LSN : News : Stat: Britons turn to credit cards to feed their family amid cost of living crisis

Shoreditch Arts Club introduces hybrid private members’ gallery

Cinema at Shoreditch Arts Club. Photography by Beth Davis, UK

Shoreditch Arts Club. Artwork by Peter Spanjer. Photography by Rocio Chacon, UK

Shoreditch Arts Club. Artwork by Joey Holder. Photography by Beth Davis, UK

UK – Shoreditch Arts Club is an ambitious new hybrid art gallery located in Shoreditch’s Tea Building, an iconic East London 1930s warehouse. Exclusive members can access the 500-square-metre space that includes several art exhibitions, a restaurant with a seasonal menu by in-house chef Mattia Luminelli, a cafe and bar, open dining, working and lounge areas, private dining and meeting rooms, a 24-seat cinema and a busy event and networking programme.

‘Since its inception, it was clear that the club should be a space for art although not a gallery,’ say co-founders Amr Assaad and Matt Yeoman, directors of the architecture firm Buckley Gray Yeoman. ‘Therefore, we had the idea to create an environment like an avid collector’s home.’ The annual membership fee is £750 ($893, €845), with an additional one-off joining fee of £150 ($179, €169).

We previously highlighted in Whisper Networks how spaces like Shoreditch Arts Club focus on experience-led micro-communities to uphold an aura of real-life exclusivity in the era of luxury omnipresence.

Strategic opportunity

Luxury, travel and hospitality players should consider how to answer humanity’s desire for community with exclusive experiences and access to physical invitation-only spaces

Savage X Fenty partners with Fit:Match for tech-powered fittings

US – Lingerie brand Savage x Fenty has partnered with digital twin platform Fit:Match and Intel to launch a new AI- and AR-powered fitting room experience.

Fit Xperience scans shoppers in the fitting room using Intel’s RealSense technology and it generates an anonymous avatar based on a shopper’s exact body shape.

The shopper’s body is then compared to the bodies in Fit:Match’s database and an AI assist from Intel OpenVINO recommends the best-fitting Savage X styles for the shopper.

This combination of technologies tackles the fit challenge that has long plagued brands and consumers by using body shape data rather than standard measurements.

The immersive shopping experience is quick, safe and private; the entire process takes less than 30 seconds, and no videos or pictures of shoppers are taken or stored.

Fit Xperience is available exclusively at Savage X Fenty stores.

Savage x Fenty has long been considered a disruptor in the lingerie market, attempting to make it a more playful, powerful and relatable retail category for younger consumers. This collaboration bolsters the brand’s commitment to turning lingerie shopping into a more empowering and inclusive experience.

Fit:Match and Savage X Fenty, US

Strategic opportunity

By using new technologies, brands and businesses can discover more intuitive ways to cater for consumers

Foresight Friday: Pavan Bivigou, senior foresight analyst

Victoria Ling for The Future Laboratory

This week, LS:N Global’s senior foresight analyst Pavan Bivigou details the sharp shoulders, murals and non-smart bots on her radar.

: Set your clocks to Moon time! Global space organisations are working on establishing a common lunar reference point

: This week we looked at how clothing can be literal armour and fashion is once again encouraging us to dress for power. See: the sharp shoulders at Saint Laurent, the stern skirt suits in serious beiges at Miu Miu and pinstripes at Courrèges

: Gender equality news has been difficult this week. We need to see women everywhere. Hooray, that The National Portrait Gallery has announced a new mural featuring 130 women from British history

: It’s also been wonderful to discover the work of Make Space for Girls this week. This charity is making sure that parks and public spaces across the UK are designed with teenage girls in mind

: AI creates art and can also teach us about the ways we often take it for granted

: But not all AI is so reflective. Meet the world’s first Artificial Untelligence, a non-smart chatbot only interested in silly jokes and Zoolander quotes

Quote of the week

‘The mind that crafts the interesting story is not in any danger’

Shelia Williams, editor of sci-fi magazine Asimov’s Science Fiction, assuring readers that human imagination will win out against the rising tide of AI-generated fiction

Stat: Britons turn to credit cards to feed their family amid cost of living crisis

Nourish Hub by RCKa, UK

UK – A survey by Forbes Advisor in December 2022 of 2,000 UK adults aged over 18 reveals that nearly a third admit using credit cards to buy groceries and essential food items. Some 25% said they go into debt to pay for everyday items such as transport, lunch and drinks.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), food prices rose consistently for 17 months until December 2022 – when food price inflation was at its highest since September 1977. Inevitably, some households have no choice but to turn to credit to catch up.

‘Credit cards are a great servant, but a terrible master,’ says Laura Howard, a financial expert at Forbes Advisor. She adds: ‘Many households will be unable to clear their monthly balance. And with the effective credit card interest rate now at 19.55%, according to the latest Bank of England data, this only exasperates affordability problems for households.’

In our Cost of Living Crisis series, we have examined how organisations and brands in all industries are flexing their business operations to cater for customers facing a global cost of living crisis. Credit card companies must also rethink their approach as new clients are knocking on their door out of desperation.

Strategic opportunity

While Gen X and Millennials used to go into debt to pay for a car or a house in their 30s, Gen Z now start much earlier (23 years old, on average) via new credit players like Klarna. There is space for more educational platforms around debt and financial services to empower a new generation rather than push them into more debt