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Campaign ME
2 days ago
- Business
- Campaign ME
Research on the future of luxury: How Gen Z is redefining prestige in the UAE
Luxury used to be defined by rarity, craftsmanship and price. However, the story is being rewritten – and Gen Z is now holding the pen. In digitally fluent, high-income markets such as the UAE, this generation isn't just consuming luxury; they're reshaping it, pixel by pixel, reel by reel. Yet in the UAE, the story is more than just small volatility, it's about a generational pivot. Gen Z – digital natives with TikTok reflexes and climate anxiety in their blood – are not perceiving luxury as their parents knew it, they're not buying logos; they're buying meaning. In doing so they are pushing luxury brands to evolve, or face irrelevance. According to McKinsey, the luxury sector rebounded strongly from 2019 to 2023, powered by ultra-high-net-worth individuals. However, by 2024, signs of a slowdown emerged: 50 million consumers globally exited the market. Amid this turbulence, one trend stands out – Gen Z now accounts for 20 per cent of luxury consumption, with their influence continuing to increase and define the sector, as highlighted by Bain & Company. From owning to experiencing: The sensory shift among Gen Z Traditionally, luxury belonged to the 'esteem' level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs — signalling power, exclusivity and status. Gen Z, is more interested in shareable moments than static assets; luxury is being redefined as what you feel, not just what you flaunt. Take the rise of 'experiential luxury'. In the UAE, luxury isn't just something you wear – it's something you feel. Think fine dining, wellness retreats and meticulously curated aesthetic escapes. The experience itself has become the ultimate status symbol and the numbers back this up. Data from Kantar, in collaboration with Altient, shows that in 2024, 71 per cent of affluent consumers in the UAE indulged in fine dining, while a staggering 67 per cent checked into five or six-star hotels. Here, luxury doesn't sit behind glass – it's lived, savoured, and shared. Here's the kicker, these numbers spike among Gen Z. Looking to 2025, one in two say they plan to spend more on such experiences. How come? Because experiences can be shared, they can be turned into reels, vlogs, bite-sized dopamine hits. This, too, is luxury; the ability to live a life that's aesthetically enviable and emotionally rich. Gen Z aren't just online, they are online. Born into the scroll, raised on stories and fluent in every platform from TikTok to whatever's trending, they bring a whole new set of expectations to the table and from brands they want real talk, real people and zero filters. And nowhere is this digital fluency more intense than in the UAE. With some of the highest social media engagement rates in the world, young consumers here aren't just following trends — they're setting them, shaping brand narratives with every like, comment, and share. Rise of the Instagrammable experience economy In the UAE, social media isn't just where trends happen, it's where luxury lives. For Gen Z, picking a venue often comes down to question, will it look good on my feed? That's why places like Atlantis, The Palm and Nusr-Et (aka SaltBae) aren't just destinations – they're content factories. Atlantis is the most 'Instagrammable' hotel in the Middle East, racking up more than 670,000 posts under #AtlantisThePalm. From its underwater suites to its jaw-dropping aquariums, every corner is engineered for envy. Demand for hyper-personalised content But it's not just about aesthetics, it's also about alignment. Gen Z in the UAE is leaning hard into content that feels tailor-made, culturally relevant and organic. That's where Huda Beauty comes in. Built by Dubai-based influencer Huda Kattan, the brand doesn't just sell products, it tells stories Gen Z relate to. From unfiltered tutorials to brutally honest reviews, Huda's content strips away the gloss without losing the glam. It works, Huda Beauty saw a 264 per cent jump in TikTok EMV, showing how personalised and value-driven content can drive real engagement. French label Jacquemus is hitting that note. The brand's collaborations with regional influencers such as @karenwazen make its pieces, bags, accessories and more – feel less like high fashion and more like personal expression. It's a strategy that clearly hits home. Jacquemus grew its sales from €200 million to €280 million in 2023, powered by minimalist yet magnetic content that now pulls in over 5 million Instagram followers. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karen Wazen Bakhazi كارن وازن (@karenwazen) While the brand's global footprint is impressive, the UAE plays no small part in that momentum, with its hyper-connected, style-savvy audience, the region fits squarely into Jacquemus's strategy, not just as a market, but as a flagship market. The transparency equation: Do good or get cancelled Opaque supply chains can damage a brand's reputation, especially with how 'What Fuels Fashion' shed light on when they are used as a way to ''mask a lack of decarbonisation progress with vague, insufficient targets and progress''. The fast fashion sector has offered plenty of cautionary examples in recent years. Yet, few are talking about how supply chain transparency isn't just a compliance box to tick, it's a real business opportunity, especially for luxury brands aiming to win the trust and prove their meaning to the next generation of buyers in Gen Z. According to Kantar and Altiant's dataset, in the UAE data 83 per cent of Gen Z HNWI are willing to spend time and money on brands that do good. 81 per cent of this audience actively research a brand's social and environmental impact before making a purchase. Luxury's traditional opacity — the secrecy around sourcing, labour, and emissions — simply doesn't cut it anymore. Gen Z demands to know all, not just the marketing spiel, but the hard facts. So what's a marketer supposed to do with all insight? After all, decisions about opening up value chains usually happen at the board level. Though, that doesn't mean marketers have no role. In fact, there are plenty of ways transparency can come to life on the ground. In the UAE market. Chalhoub Group's 'Unity for Change' initiative, isn't just a slogan, it's a blueprint for how transparency can be embedded into local market strategies. If you're remit is global, then learnings can be taken from Stella McCartney transformation of transparency as a cost into a brand asset. The Stella McCartney brand may be best known for its campaign with Eva Mendes, however this article is interested in the brands innovation of an Environmental Profit & Loss (EP&L) report, which offers a perspective into what could be possible for brands on the road to true transparency. Because today, storytelling isn't just about what brands say it's about what they're willing to show. For Gen Z, transparency isn't a 'nice to have' its a commercial imperative. In fact, 37 per cent of luxury-purchasing Gen Z's in the UAE strongly agree that they would only engage with brands demonstrating visible sustainability initiatives. Therefore, the young buyers in the sector don't ask, but require luxury brands to be transparent in not just communicating Scope 1 impact, but 2 and 3. So what should brands do to better for Gen Z? Here's the key executive summary points for luxury brands with ambitions in the UAE market: Drop the status symbols. Replace them with stories, experiences and emotions. Localise your relevance. Ramadan campaigns, regional influencers, and cultural fluency aren't 'extras', they're essentials. Make your impact traceable. Supply chains can no longer be locked vaults; they need to be open books. Design for the feed. Instagrammable aesthetics still matter, but only when paired with meaningful substance. Luxury is no longer confined to glass cases; it thrives in social feeds and online validation. Gen Z doesn't want to be sold a dream — they want to co-create it. In a region where influence spreads faster than budgets, relevance is earned through meaning, not profit. The old formula of status and scarcity no longer works. Gen Z expects brands to be transparent, personalized, and brands to come into their worlds. This shift is already underway in the UAE and the luxury brands with foresight, continually scanning the horizon for what Gen Z wants and needs will find the oasis, while those refusing to change and embrace this generation of purposeful disruptors will be left deserted in the sands of the Rub' al Khali. Contributors: Hakan Nurakin, Client Manager, Kantar Richard Williams, Sales Consultant, Programme Design, Kantar Wensi Li, Associate Research Manager, Kantar
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Wall Street wants to make private markets a little more public
There's a new darling on Wall Street : private markets . Because that's where the party is now. Companies are staying private for longer-the number of publicly traded companies has dropped by nearly half over the past three decades, with nearly 1,500 startups worldwide currently boasting a valuation of $1 billion or more-and, according to the global consultancy Bain & Company, private market assets have more than tripled since 2013. The firm expects them to grow twice as fast as public assets in the future, reaching $62 trillion globally by 2034. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Select a Course Category MCA Healthcare Product Management MBA CXO Data Science Artificial Intelligence Technology others Data Science Digital Marketing Finance Project Management healthcare Operations Management Others Leadership Management Public Policy Design Thinking Cybersecurity PGDM Degree Data Analytics Skills you'll gain: Programming Proficiency Data Handling & Analysis Cybersecurity Awareness & Skills Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Duration: 24 Months Vellore Institute of Technology VIT Master of Computer Applications Starts on Aug 14, 2024 Get Details by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Play War Thunder now for free War Thunder Play Now Undo Historically, private equity investments were accessible only to wealthy and experienced investors. But in recent years, interest has soared among the retail class. Fund managers, brokerage houses and savvy startups are racing to build new products that expand access to all, and the newly appointed chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission , Paul S. Atkins, has signalled he supports the goal. "This is just the beginning," said the senior vice president of Robinhood Crypto, Johann Kerbrat, who is leading Robinhood's efforts to make PE tradable on its platform. Live Events Washington appears to be on board. Investments in private companies have typically been reserved for " accredited investors "-people that earn more than $200,000 a year or have a net worth of at least $1 million. The requirement is meant to protect everyday investors from high-risk investments. "There's not a lot of clarity, you can't get your money out, and you might lose all your money," said Jonathan Foster, the CEO at Angeles Wealth Management. Atkins indicated in May he planned to expand private markets access for retail investors. " Financial innovation sometimes means getting out of the way of capital formation," he said. The White House is reportedly finalising an executive order allowing 401(k) retirement savings plans to invest in private equity, according to The Wall Street Journal. That would ease the legal concerns that have kept private equity out of the US defined contribution market, which has grown from $9.6 trillion in 2022 to $12.4 trillion in 2024. New firms specialise in a secondary market for private shares. Trading platforms such as Forge Global, Destiny, Augment, Hiive, and EquityZen act as middlemen between early employees of private companies looking to sell their shares and public investors hoping to put their money in the private entity. Forge, for example, currently offers investment opportunities in roughly 200 hotshot private companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Figma and Stripe-with nearly 2,000 companies on the firm's radar. While these platforms require investors to be accredited, they have made it easier to find private shares (sometimes without permission from the companies that issued them). In March, Forge lowered its minimum investment threshold to just $5,000. "We believe in broadening access to all investors," said the company's chief strategy officer, Howe Ng, adding that Forge's total trading volume for the first quarter of 2025 increased by 132% over the prior quarter, topping out at $692.4 million.
Web Release
6 days ago
- Business
- Web Release
Bain & Company forms strategic partnership with Dr. Andrew Ng to accelerate AI transformation for clients worldwide
Bain & Company today announced a strategic partnership with Dr. Andrew Ng and his advisory firm, AI Aspire, to help organizations unlock scalable, transformative value from artificial intelligence. Dr. Ng is a renowned British-American computer scientist, AI thought leader, and founder of The collaboration combines Bain's deep industry knowledge and expertise in AI implementation with Dr. Ng's pioneering insights in AI and machine learning, with the goal of empowering companies to move beyond experimentation and deliver enterprise-level results with AI. 'AI is the most transformative technology of our generation—and realizing its full potential requires both cutting-edge technical thinking and practical execution at scale,' said Chuck Whitten, senior partner and global head of Bain & Company's digital capabilities. 'That's what Bain does best. We're thrilled to welcome Andrew Ng—one of the foremost minds in AI—to our team, joining forces with our 1,500 AI and digital practitioners to help clients move from experimentation to enterprise-wide impact.' As demand for AI-enabled solutions accelerates, Bain has seen a sharp rise in client needs across sectors. Tech- and AI-enabled revenue now comprises approximately 30% of the firm's business, with expectations to grow to 50% in the coming years. 'I'm thrilled to partner with Bain & Company to make the best AI thinking accessible to leaders around the world,' said Dr. Andrew Ng. 'Companies that lack a thoughtful, strategic approach to AI risk falling far behind their competitors. This partnership is about equipping organizations to lead—not follow.' Bain's AI, Insights, and Solutions practice includes more than 1,500 AI, data, analytics, architecture, and engineering experts. This multidisciplinary team combines algorithmic, technical, and business expertise to solve business leaders' hardest problems. This includes machine learning application implementation, business insight delivery, technology architecture and engineering, organizational development, and analytics strategy. The group integrates closely with the firm's industry and capability practices to deliver holistic business and technology solutions. The firm has also significantly expanded its wider digital and AI ecosystem of partner organizations, including forming key alliances with OpenAI, Microsoft, AWS, Google, SAP, Salesforce, and IBM.
Fashion Network
7 days ago
- Business
- Fashion Network
AI, resale and influencing suppliers are all key for fashion's decarbonisation drive
Home › News › Industry Download Print Only 11% of the fashion sector's market value is on track to meet 2030 decarbonisation goals but new research shows exactly where carbon cuts and commercial value align, and how AI could be the unexpected accelerator for both. It also highlights the importance — and challenges — of secondhand and how crucial it is to influence supplier behaviour as sourcing is where it all starts. Selfridges That's all according to a new Bain & Company study that says decarbonising the fashion and luxury industry is 'no longer a side initiative, but a critical business imperative that will reshape industry dynamics over the next decade'. Fashion accounts for around 2% of global emissions, so that 11% figure quoted earlier is concerning, But how did Bain arrive at it? It used a 'marginal cost of abatement curve (MACC) to compare potential decarbonisation levers and their returns on investment (ROI)'. Looking at fashion apparel and luxury separately, the MACCs were developed from aggregated public data, focused on near-term targets, and modelled emissions growth through 2030 in line with expected market growth. One critical decarbonisation lever for fashion apparel is sourcing and Bain saids that "while shifting to recycled materials is an important first step, the bigger opportunity lies in influencing supplier behaviour such as using lower-emission methods of manufacturing'. It added that for luxury, 'durability and lower impact per wear are intrinsic to brands' business models. Cutting overproduction and scaling resale would be important levers to focus on. Luxury's high gross margins mean that brands tend to overlook overproduction to avoid stock-outs. However, unsold inventory not only erodes margins, but also carry environmental costs which are increasingly under regulatory scrutiny particularly in Europe'. So where does AI come into it all? The report recommends using AI to help brands 'address overproduction and improve inventory efficiency'. We're told that AI-powered sales forecasting is already in use or being tested by approximately 60% of fashion brands, 'enabling more accurate predictions of consumer demand across styles, sizes, and geographies'. In parallel, 'around half of brands are leveraging AI to allocate stock more precisely. Technology is also enabling new production models, where brands are beginning to pilot made-to-order and made-to-measure approaches that significantly reduce waste by producing only what is needed'. Of course, this isn't just about what companies want to do because as well as their customers demanding a more sustainable attitude, regulation is also pushing fashion towards circularity by banning inventory destruction and supporting resale. Upcoming EU regulations requiring digital product passports (DPPs) 'could unlock new possibilities by doubling fashion products' lifetime value – with consumers reaping the rewards,' Bain said. And getting there won't be easy. For instance, secondhand is often held up as the way forward. But the report found that secondhand remains a 'negative-ROI decarbonisation lever for most brands as profitability is lower with majority of secondhand sales taking place on third-party platforms. Additionally, emissions are only reduced when secondhand volumes grow at the expense of firsthand volumes'. To counter this barrier, brands need to turn secondhand into a 'profitable, brand-owned channel that drives both customer lifetime value and emissions reductions'. 'Secondhand is fundamental to reaching the SBTi near-term target and DPP is a critical element to remove friction and cost to the overall channel. Done right, resale can shift from margin drain to margin growth—and become a credible and scalable decarbonisation tool,' said Matteo Capellini, a partner from the Sustainability & Responsibility practice at Bain. 'Fashion and luxury's decarbonisation journey is a complex one. What we've done is break down into immediate priorities and longer-term actions that companies can leverage to reduce carbon impact and still maintain commercial value. In the near term, we found that AI could improve demand forecasting and reduce e-commerce returns — two areas where inefficiency drives both emissions and margin erosion. But the bigger challenge lies in turning performance into habit. That means treating decarbonisation not as a standalone initiative, but as a business discipline embedded in sourcing, supply chain, inventory management, and product strategy.' Copyright © 2025 All rights reserved.
Euronews
16-07-2025
- Business
- Euronews
Is Russia producing a year's worth of NATO ammunition in three months?
In a keynote speech in London last month, the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte repeated a warning he has made in public at least three times this year: the western alliance is severely lagging behind Moscow on ammunition production. 'In terms of ammunition, Russia produces in three months what the whole of NATO produces in a year,' Rutte said on 10 June, adding that Putin's war machine is 'speeding up, not slowing down". Rutte, who became chief of the military alliance in October last year, went on to repeat the same warning. 'Let me repeat it again. NATO's economy is 25 times bigger than Russia's. It's 50 trillion (dollars), and the Russian economy is two trillion. That two-trillion-dollar economy is producing four times as much ammunition as the whole of NATO is producing at the moment,' he said. We verified his claims against the available data. We found that, while Moscow's ammunition production may have been approximately four times more than that of the NATO Alliance in 2024, there are signs that the gap could be closing. What do we know about Russia's ammunition production capacity? Information about Moscow's military production capacity is classified. Experts' estimates are based on the statements of officials, leaked intelligence and historical data. We can say with certainty that Moscow has steeply increased its ammunition production since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, outpacing its western counterparts. The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service estimates that Russia produced or refurbished 400,000 artillery rounds in 2022, multiplying its production more than eleven-fold to produce 4.5 million rounds in 2024. An analysis by consulting firm Bain & Company for Sky News in May 2024 came to the same conclusion, putting the total number of shells produced or refurbished in 2024 at an estimated 4.5 million rounds. Russia predominantly produces 122mm and 152mm artillery shells, while the NATO-standard shell has a slightly bigger diameter of 155mm, and is mainly used in the Western Howitzer systems, such as those provided by allies to Kyiv. The Bain & Company analysis estimates that the 152mm shell favoured by Moscow is also around four times cheaper to produce at $1,000 (€860) per shell compared to $4,000 (€3430) for the NATO-standard 155mm shell. The ammunition stockpile available to Moscow is also believed to be greater than its own production capacity due to the stocks it imports from its allies. According to media reports citing South Korean intelligence leaked this week, North Korea has supplied Russia with 12 million rounds of 152mm shells to be used in Ukraine. While this figure cannot be independently verified, satellite imagery analysed by the Wall Street Journal last December showed signs of a significant scaling up of production facilities in North Korea as well as an increase in shipments to Russia. How does NATO's capacity compare? We verified Rutte's statements by looking at the comparative ammunition production capacity of European allies and the US, the main NATO manufacturers. In 2024, Europe and the US produced an estimated 1.2 million shells per year, according to the Berlin-based German Institute for International and Security Affairs, compared to Russia's estimated 4.5 million. These estimates would roughly align with Rutte's claim that Russia is producing four times more ammunition annually than its NATO counterparts. Yet the Western alliance is looking to dramatically close the gap in 2025. The European Commission has set a target to ramp up ammunition production to 2 million rounds per year in 2025, while the US is looking to hit a new target of 100,000 rounds per month by October. Other allies, including Norway, the United Kingdom and Canada, are also looking to boost supply chains. While hitting those targets would see NATO significantly close the gap on Russia, western allies have in the past struggled to fulfil their promises. The European Union missed its target to provide Ukraine with one million artillery shells by March last year, prompting the Czech Republic to spearhead an international fundraising drive to procure more ammunition rounds for Kyiv, which has since secured the participation of 16 countries. The Czech initiative has since delivered 1.6 million shells to Ukraine. The Czech foreign minister said in May that funding has been secured to keep the programme going through to 2026, but that its future depends on parliamentary elections scheduled to take place in October. Is the Western lag endangering Ukraine's resistance? It is also unclear how much of those Western stockpiles would be sent to Ukraine in 2025. The government in Kyiv has previously said it needs around 200,000 ammunition rounds per month to be able to withstand Russian assaults on the front line. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently said that Ukraine hopes to receive some 3 million artillery shells from its allies this year, including 1.8 million from a Czech-led programme. But the West, particularly Europe, is still struggling to fire up its ammunition industry. Explosives — the essential core of ammunition shells — are in shortage with just one single factory in Poland currently producing trinitrotoluene or TNT. Western targets are also still far behind Russia's, despite the Russian economy being almost 25 times smaller than the combined size of NATO's economies.
