If Abercrombie & Fitch is allowed to open its store on Savile Row, others will follow: eventually, the Row will become like any other street in the world, full of chain stores selling clothes that can be bought in Madrid, Dubai or Tokyo.
In the world of behemoth chain stores there is still room for the quality boutique, even in America.
The Dell and Amazon examples remind us that the key to successful commerce businesses is the unsexy, gritty, complex world of supply chain and logistics.
They also stand for great fun, and welcome defiance in a world of boring chains.
Perhaps most importantly, expansion around the world of supply-chain oriented trade allowed poorer economies quickly to become export powerhouses by importing complex components (like computer chips) for assembly into finished goods that could be re-exported.
While she jokes that being bossy has always been in her nature, she ventured into the world of whips, chains and submission after her divorce.
LONDON — Rupert Murdoch's son James received and responded to e-mail messages in 2008 that referred to "a nightmare scenario" of legal repercussions from widespread phone hacking at the tabloid The News of the World, a chain of e-mail messages and replies released Tuesday by a British parliamentary panel shows.
In the tightfisted world of publishing, where chain stores and online discounters make it tough to operate in the black, that's no small feat.
Just a few weeks ago, Patagonia and Stella McCartney - both big brands in the world of sustainable supply chain practices - had to confront this very scenario, learning that a supplier used by both companies was committing serious animal cruelty and abuse.
This was Europeans' first encounter with one of the natural wonders of the world: a 2,600km chain of hundreds of islands and thousands of individual reefs, built by tiny marine invertebrates and home to a ravishingly colour-saturated underwater world teeming with life.
