Superdrug to add more stores as demand for weight loss drugs soars
An increase in demand for weight loss drugs, including Mounjaro and Wegovy, as well as demand among its generation Alpha customer base for beauty products is driving expansion at Superdrug.The retailer plans to add 25 more stores to its 800-plus strong chain this year as well as extending existing outlets, despite troubles across the high street that have led to the closure of hundreds of stores at its rival Boots and downsizing at chains from Poundland to River Island.Superdrug is bouncing back from difficult times during the coronavirus pandemic as demand for its weight-loss services almost 300% in the first half of this year compared with last year.While many of the drugs are ordered online via its private GP service, the retailer is looking at how it can adapt and expand in-store services to cater for demand so that its team of nurses can offer help with the potential side-effects, such as hair loss, for example.More serious problems, including with the pancreas, have also been flagged up in some cases.
“For us it is good that people are getting healthier and fitter and that is really important,” said Simon Comins, the chief commercial officer at Superdrug, but those taking the drugs may want “social interaction in store” to help discuss any problems they encounter.Superdrug, once the downmarket and dowdy rival to Boots, is also capitalising on the growth in the beauty market and its appeal to gen Alpha – people born from 2010 onwards – who are looking for in-store experiences as they head to the high street after school and at weekends.The retailer has made a conscious effort to gain youth appeal, catering to the generations influenced by TikTok and Instagram.Its latest gambit is the “beauty playground” – tables kitted out with testers of the latest products, mirrors and ring lights for flattering social media snaps designed to appeal to tweens and teens.“Generation Alpha is our focus,” Comins said, touring the first of 30 planned beauty playgrounds, in the group’s Westfield store in Stratford, east London.
“They often come as a ‘squad’ and they like the opportunity to touch and feel the products.” As much as clicking [to buy] on TikTok is easy and convenient, people want to browse in real life.”Even on a hot June lunchtime, a steady stream of young women are posing in front of the mirrors and testing out the products.The store has been extended by taking over two neighbouring outlets to give more space for experiences including a brow and nail bar, and piercing service.It is part of efforts to draw shoppers into physical stores rather than just buying online.
Other services that have been tried include barbers and hairdressers, and Superdrug has trained hundreds of pharmacists who can offer free consultations on skin conditions such as acne – the kind of service it may be difficult to access via a GP.Comins says Superdrug has a team that scans social media to pick up on the latest popular brands and has brought many into stores, including Geek & Gorgeous, Starface acne stickers, BPerfect cosmetics and the colourful Daise body care range appeals to tweenagers.Industry insiders say the demand for beauty and cosmetics brands has even diverted spend from toys and other traditional products bought by not-quite teenagers.Liz Tan, a senior strategist at the trends advisory company WGSN, says “Zalpha”, the fringe generation that threads between gen Z and Alphas, are leading the beauty craze “having grown up immersed in social media, with influencers and creators promoting beauty products online”.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionTan adds: “Beauty brands are also increasing, building and establishing brand awareness, affiliation and emotional connection through digital playgrounds in gaming worlds like Roblox.
”These youngsters are also getting into skincare regimes at a much younger age then previous generations as “health-conscious millennial parents emphasise routine building as part of their daily lives”.Alex Beckett, a senior research director at the market research company Mintel, adds that young consumers are prompting their parents to spend.“Thanks to their exposure to social media, YouTube and Netflix, gen Alphas are exposed to trends and dopamine-raising crazes intended for older adults, and they’re emulating them – essentially becoming hyper-informed consumers at an early age.”For its older customers, Superdrug’s push into weight-loss services comes as thousands of patients in England are from this week able to access weight loss jabs via their family GP.However, the NHS rollout is limited to 220,000 people with the “greatest need” and many more people are prepared to pay for private access, so demand from high street and online chemists is expected to continue.
Recent figures from Boots also indicated strong growth in pharmacy sales – up 5.4%, while its online Boots.com service increased sales almost 15% in the three months to the end of May, although the group did not break out the contribution from weight-loss drugs.Analysts at GlobalData said the chain was benefiting from demand for treatments for skin conditions such as acne, as part of a wider trend – being encouraged by government policy – towards visiting the pharmacy before trying the GP.Superdrug, which is owned by the Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings, is expanding after Debenhams – once one of the leading beauty retailers in the UK – left the high street and House of Fraser and John Lewis have closed stores.
Inside a plan to use AI to amplify doubts about the dangers of pollutants
An industry-backed researcher who has forged a career sowing doubt about the dangers of pollutants is attempting to use artificial intelligence (AI) to amplify his perspective.Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr, a Denver-based risk analyst and former Trump adviser who once reportedly claimed there is no proof that cleaning air saves lives, is developing an AI application to scan academic research for what he sees as the false conflation of correlation with causation.Cox has described the project as an attempt to weed “propaganda” out of epidemiological research and perform “critical thinking at scale” in emails to industry researchers, which were obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests by the Energy and Policy Institute, a non-profit advocacy group, and exclusively reviewed by the Guardian.He has long leveled accusations of flimsiness at research linking exposure to chemical compounds with health dangers, including on behalf of polluting interests such as cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris USA and the American Petroleum Institute – a fossil fuel lobbying group he has even allowed to “copy edit” his findings. (Cox says the edit “amounted to suggesting a small change” and noted that he has also obtained public research funding
Trump’s tax bill seeks to prevent AI regulations. Experts fear a heavy toll on the planet
US Republicans are pushing to pass a major spending bill that includes provisions to prevent states from enacting regulations on artificial intelligence. Such untamed growth in AI will take a heavy toll upon the world’s dangerously overheating climate, experts have warned.About 1bn tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide are set to be emitted in the US just from AI over the next decade if no restraints are placed on the industry’s enormous electricity consumption, according to estimates by researchers at Harvard University and provided to the Guardian.This 10-year timeframe, a period of time in which Republicans want a “pause” of state-level regulations upon AI, will see so much electricity use in data centers for AI purposes that the US will add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than Japan does annually, or three times the yearly total from the UK.The exact amount of emissions will depend on power plant efficiency and how much clean energy will be used in the coming years, but the blocking of regulations will also be a factor, said Gianluca Guidi, visiting scholar at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features
The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice.The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe.Having secured broad cross-party agreement, the department of culture plans to submit a proposal to amend the current law for consultation before the summer recess and then submit the amendment in the autumn.It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice.The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an “unequivocal message” that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez arrive in Venice for divisive wedding
The billionaire Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and the former TV journalist Lauren Sánchez have arrived in Venice as they prepare to tie the knot in a lavish three-day celebration that has divided the lagoon city.Scores of celebrities and other members of the world’s super-rich will also join the pair in Italy, arriving on superyachts and private jets.Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest person, and Sánchez were seen stepping off a water taxi on Wednesday as they entered the exclusive Aman Venice hotel on the Grand Canal, where many of the celebrities will stay.More than 90 private jets are expected to land in Venice before the celebrations officially begin on Thursday, bringing in guests for an event that some have called the “wedding of the century” and is rumoured to involve everything from pyjama parties to elegant dinners.Among the first guests to arrive were Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and their children
Group of high-profile authors sue Microsoft over use of their books in AI training
A group of authors has accused Microsoft of using nearly 200,000 pirated books to create an artificial intelligence model, the latest allegation in the long legal fight over copyrighted works between creative professionals and technology companies.Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and several others alleged that Microsoft used pirated digital versions of their books to teach its Megatron AI to respond to human prompts. Their lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, is one of several high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright holders against tech companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over alleged misuse of their material in AI training.The authors requested a court order blocking Microsoft’s infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work that Microsoft allegedly misused.Generative artificial intelligence products like Megatron produce text, music, images and videos in response to users’ prompts
Meta wins AI copyright lawsuit as US judge rules against authors
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has won the backing of a judge in a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors, in the second legal victory for the US artificial intelligence industry this week.The writers, who included Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, had argued that the Facebook owner had breached copyright law by using their books without permission to train its AI system.The ruling comes after a decision on Monday that Anthropic, another major player in the AI field, had not infringed authors’ copyright.The US district judge Vince Chhabria, in San Francisco, said in his decision on the Meta case that the authors had not presented enough evidence that the technology company’s AI would cause “market dilution” by flooding the market with work similar to theirs. As a consequence Meta’s use of their work was judged a “fair use” – a legal doctrine that allows use of copyright protected work without permission – and no copyright liability applied
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