Need to Know
15 : 05 : 19

US – The Miami-based jewellery and accessories brand has launched a fleet of mobile retail units to reach new customers.

To amplify its narrative around American craftsmanship, Miansai is telling its story through a fleet of vintage vehicles transformed into retail units. The brand has been sending the vehicles to locations such as Coachella Festival in California, Soho House in New York and Navy Beach in Montauk – destinations said to fit the brand’s relaxed attitude towards luxury.

The project allows Miansai to step out of the traditional brick-and-mortar jewellery retail format, as well as test new shopping formats. ‘The cool thing about mobile retail is that it allows us the flexibility to be agile and test markets without committing to leases right away,’ says Michael Saiger, the brand's founder.

As explored in our recent microtrend, austere and exclusive jewellery showrooms are falling out of favour as brands turn to casual, social spaces to enhance the jewellery experience.

Global – Nike has added a new function to its retail app that allows users to measure their feet using their smartphone.

Nike Fit is a scanning solution created to help consumers find the right size for every Nike shoe style. The technology, which uses 13 points of measurement, relies on a combination of computer vision, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Once a foot is scanned, the brand is able to compare individual sizing data with its full range of footwear in order to recommend the best fit for a consumer’s chosen shoe.

According to Nike, sizing is a significant consumer problem across the footwear industry. Positioning Nike Fit as a solution to this issue, the brand suggests data captured from the feature will enable the company to transform the way it designs and makes footwear, while removing friction from both the online and in-store shopping experience.

In our Digital Fit microtrend, we explore how a new wave of digital tools are helping to refine sizing options for shoppers buying fashion online.

Germany – Signs is the first tool of its kind to communicate sign language via a voice assistant.

Created by The German Youth Association of People with Hearing Loss and MRM//McCann, the tool recognises and translates German sign language in real-time and communicates this directly to a voice assistant such as Alexa or Google Home.

The smart tool is trained to identify body gestures with a camera, which are translated into data for the voice assistant to understand. The answer is then displayed in text or as visual feedback. Signs was created in response to Gartner's prediction that the world will be dominated by 30% non-screen based digital interaction by 2020.

Read our macrotrend Programmable Realities to discover more about Gestural Design and how our bodies can be used to code data without the need for a physical interface.

Adults in Britain are eating socially less often, according to new data from Sainsbury’s Living Well Index. Overall, 29% of adults reported eating alone most or all of the time, compared to 26% just six months earlier. Broader changes in relationships and social connections appear to be leading to this growth in solo dining.

Within the relationships category, the survey finds a modest decline in the number of people in relationships, as well as a drop in the number of people reporting being satisfied with their sex lives. The study shows that people who are no longer in a relationship were significantly more likely to eat alone more often.

As our macrotrend Uncoupled Living unpacks, while singledom is on the rise, brands have an opportunity to support it as a positive and fulfilling lifestyle choice.