Weekly Insights Feb 19, 2016

Executive Summary

• This week, the FBIC Global Retail & Technology team attended the MAGIC trade show in Las Vegas. MAGIC initially featured only menswear, but the event’s scope has been expanded to encompass 11 separate categories, including women’s, juniors’ and children’s apparel.
• Tech companies are still figuring out how to make virtual reality the kind of technology that people cannot live without, and they are turning to science fiction for inspiration. Facebook-owned Oculus distributes a copy of the popular sci-fi novel Ready Player One to new hires, and startup Magic Leap has hired sci-fi and fantasy writers.
• The British Retail Consortium, the trade association for the UK retail industry, and Springboard, a British retail intelligence firm, announced that average foot traffic across all types of locations in the UK rose by 1.2% year over year in January. The figure was significantly higher than the 2.2% decline seen in December.
• Experts at the Singapore Centre for 3D Printing at Nanyang Technological University are currently developing plans to build the city’s future public housing by integrating 3D printing technology with a “LEGO-like” strategy for assembly. Neither a printer large enough to build on such a scale nor printable concrete currently exists; both will have to be developed.