Sydney – The digital-first, direct-to-consumer wine service has been relaunched and rebranded with a new focus on personalisation.

Good Pair Days calls itself ‘a wine retail experience built for the Netflix generation’. Specialising in product discovery, the company aims to engage novice wine drinkers and long-time aficionados by mixing expert curation with personal recommendations. Its range of wines are chosen by a team of sommeliers and sourced directly from independent winemakers in a variety of countries.

To identify wines matched to their individual tastes, customers take an initial palate quiz online before choosing three bottles from a list of suggested wines. These are then delivered directly to buyers throughout Australia along with tasting cards, food pairings and recipes. ‘For every bottle we calculate the chances you’ll love it,’ says Beto de Castro Moreira, co-founder and CTO of Good Pair Days. ‘This allows a level of personalisation and customisation for our customers’ tastes that can only be matched in the current market by having a personal sommelier.’

For more changes taking place in the alcohol sector, explore our Food & Drink vertical.

Mexico City – Studio José de la O is experimenting with brainwaves to see how they could be used to design objects.

Mind Vases is a project by the Mexico City-based studio and Japanese company Mirai Innovation Lab, in which participants use brain signals to manipulate a computer-generated model of a vase. The experiment uses a device called Aura, a headset covered with sensors that monitor bio-signals from the brain. Wearing the headgear, individuals are able to modify an existing 3D model of a vase by relaxing or concentrating on different aspects of its shape, height and diameter.

Mind Vases investigates the idea that sophisticated digital interfaces could empower people to design without the need for technical skills. In future, learning a specific craft or software might no longer be necessary in order to design and produce objects. Similarly, we consider how gestural design could democratise coding in our Programmable Realities macrotrend.

Global – The lifestyle and media brands have joined forces to position sleep as an endangered species.

Entitled Bedroom Habitats, the campaign takes inspiration from nature documentaries. The first episode of four features a couple facing the challenge of a small, uncomfortable bed ‘where sleep itself is on the brink of extinction’. The short films each lead viewers to an educational microsite, which offers sleeping tips as well as the ability to ‘shop the solution’ with Ikea products.

With one-in-three Americans not getting enough sleep, Ikea has spent several years focusing on the sleep market and presenting its furniture as an affordable remedy. This is the first time, however, that the retailer has worked with a media brand, and in particular one traditionally associated with global environmental issues such as extinction, ocean waste and climate change.

In an age of anxiety, sleep is also top of the agenda for health and wellness brands hoping to encourage a positive attitude to rest among consumers.

The South Korean duty-free market is experiencing a lucrative boom, with 27% growth in the first quarter of 2019 and sales totalling £4.10bn ($4.95bn, €4.41bn). The growth continues successes recorded in 2018 for South Korea, when the market grew by 35% to more than £14bn ($17bn, €15bn), according to The Moodie Davitt Report. In particular, foreign travellers have become increasingly important as domestic sales fall due to increases in online shopping and a general decline in domestic spending.

One of the main drivers is Chinese travellers, who account for 31.2% of foreign visitors to the country and 76.7% of duty-free sales in South Korea (sources: Korea Tourism Organization, The Moodie Davitt Report). A large proportion of these are individuals, as well as corporate resellers who buy at duty-free prices to sell at a profit in China, with spending per person outpacing the increase in duty-free traffic.

The South Korean market is not the only one changing as a result of changes in Chinese consumption. For more, read our Chinese duty-free market.