On opening day, more than 2500 shoppers and 250 invited guests were at the store to participate in activities including a fashion and dance showcase. “For the past 10 years, Skechers has been evolving and improving ourselves in terms of retail shopping,” said Vincent Leung, president of Skechers Southeast Asia.

 

“Our clear direction is to create a wonderful customer shopping experience, with Brand Experience Stores in China, Hong Kong, and now our very first in Southeast Asia right here at Jewel Changi Airport.”

 

A staircase between Levels 1 and 2 features a colourful wall mural designed by Diplomat, a small group of young budding Singapore artists, adding energetic hip-hop and street-cred elements to the space. There is also a photo zone on Level 2, where visitors can take selfies with a fun photo-wall.

 

Another highlight of the Skechers in Singapore store exclusive to Jewel is a customisation zone, where one can personalise selected Skechers shoes or apparel with adornments or heat press. Guests of the opening were able to make their own customised pouch, choosing motifs to create an extraordinary souvenir of the event.

 

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Summer Wang, an equity analyst at Jefferies, said auto sales increased caused by deep discounts on older models ahead of stricter State VI emission standards which took effect on July 1, and the 6.18 Shopping Festival  which caused cosmetics, jewellery and appliance sales. Small-ticket items like food and daily goods also outperformed.

 

Urban Mainland China retail sales grew 9.8 per cent, ahead of the 8.3 per cent year-to-date figure, reaching RMB2.896 trillion (US$421 billion) in June, while rural retail sales grew by 10.1 per cent, ahead of 9.1 per cent for the half year. Cosmetics sales grew by 22.5 per cent, cars by 17.2 per cent and daily goods by 12.3 per cent. “We believe the beauty category is continuing to benefit from functional premiumisation, as consumers – both women and metrosexual men – are willing to pay a premium for a tangible improvement in appearance,” said Wang.

 

“Most discretionary categories saw improvement as well, including gold and jewellery (up 7.8 per cent), home appliances (up 7.7 per cent) and apparel and footwear (up 5.2 per cent).” By channel, online retail goods sales kept momentum with a robust 21.6 per cent year-on-year growth during the first half of the year, accounting for 19.6 per cent of Mainland China retail sales.

 

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Sudeep Singh, CEO of GoWork, said the startup will use the fresh capital, which will flow for the next two years, to build its footprints in the country. GoWork plans to establish 50 centers spanning numerous major Indian cities by 2025, up from two it runs at present in Gurgaon. In the immediate quarters, it plans to increase its accommodation capacity to 25,000 people, up from 12,000 currently. GoWork counts corporates such as Paytm Mall, CoverFox, and Impactify Consulting among its clients.

 

Alongside fast Wi-Fi, shuttle service, parking facility, cafe, and food court services it currently offers, the startup plans to include additional add-ons such as pet care facility and brewery in the coming months. In a statement, Neeraj Seth, BlackRock’s Head of Asian Credit, said, “GoWork is taking the brick and mortar aspect of the co-working concept further, as well as consistent measures to enable young businesses to reach their highest potential. We look forward to GoWork offering optimal operational efficiency for all start-ups as well as corporates.”

 

India’s co-working space, still a quite new business category locally, is worth $390 million — a fraction of the $30 billion office and commercial real estate business. GoWork competes with a number of firms including hotel lodging startup Oyo, which last month entered the co-working spaces business with the launch of Oyo Workspaces. For the expansion, it acquired local player Innov8 for a sum of about $30 million to immediately establish presence in 10 cities in India with more than 20 centers. 91Springboard, Awfis, GoHive, and the global giant WeWork are also competing for a slice of the $390 million market.

 

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'China would temporarily not rule out the possibility of levying additional tariffs on imported U.S. farm produce with deals made after Aug. 3, and related Chinese companies have halted purchases of U.S. farm produce,' the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.

 

'With a huge market, China is a promising destination for high-quality U.S. agricultural products,' it said. 'We hope that the U.S. should earnestly implement the consensus reached in Osaka and be committed to fulfilling its promises to create necessary conditions for bilateral agricultural cooperation.'

 

The midnight announcement hinted at the back-and-forth within the Chinese government over how to deal with the agricultural purchases. Earlier Monday, an official of China's top economic planning body had insisted that Chinese companies have purchased millions of tons of soybeans, sorghum, wheat and other farm goods since the end of June, Trump's tweets to the contrary notwithstanding.

 

Speaking to state media, Cong Liang, secretary-general at the National Development and Reform Commission, was responding to Trump's complaint that China has reneged on its pledge to buy from U.S. farmers. Some 2.27 million tons of American soybeans were delivered to China from the end of June to the end of July, according to Cong. Another 2 million tons are to be loaded this month, he said.

 

China also determined deals to buy 130,000 tons of soybeans between July 19 and Friday, as well as 120,000 tons of sorghum and 75,000 tons of hay, according to Cong. Other targets include wheat, pork and cotton, he said. But U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows exports of slightly over 1.55 million tons of American soybeans to China from June 28 to Aug. 2 - far less than Trump expected.

 

On Friday, China vowed to strike back after Trump tweeted that the U.S. will impose a 10% tariff on $300 billion in Chinese goods from Sept. 1. The American leader blamed Beijing's failure to keep promises, including one to 'buy agricultural product from the U.S. in large quantities.'

 

The U.S. agriculture sector has been among the hardest hit since the trade war started. American farmers have been demanding Trump to cut a deal with China, the world's largest soybean consumer. Soybean prices are decided by demand, and the farmers prefer trade over aid. The next cabinet-level meeting between the two sides is slated for September in Washington. The push and pull over American farm goods will likely heighten.

 

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In 2017, 32 per cent of Vietnam SMEs partnered with foreign online partners. Last year, the rate was 98 per cent, among which two thirds were ‘extra-small businesses’. Founded in 2011, as a cross-border shipping company, Fado improved to turn into the first cross-border e-commerce platform in Vietnam in 2014.

 

Officially partnered with Amazon, Fado connects Amazon suppliers with Vietnamese shoppers on a single platform. “Our services are not only legal but also convenient to customers. They do not have to get anxious about how their purchases are shipped cross border. Customers enjoy our return policies if the products are not as described on websites.

 

Shoppers also can buy discounted products in real time, specifically during events like Amazon Prime Day, without subscribing to membership. The platform has partnered with Proship to deliver products within its home market.

 

Fado’s greatest challenge is how to calculate import tax for 4 billion products before customers purchase them, chiefly during sales. “Fado builds a product database using machine learning and AI including images and description so the system can recognise them and apply the right import-tax code. Our system also recognise products banned according to Vietnamese law,” Pham added.

 

Vietnam’s cross-border e-commerce market is expected to generate 30 per cent each year. According to Vu Ba Phu, head of Vietnam’s Trade Promotion Agency, the global market will extend to US$3300 billion in the next two years.

 

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Big Red is not really giving up on its rather ambitious goal of spreading the 5G love to “more than” 30 cities by the end of the year, despite the fact that some of those locations remain under wraps and there are no words on future release dates. It’s also crucial to emphasize Verizon’s “true” 5G Ultra Wideband network is only accessible in certain parts of the five aforementioned cities for the time being. As far as St. Paul is concerned, the new ultra-low latency and insanely high download speeds are available in “parts” of Downtown, Lowertown, and West Seventh neighborhoods “around” landmarks including the Minnesota Children’s Museum, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Fitzgerald Theater, Cathedral Hill Park, and the Alexander Ramsey House. That doesn’t actually sound impressive, but it is a start.

 

Apart from that, the nation’s largest wireless service provider promises your 5G device will be able to seamlessly switch to 4G LTE connectivity where a 5G signal is out of reach. Speaking of devices, the Inseego 5G MiFi M1000 hotspot is primarily available for Verizon subscribers starting today at an outright price of $650. This is the fifth 5G-enabled gadget produced by Verizon, targeting both businesses and everyday consumers. The ultra-advanced hotspot allows up to 15 devices to connect simultaneously, supporting “near real-time” virtual reality and augmented reality experiences, as well as 4K and 8K video streaming with “near real-time downloads and virtually no buffering delays.” If $650 feels a little rich for your blood, you can get that price point down to $499.99 with a two-year contract or pay $27.08 a month for two years. Don’t forget you also need to pay a little something extra on your monthly plan to actually get 5G access.

 

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While Huawei has been a crucial buyer of Qualcomm, buying chips from the world's biggest mobile chip developer, the Chinese company also develops its own mobile processors in-house for its smartphone product lineups. Qualcomm and Huawei's chip unit HiSilicon Technologies, at the same time, have competed with each other to roll out new 5G mobile solutions for next-generation handsets that would allow speedy, low-latency data transfers to enable high-quality livestream, new AI features, 3D sensing and more.

 

The U.S. export ban has pressured Huawei to adopt more of its own in-house solutions, and, based upon Mollenkopf, is encouraging the Chinese company to focus more on its home market. 'Huawei is driving customers away from us as they are becoming increasingly focused on the domestic market because of the U.S. export ban,' Mollenkopf said. However he characterized this as 'a little bit of share loss at the low tier' and not 'financially impactful.'

 

Including the more than $4 billion from settlement agreements with Apple and its contract manufacturers, Qualcomm's revenue and net income for April-June were both up over 70% on the year. With that amount stripped out, revenue fell 13% on the year to $4.9 billion, while net income fell 34% to $1 billion. For the three months through September, Qualcomm expects adjusted revenue of between $4.3 billion and $5.1 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 12-16%. 

 

Mollenkopf also discussed China's progress in rolling out commercial 5G mobile services, and said the trend in the country will be toward lower priced services. 'In China, 5G commercial service was officially approved in early June, and our current estimate is that by the end of this year, the three China operators will deploy just about 100,000 5G base stations, which to put in context is the equivalent of the scale of the entire network of a large U.S. wireless operator,' he said.

 

On Tuesday, Qualcomm revealed a mobile gaming tie-up with Chinese tech company Tencent Holdings. One of the world's biggest game companies, Tencent has been struggling with China's pause on issuing licenses for new titles. For the time being, Intel CEO Bob Swan said in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday that the PC chip king has applied for licenses to sell 'general purpose products' that the executive believes cause no national security concerns. Swan said his company did sell some products to Huawei in the past June quarter after determining what products were with in the rule of the law.

 

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1. RFID Sensors for Proximity Warnings

 

Radio frequency identification or RFID sensors show their worth in warehouse settings. Besides becoming critical for inventory tracking and management, they can also help improve worker safety. RFID tags and sensors can generate proximity warnings if a worker strays too close to an unsafe area. This can lessen injuries and save lives, preventing distracted or focused employees from wandering into the path of a forklift or other heavy equipment.

 

Developing this system is not difficult. Start by attaching an RFID reader to the equipment, and providing each employee with an RFID tag. If the reader identifies a person is too close to the forklift, it can set off alarms, alert the driver or shut off the equipment.

 

2. Automation Assistance

 

Most warehouses have not managed full automation as of 2019, but the possibility is there and automating some tasks can help greatly improve employee safety. Robots can perform tasks that are dangerous for human employees, bettering workplace safety. They can also carry out repetitive tasks, lowering the potential for repetitive strain injuries. Nearly 1.8 million warehouse workers every year suffer from ergonomic injuries, such as those caused by repetitive movement, working in awkward positions or working for too long but not sufficient rest.

 

Automation will possibly never replace the need for human employees, but it can help make the workplace safer so these workers can carry out their job without the risk of injury looming over their heads.

 

3. Forklift Safety

 

Automation may replace human forklift and pallet jack drivers as autonomous vehicle technology continues to evolve. This could reduce accidents between warehouse workers and forklifts, one of the most common causes of injury in this setting. For those that are not ready to adopt self-driving forklift technology, a strict maintenance schedule can help keep the equipment in top working order, decreasing the potential for catastrophic failure that could result in an accident, injury or fatality.

 

Take the time to check everything from the interior and exterior to every moving part. It might take extra time, but implementing an extensive maintenance and inspection schedule can save you time and money, and improve worker safety, in the long term.

 

4. Improved Training With VR and AR

 

Augmented and virtual reality, shortened to AR and VR respectively, are making an appearance in the warehouse and logistics industry — exclusively regarding training new employees and providing continuing education opportunities for existing ones. VR immerses the worker in a virtual environment, while AR takes virtual components and overlays them on the real world.

 

Both of these tools can be used for training, providing employees with the skills they will need to complete their tasks safely, without putting the worker or the facility at risk while they learn. Implementing a VR or AR training program can constitute a crucial investment due to the cost of equipment and training programs, but it can provide your employees with unique tools that will help keep them safe in the workplace.

 

5. Warehouse Drones

 

Drones were once toys and tools for hobbyists, however today they find a niche in nearly every industry. In the warehouse and logistics industry, drones can capture pallet barcodes and locations without the need for a human employee to scale a ladder to complete the job. Keeping employees off of ladders reduces their risk of a fall-related accident, especially if they have to move awkwardly to scan a barcode.

 

The technology has not advanced for drones and workers to move in tandem though. These drones only operate during uncrewed shifts. If the warehouse operates 24 hours a day, aisles where the drones work close to human foot traffic. These little robots complete the job 50% faster than a manual inspection while keeping human employees safe and on the ground.

 

The Future of Warehouse Safety

 

Warehouse safety is perhaps the most important parts of the storage and logistics industry. As technology continues to evolve, so will keeping workers safe. Drones, virtual reality, automation and RFID sensors will take their place in the warehouses across the globe, keeping workers safe and improving performance and productivity. This is just a small sampling of the new technologies that will continue to make warehouses much safer for years to come.

 

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