A-list chic in a bodycon dress, heels and sunnies. Love her new ombré hair!
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This is Django Woolf Your Host On Style-and-Fashion.com
Fashion blogger Lily Melrose was picked to be our guest presenter for London Fashion Week, we sent her to the Giles show at the impressive Royal Courts of Justice in London to cover all the action backstage. Watch out for the video coming very soon.
Before preparations for the show got underway we let her loose in our Oxford Street store and this is what she picked. Doesn’t she look great? Scroll down to get Lily’s style!
FROM LEFT>> Knitted boxy jumper: £24.99. Limited Edition floral tea dress: £34.99. Lace up brogue: £29.99. Ornate enamel ring: £6.99. Leafy chain necklace: £8.99.
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Guilty Pleasures
Put on your dancing shoes and grab a partner….for Guilty Pleasures returns…
