Home and hospitality - the new focus for luxury brands

A really interesting article giving an overview of the findings from the new Business of Fashion Insights report "The Lifestyle Era: Luxury's Opportunity in Home and Hospitality". 

Sales in the home and hospitality sectors are set to grow in the next few years, and luxury fashion brands are increasingly looking to extend into these areas. Whilst luxury brands like Ralph Lauren have been players in the homewares market for years, hospitality seems to be the new area that luxury brands are now exploring as consumers seek immersive, social experiences from their favourite brands. 

From an IP perspective, where fashion brands are looking to expand beyond their core clothing and accessories offering, it is really important that they check the scope of their existing trade mark protection and look to bolster this to ensure they have coverage for their new interests, whether these are homewares, furniture, restaurant services etc. Searches should also be conducted before extending your use or filing new applications - just because you have rights in a trade mark for your core fashion goods, does not mean that your rights extend to the new goods / services of interest, and there could be third parties out there with legitimate rights in the same trade mark for those new areas that you need to navigate around.