Vogue Business is a young publication; it was launched in 2019 as Vogue’s B2B companion, and since then, it’s been through a few iterations and editors (I myself joined in 2023).
The world is never quiet, but in just these seven years of its existence, Vogue Business has seen a pandemic, a luxury boom and ensuing slowdown, an e-commerce collapse, a tariff war, a creative reshuffle, the rise of GLP-1s and peptides, and the excruciatingly fast advent of artificial intelligence.
It’s hard to keep up, and we have been doing our best through first-in-your-inbox news stories, in-depth interviews, executive reports, and editorial packages that address our industry’s greatest pain points.
But we wanted to turn all the knowledge we gather each year into a best-practices compendium. Today, I am happy to introduce How to Sell Now: our best-in-class, interactive guide to retail in 2026.
Social media platforms are powerful sources of entertainment, education, and discovery for luxury consumers, but conversion is still an issue. At the same time, AI overviews are no longer a nice-to-have, but an essential practice for brand marketers.
Methodology
How to Sell Now is a comprehensive multimarket retail study that aims to provide strategies for success across six key areas: direct-to-consumer, multi-brand, resale, social commerce, product, and brand. To understand what’s working for brands today, we evaluated data trends across several sources, leveraging both proprietary data from consumer research and Vogue Shopping data, as well as expert interviews and external sources, running several analyses across a cohort of 25 brands.
“How to Sell Now is the most comprehensive research package Vogue Business has ever delivered for our Executive Members,” says Anusha Couttigane, head of custom insights. “Not only have we introduced a focus on markets like Mexico in our research for the first time, but we’ve also provided unique analysis on how generative AI is shaping both shopper behavior and commercial strategies. This data analysis provides an essential foundation for executive brand leaders seeking bespoke insights on the competitor landscape.”
The 25 brands analyzed are:
- Ami Paris
- Balenciaga
- Bottega Veneta
- Brunello Cucinelli
- Burberry
- Chanel
- Coach
- Diesel
- Dior
- Gucci
- Hermès
- Hugo Boss
- Jacquemus
- Loewe
- Longchamp
- Loro Piana
- Louis Vuitton
- Maison Margiela
- Miu Miu
- Moncler
- Prada
- Ralph Lauren
- Tory Burch
- Vivienne Westwood
- Zegna
Each brand was selected based on its growth prospects, market leadership in key areas, editorial discretion, and a requirement for presence and shoppability in at least 50% of the markets assessed, to ensure a robust sample per brand, especially across consumer research. Consumer research was conducted in six markets: the US, Mexico, the UK, Italy, France, the Gulf Cooperation Council (Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE), and China.
The table below outlines the sources used, with a summary of data points analyzed. Research was conducted between March and April 2026, broadly reviewing changes over the last year, from March 2025 to February 2026.
