Hi! Here are the highlights of industry news from the last week.  Sources are in the hyperlinked text after the headline.  Enjoy!

Brands and Retailers

• Michael Kors to shut 100-125 stores. Wall Street Journal
• Mickey Drexler to leave J.Crew. Business of Fashion
• Lululemon to close 40 Ivivva Girls stores. Business of Fashion
• How Soho became an experiential retail playground. Glossy
• 12 key takeaways from Mary Meeker’s 2017 Internet Trends Report. AdAge
• Alexa Chung launches her own fashion line. Wall Street Journal
• Radio Shack closing 1,000 stores. USA Today
• Amazon fights Wal-Mart for low-income shoppers. Wall Street Journal
• Wal-Mart tries using store workers to deliver online orders. Wall Street Journal
• Canada Goose defies brick-and-mortar gloom. Business of Fashion
• Inside Hasbro’s digital transformation into a modern toymaker and advertiser. AdWeek
• Some of Amazon’s own brands are becoming super popular online. Recode
• Yoox Net-a-Porter group bans fur. Vogue
• Iconic Parisian department store Le Bon Marche and LVMH go digital with 24 Sevres. Forbes
• Amazon’s New York City bookstore is about your favorite things not book discovery. Forbes
• What’s driving the billion-dollar natural beauty movement? Fast Company
• Tommy Hilfiger is taking his see-now, buy-now spectacle to London. Fashionista
• Lululemon gains the most in six months as sales begin to recover. Bloomberg

Marketing and Social Media

• This Gen Z-focused publisher only uses social platforms (10 of them) and doesn’t even have a website. AdWeek
• Pinterest raises $150M at a $12.3B valuation as it makes a full press into visual search. Techcrunch
• Publishers are starting to see money from Facebook’s mid-roll ads. Digiday
• Snapchat acquires location-based data company to ramp up mobile measurement. AdWeek
• Meeker trends report points to mobile add opportunity. SeekingAlpha
• 7 Internet trends from Mary Meeker’s 2017 report that marketers should know about. AdWeek
• Twitter adds new features as it experiments with sponsored live video. AdWeek
• Instagram ads can now link to brands’ messenger accounts, bots. Marketing Land

Startup and Emerging Tech

• Siri, speakers and software: highlights from Apple’s show. New York Times
• HomePod speaker and new iMacs: what we saw at Apple’s WWDC. New York Times
• Apple business chat will bring customer service to the iMessage platform. Techcrunch
• The way forward with Facebook messenger bots. Venture Beat
• The RealReal ropes in $50M in new funding. TechCrunch
• Sakes Fifth Avenue is turning to iMessage to bolster sales. Glossy
• Toyota is aiming to debut a flying car by 2020. Fortune

International

• Luxury fashion brands start to sell on China’s WeChat messaging app. Wall Street Journal
• Aditya Birla fashion plans to trim Forever 21 to turn the label profitable. Economic Times
• Amazon to take on Australian market. Bloomberg
• Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE have severed ties with Qatar. Fortune
• Alibaba: what you should know about new retail. Seeking Alpha
• Mary Meeker’s focus on China: the key highlights. Recode