New York – Luggage brand Tumi has enlisted Lenny and Zoë Kravitz to show how travel can reconnect us with our ancestry.

The campaign is set in the Bahamas, the birthplace of Kravitz’s ancestors. The video follows the father and daughter as they explore the places and traditions that were significant to their Bahaman roots, and discuss the importance of passing on family values from one generation to the next.

‘To me, this campaign is about connecting with ourselves, our roots, and with each other,’ says Zoë Kravitz in a press release. ‘It was amazing to travel to the other side of the island for my first time to see where my family originated from and to pay respect to our elders and those who came before us.’ The documentary-style film takes a more enlightened approach to travelling than traditional campaigns, which tend to rely on stereotypes of white, Western tourists. As Bani Amor argues, there is a growing movement of conscious, diverse travellers who only travel when they are invited, or connected, to a country.

San Francisco – A new digital marketplace allows anyone to open an online store with their phone and sell new, brand-name products directly to friends or followers.

From sportswear to eveningwear, Storr is working with more than 150 brands including Adidas, Re/Done Denim and Jonathan Simkhai and plans to eventually feature thousands more in different verticals. The brands handle shipping and returns, while sellers make a 15–25% commission for each sale, which can be processed from Apple or Android devices, the web, or directly from Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

‘Storr accelerates the transition from centralised, channel-first commerce to decentralised, people-first commerce,’ says founder and CEO Eric Senn. Brian Murray of Craft Ventures, which recently invested in the platform, adds: ‘As personal brands become larger, more relatable and more trusted than retail brands, Storr represents the logical next step in e-commerce.’ For more on the emergence of peer-to-peer retail, read our Shoppable Social market.

Switzerland – Following years of biotechnology research, the textile is finally being used in a consumer-facing product.

Omega has teamed up with AMSilk, a German producer of synthetic spider silk, for a Nato watch strap that blends polyamide with AMSilk’s synthetic Biosteel. Although spider silk is renowned for its strength and flexibility, the man-made version has been chosen for its breathable, anti-bacterial and anti-allergenic qualities.

The collaboration marks the first time a commercially available product has been made with Biosteel. While various companies have used the material to create one-off, limited-edition pieces, Omega is the first luxury brand to scale up production of synthetic spider silk. The watch strap is priced at a premium £207 ($270, €235).

As luxury consumers become more aware of the damaging impact of animal products, brands have no choice but to develop alternative, often lab-grown materials.

Some 48% of consumers say Brexit is their biggest concern heading into 2019, according to new research conducted by NatWest and Retail Economics. As a result, just under half of all UK households are expected to cut back on leisure activities, such as eating out or going to the cinema, in 2019. For consumers that expect their personal finances to be significantly weakened by Brexit, this figure rises to 60%.

‘It is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit has been declared the top customer concern,’ says David Scott, head of retail and leisure at NatWest. ‘Uncertainty always has and always will damage the sector. 2018 was a year of unprecedented change in the retail industry, and this change propels uncertainty – there is nothing more uncertain than what Brexit will look like.’

From Brexit to the US elections, we explore consumer discontentment in more depth in our An Uncertain Future vertical.