The Modern Retail Podcast

"International foods are having a moment," said Miguel Leal, co-founder and CEO of Somos Foods. Indeed, that's the thesis of his startup, which makes Mexican food products currently sold in over 6,000 stores including Whole Foods and H-E-B. The company has been around for two years and sells products like chips, salsas as well as rice and bean packs. It first started as an online brand but quickly realized that the way to grow a brand like his is by zeroing in on grocery distribution. "Life was definitely pointing us into retail," Leal said on the Modern Retail Podcast. On the show, he spoke about the state of both CPG startups and why international foods are becoming an increasingly popular area for national grocery retailers. Leal knows a thing or two about national retail. He and his co-founders all worked together at Kind -- in fact, Kind founder Daniel Lubetzky is one of Sonos's co-founders. Leal also worked as the chief marketing officer at both Cholula and Diamond Foods. This background helped him realize that there was white space for a premium Mexican food brand. While high-end Mexican restaurants have risen the ranks in U.S. culture over the last year, "it was the same canned beans and fluorescent yellow hard shell tacos at grocery store." Thus, Somos aims to be a step above Old El Paso. So far, the idea seems to be working. Somos continues to expand into new national retailers as well as expand its product portfolio. Most recently, it launched a salsa macha condiment. "We have some big retail announcements coming soon over the summer, another big one in the fall, and then by the end of the year," he said. "But we also have some really exciting products coming into the market."

On this week's Modern Retail Rundown, we discuss why Amazon is not including shopping app Temu in its competitive pricing algorithm. Then, a look into the state of food delivery apps in the wake of reported layoffs at Grubhub. Finally, we look into the news that Instant Brands -- the maker of the Instant Pot -- is filing for bankruptcy. News cited: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/price-war-amazon-excludes-rival-temu-competitive-price-checks-2023-06-13/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/grubhub-to-lay-off-about-15-of-staff-85e87595 https://www.fastcompany.com/90892020/doordash-q1-earnings-2023 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/business/instant-brands-bankruptcy.html

Athleticwear brand Legends wants to be the Lululemon of professional sports. The company -- which sells products like basketball shorts, swim trunks and athletic tees -- launched in 2019 with a slew of professional athlete investors. Since then, the company has brought on more influencers to its program and -- thanks to these partners -- has seen sales consistently grow, even though it hasn't focused much on organic marketing. In 2020, the company made about $10 million, and that grew the following year to about $16 million. This year, said co-founder and CEO Scott Hochstadt, the focus is on really growing the business. "We're at a point where we've we've built the brand," he said. He's hired a crack team of retail and marketing operators who are "ready to accelerate things and scale it out." He joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and talked about the growth strategy behind Legends. Hochstadt knows a thing or two about sports and celebrities. After playing lacrosse in college, he brought the sport to the West Coast and ended up launching a lacrosse lifestyle brand that he ultimately sold. Then, with a business partner who was working with big sports stars Kobe Bryant at the time, Legends was born. "We have the biggest athletes in the world training with us in this spot," said Hochstadt, "and I have the factories and I have the design capabilities to build products for these guys." And so, Legends launched with the help of quarterback Baker Mayfield and NBA stars Steve Nash and Matt Barnes, among others. The white space that Hochstadt saw was a premium sportswear company that speaks to a certain type of athlete. "Vuori is more lifestyle yoga," he said. "Lulu is your wife's brand that makes men's products now." For the first couple of years, Legends held individual activations to get the word out. For example, it would sponsor shows with celebrities and hold drops of limited-edition apparel. This helped establish the brand as something more on the elite tier. But the focus now is on going from small brand major athletes like to a mainstream name. "We spent a couple of years just building out the team, building out the products and building out the brand," said Hochstadt. "Now the team is in place, and… this will be our biggest growth year."

In this week’s episode of the Modern Retail Rundown, our staff dissects all various changes and announcements coming out of the retail industry. First we start with the news that Nike is walking back the decision to sever ties with previous wholesale partners like DSW and Macy’s. Next, an announcement of GameStop CEO’s firing — and replacement with board member Ryan Cohen as executive chairman — has rattled up the company’s passionate shareholders. Lastly is a look at fresh M&A news in the DTC space, with the acquisition of cookware brand Great Jones. The Modern Retail Rundown is released every Saturday morning.

Kids' apparel brand Hanna Andersson is four decades old but in the midst of a huge business transformation. In 2019, it decided to close all of its stores and focus solely on its online business. The company says this strategic shift has helped stay focus and grow in new ways. "We're 100% direct to consumer and are frankly much more profitable because of that -- and, honestly, much more attuned to our customers in anticipating their needs," said Aimée Lapic, CEO of Hanna Andersson. She joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and dove into her strategic mandates and the areas of growth she's most excited about. Lapic has worked in retail for a long time now. She worked at both Gap and Banana Republic, helping lead their early online experiences and marketing strategies. She then moved to the tech sector at places like Pandora and GoPro. But she came back to apparel last summer when she accepted the role of CEO at Hanna Andersson. "Honestly one of the reasons why this is such a fun moment for me is that it is full circle from how I started my career in apparel," she said. With nearly a year under her belt, Lapic has been focused on launching new initiatives. For example, the apparel brand -- most well-known for its pajamas -- has expanded into children's athletic wear. Beyond that, Hanna Andersson also launched a peer-to-peer resale program. That first began earlier this year with 2,500 listings and has already expanded to over 17,000, according to Lapic. But one of her big focuses has been on tapping into the brand's already robust community. Parents have bought Hanna Andersson for years -- Lapic said she's spoken with new moms who wore the clothes themselves as children. But much of this hasn't been fostered by the brand itself. "There has been a very strong community for many years of Hanna customers that love our brand, that speak on behalf of the brand, that hasn't actually been fostered by the brand," she said. Lapic now is trying to find ways to tap into these brand enthusiasts and have them be a bigger part of research and the company's overall retention efforts. As Lapic sees it, there are a bunch of new initiatives afoot, but the goal is on one big thing. "We have done a lot of work, really focusing the team on what's going to make a big difference in the brand and the growth story," she said. "First and foremost, it's all about building this brand awareness."

This week's Modern Retail Rundown starts out with an analysis on why digital fast fashion players like Shein and Temu lose money on orders despite their popularity. Next, recent earnings reports show that dollar store chains like Dollar General and Dollar Tree are struggling as customers cut back on spending. Finally, we take a look at big companies like PepsiCo. continuously raising prices to increase profits, even as product demand declines. Stories cited: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fast-fashions-curious-comeback-8a5516c5 https://www.wired.com/story/temu-is-losing-millions-of-dollars-to-send-you-cheap-socks/ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/dollar-general-dg-q1-earnings-report-2023.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/25/dollar-tree-dltr-earnings-q1-2023.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/business/economy/inflation-companies-profits-higher-prices.html

Collars & Co is trying to create a new category that's one part casual and one part dressy. The two-year-old apparel startup makes a collared polo shirt, along with other items, and targets predominately well-to-do males. It first got its start on TikTok, but an appearance and subsequent deal on Shark Tank led to a huge increase in sales. "We saw about a 400% increase in the number of visitors," the night after the episode aired, said Justin Baer, founder and CEO of Collars & Co. "I think I attached about $200,000 to $250,000 in revenue that week." Baer joined the Modern Retail Podcast and dove into how he's growing his clothing brand. Despite the sales spike, Shark Tank was just one helpful marketing moment. Baer, now, is focused on the long game. That includes investing in digital media as best as possible and even launching new retail concepts. For example, Collars & Co is going to open its first store in Chicago this month. One of the big reasons the company is opening a store is because physical retail speaks directly to the customer Collars & Co targets. Our customer tends to be slightly older -- it's an older gentleman that's 35 to 65," said Baer. "And not all of them are on Instagram buying clothes online." With that, the Chicago store is a test to see if the model can work. "We definitely want the store to be profitable. It doesn't have to be that profitable, because it's not the main driver," he said. "And it's going to be a fraction of the revenue that we're doing DTC." Another big focus for the brand is on finding more customers. While it's seen huge growth, Baer thinks there's more digital marketing to be done. "Facebook is still the best, but we try a lot of different things," he said. "We're trying a lot of different angles, newsletters, a lot of different online platforms." That being said, Baer said he initially got the company off the ground by showing off his first product on TikTok. And while other brands test out new types of advertising like TV, Baer is still bullish on digital being a primary driver for his brand. "I think digital is still going to be 95% of our ad budget this year," he said.

This week's Modern Retail Rundown begins with a discussion about why retailers like URBN and Kohl's are thriving while other apparel players are struggling at the moment. Next is an overview of Meta’s record $1.3 billion privacy lawsuit filed by European Union regulators, as a means to crack down on Facebook's user data sharing. Lastly, we talk about how TikTok Shop is generating buzz among live commerce audiences in Southeast Asia.

Parachute doesn't look or feel anything like a Bed Bath & Beyond, but founder and CEO Ariel Kaye thinks her brand represents the next wave of home goods retailers. The stores are certainly smaller and more curated -- and they are focused much more on the experiential than pure conversion. But Parachute is focused on utilizing its growing store base as a way to bring in more customers and become a household name. Kaye joined Modern Retail to speak about her company's ambitions and strategies. Physical retail plays a big role in this. She spoke live at an event hosted at Parachute's new flagship store in Manhattan. "Last year, we doubled our store footprint," she said. "We went from 12 stores to 24 stores -- this is our 27th that opened last week. And, we just see retail as, like, this is the eyes and ears for the customer." Parachute launched in 2014 with the idea that bedding shouldn't be considered a mindless purchase. "These are aesthetic products that can completely transform a space, and they were they were [treated as] upsell opportunities -- they weren't actual products that any brand was focusing on," Kaye said. The bet seemed to work -- Parachute has grown from its California roots over the last nine years. While the pandemic put a stop to any store openings, the last year was when the company began to put retail expansion into overdrive. But Parachute's stores are as much about community as they are about sales, according to Kaye. "We really do want to just educate people and get people excited about the product," she said. But that does lead to better loyalty; Kaye said, "people that shop in-store first are our best-performing customers." Now is an especially interesting time to be in home goods. With Bed Bath & Beyond's bankruptcy, it leaves other players an opportunity to pounce. But Kaye also sees legacy retailer's demise as a lesson for other founders. "This happens in almost every category and industry," she said. "It's part of the reason why it's so important to continue evolving and growing with your customer and keeping your eye on what the next version of what you're building looks like."

Earnings season has arrived — and the Modern Retail Rundown dove into all the details. On this week's show, in which the Modern Retail staff discuss the week's biggest industry headlines, we looked at the results of Home Depot, Target and Walmart -- and what they mean for the year ahead. Then, we talk about some new numbers revealed about Instacart's advertising business. Lastly, we discuss Shein's most recent funding.

Spritz Society rose to fame because of its influencer founder, but the sparkling wine brand is now trying to transcend that. Ben Soffer, perhaps best known on Instagram as the Boy With No Job, ironically does have a job -- he's an alcohol entrepreneur selling canned drinks both online and in over 400 stores in eight states. Soffer is now focused on expanding Spritz Society's wholesale presence and making his company a brand beyond its social media roots. "If you have a community, then you can get people to try a product online without ever experiencing it in-person," Soffer said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "If you don't have that community, there's no level of credibility that's going to educate you on why you should give this product to chance -- unless you're dumping money into paid media." Indeed, it was his community that first launched the brand. Sofer asked his followers via a Google Form in 2020 about what they wanted to see in the brand. "The name of the brand, Spritz Society, comes from the empathetic approach," he said. But now the company is much more than a few thousand survey responses. The brand is expanding to 70 Walmart locations and in 200 H-E-B stores. "The main driver is grocery and will continue to be. Grocery is where you're looking for this product," Soffer said. Even though Spritz Society first launched online, Soffer believes that wholesale is the only real way for a startup alcohol brand to truly grow. "It's completely impossible to launch a direct-to-consumer alcohol business without a community behind it," he said. And community is something he's thinking about a lot. For example, he is very stringent about the types of partnerships he forges with Spritz Society. It may seem like a good idea for a brand to find a celebrity, but it may not be easy to actually sell products. "There are so many celebrities and influencers that have millions of followers that can't sell a damn thing," he said. With this, the focus is on growing Spritz Society's footprint. While other companies may think about expanding into new products, Soffer says he wants to own the category he knows well. "The goal, first and foremost today, is being laser-focused on building the Spritz Society brand to be a household name amongst sparkling wine cocktails," he said.

This week's Modern Retail Rundown features an analysis on Warby Parker and Allbirds’ latest quarterly earnings, which show mixed revenue results and losses. Next we give an overview of Tempur Sealy’s acquisition of Mattress Firm, and what it could mean for the overall mattress segment. Finally, we discuss a new story showcasing the way suburban shopping centers are thriving, thanks to hybrid work schedules.

For most brands, going to market only being able to sell a few hundred units because of supply chain headaches sounds like a nightmare. But for Windmill, which sells both air conditioners and HVAC filters, this turned into marketing gold. The company first launched in the summer of 2020. "[We] had a really awesome launch plan for 2020 that we had to scrap," said co-founder Mike Mayer. "And so we couldn't get units from the factory to the U.S., just given all the complications in the supply chain." This made it so that the company had to build a waitlist. It's not the cleanest way to launch a brand and a business," Mayer said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "But it did sort of stir up some buzz." Many media outlets wrote about the multi-thousand-person waitlist. And when the products were finally ready to ship to customers' homes many months later, that led to even more coverage. It's been a few years since then, and Windmill has continued to grow. The company saw sales triple between 2022 and 2021, and just this year has expanded into HVAC air filters. With this growth, the business and marketing has gotten more nuanced. For one, Windmill -- which began as a DTC brand -- has expanded into new sales channels. Its available at the Home Depot and P.C. Richards, and will launch online at Lowe's later this summer. What's more, Windmill has begun investing more heavily in advertising. It no longer just relies on word of mouth or digital campaigns. For example, it's investing more in TV. It's a difficult formula to master, said Mayer, as Windmill makes a product that most people don't usually think of as branded. "The magic that we bring to this category is we have a brand [and] we have a personality in everything that we do," Mayer said. "TV is no different." With the summer on the horizon, Windmill has plans to introduce more people to its products. It also has some new products it's going to unveil. "There's a lot more to come from Windmill and from us," Mayer said. "We're really excited."

This week's Modern Retail Rundown starts with an overview of Shopify’s renewed focus on being an e-commerce solution provider, as the company sells off its logistics business. Next, we check in on the state of 15-minute delivery apps, in light of Getir's latest European acquisition. Lastly, a discussion of why Peloton is betting on digital fitness as a long-term revenue stream.

Ebay may be decades old, but the company is still trying to iterate as if it were a startup. "We're still a work in progress, there's still a lot more that we need to change," said Eddie Garcia, eBay's chief product officer. He joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about his priorities, and the way the marketplace landscape has evolved. Garcia is an eBay boomerang. He first started working for the company in 2003 and then left in 2014 to work at other companies like Sam's Club and Facebook. He returned a year ago to lead product, and says the focus has been on growing the platform while also maintaining a sense of community. "There still is that fundamental essence of the community experience, and that small business, or that individual connecting with another," Garcia said. Making that work across categories is also difficult. Ebay is a marketplace many people know -- but the company is trying to tailor specific areas for certain types of products. It's a difficult tightrope, Garcia said, making a platform that's both recognizable but able to offer certain features to certain types of sellers. "It's a balance," he said. "You don't want to dramatically change the experience because that can become disorienting to the shopper." There are a lot of updates on the roadmap, he said, but the focus is specifically on user experience. "We got to do more," said Garcia. "We're really proud of our progress at taking friction out of the experience for sellers and buyers, helping make search better -- creating a greater sense of trust on the platform."

This week on the Modern Retail Rundown begins with a quick update on Bed Bath & Beyond's closures. Then an overview of Amazon’s latest earnings, which include $9.5 billion in ad revenue. Next up is a look at the state of fast casual dining, and why chains like Chipotle and Subway are thriving despite inflation. Finally, we discuss Target's longtime investment in curbside fulfillment, with the latest iteration giving shoppers the ability to return items curbside.

A-Frame Brands is focused on building brands for underserved communities but with big names behind them. And national retail is a big part of its strategy. According to co-founder and CEO Ari Bloom, there's a lot that goes into making a celebrity brand work. But he thinks he's tapped the formula. So far, A-Frame has launched brands with powerhouse names like Dwayne Wade, Gabrielle Union, Naomi Osaka and John Legend -- and all of these consumer-facing products have launched in major stores like Walmart, Target and CVS. And while it helps to have a celebrity name to catch a big box store's eyes, Bloom thinks it's increasingly difficult to launch online only. Bloom joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about how he's approaching building out the A-Frame portfolio, and the thesis behind all of the brands. The first pillar of A-Frame is finding obvious holes in the market. The first brand launched was Proudly, a baby care product backed by Dwayne Wade and Gabrielle Union, that focuses on children of color. "How is it that you can Google search and find out that over half the kids in this country have a black, brown or Asian parent since 2014, and not see more brands and market dedicated to what is the majority of kids?" he said. "That's insane. So we started with that brand, knowing that there would be other opportunities." After that, A-Frame launched John Legend's skincare brand Loved01 and the Naomi Osaka-affiliated suncare company Kinlo. The tying bind for all these brands, beyond their well-known co-founders, is that they've all sought out big retail partnerships from the get-go. Bloom sees this as a necessity for any new company trying to really grow. Starting with only a website is a behemoth task, that he's just not interested in trying out. "The fact that you're just kind of going to open a door and hope people show up. That's really hard, especially today," he said. Another thing that Bloom is very clear about is that A-Frame isn't using the A-list talent as mere figureheads. "We feel it's very important that the partner is a partner," he said. "So we go 50/50 with them." That means, the celebrity gets equity -- but they don't get anything else up front. As Bloom sees it, this is a way to find true partners -- and celebrities that are actually interested in launching real brands. "It does kind of weed out a lot of folks," he said.

This week on the Modern Retail Rundown, we go into Ikea’s $2.2 billion plan to grow in the U.S., complete with a new store concept and overall footprint expansion. Next, we dive into why David’s Bridal is filing for its second Chapter 11 protection in five years -- despite operating during a booming wedding industry. In other bankruptcy news: an update on a possible filing by Bed Bath & Beyond, following store closures and staff layoffs.

Personal care brand Curie looks like a traditional DTC brand at first glance, but has grown thanks to a variety of unorthodox channels. For one, the company has been featured over a dozen times on QVC, and that has helped it reach a brand new and eager audience. What's more, Curie founder and CEO Sarah Moret pitched her brand on Shark Tank -- which gave her both a boost thanks to a deal with Barbara Corcoran, as well as viral sales. "We've grown 10x since we aired on Shark Tank," Moret said. She was a speaker at last week's Modern Retail Commerce Summit, held in New Orleans. The conversation was recorded, and is this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast. During the session, Moret spoke about growing a predominately DTC business to include other retailers, as well as the trials and tribulations of being an online personal care company. In its early days, Curie was sold only online. Now, it's sold at Anthropologie, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, and has a big-box partnership soon to launch this summer. But one of the biggest sales boosts that got Curie on the map -- beyond Shark Tank -- was QVC. "We aired on QVC for the first time in 2021. I've now been on air 15, 20 times -- and that's really changed my business," Moret said. But selling on QVC isn't as easy as looking at a camera and saying "buy this now!" Indeed, Moret had to relearn how to pitch her product and make it something truly enticing for the audience. "What QVC taught me is nobody really cares about the features of your product," she said. "They care about what it's going to do for them." She's used that knowledge to further grow the Curie brand. With that, the focus for Moret is on expanding the company beyond its digital roots. Much of that ties back to marketing. For years, Curie sold predominately via Facebook ads. But now, Moret realizes she needs to focus more on top-of-funnel as a way to get more people to recognize the brand. "We're bootstrapped, we're profitable, we are very, very ROI driven in all of our decision-making," she said. "So this is a big shift for us about thinking: all right, we don't want to just rely on these PPC ads."

On this week's Modern Retail Rundown, we discuss Walmart's lackluster performance in urban centers, following the retail giant's major Chicago exit. Next, a preview from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy shows that the Whole Foods ownership hasn't panned out well when it comes to Amazon's big grocery ambitions. Lastly, we discuss the latest updates from connected fitness startup Tonal, including a C-suite reshuffle and founder Aly Orady's departure.

Women's workwear brand Argent is back in growth mode. The company first launched in 2016, and saw a precipitous rise over its first few years -- especially thanks to well-known fans of the brand like Hilary Clinton. But the pandemic changed everything -- with people no longer going to work in offices and overall demand plummeting. During that time, said Argent founder and CEO Sali Christeson, "it really became about survival and hunkering down and going lean and figuring out what our strategy was going to be." And while the company saw a loss in both 2020 and 2021, things are once again on the up and up. "We've never seen numbers the way that we're seeing now," said Christeson. She joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about Argent's future plans, as well the overall state of workwear. Though Argent began as a digital brand, over the years it launched a few showrooms. And while many of those closed during the pandemic, Christeson said that in-store retail is a focus for this year. "I love stores," she said. "They've always been part of our story." With that, the brand has reopened its Soho store, and hopes to open more over the next year. But owned stores aren't the only area of growth for Argent. The brand recently began a wholesale partnership with Nordstrom. As Christeson described it, wholesale presents new opportunities when done right. "You have to recognize how much comes from whole partnerships, if you time it right," she said. "If it's a mutual fit, it's a win-win." And marketing is also a big push -- especially in some often-overlooked areas like catalogs. "Performance-driven catalogs… outperform digital," she said. "Catalogs crush for us." For now, the focus is on growing and keeping pace. "There's so much opportunity," she said. "We're trying to stay really focused on retail, wholesale team growth and then all the marketing to supplement it."

On the Modern Retail Rundown we discuss L’Oréal's $2.5 billion Aesop acquisition, the biggest in the beauty giant's history, and what it means for Aesop's previous owner Natura & Co. This week also saw shakeups at American Eagle’s supply chain arm, Quiet Platforms, with its president exiting the company as AE focuses on profitability. Finally, we discuss why Chipotle rushed to sue Sweetgreen over the salad chain's new burrito bowl.

Men's apparel brand True Classic was able to become a $250 million company -- and it thanks Facebook for its success. "I knew I was going to put all my eggs in the Facebook basket," said co-founder and CEO Ryan Bartlett. Lucky for him, the company launched before the changes to iOS 14, and his thesis worked. The company says it's profitable, has sold over $250 million worth of goods since its launch in 2019 and now has five stores open around the U.S. Bartlett joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about True Classic's growth strategy -- as well as what it takes to rely on social media in the current climate. Bartlett admits that the performance marketing space has gotten much more difficult over the years, but he still believes Facebook is a great channel for growth. The company spends as much as $100,000 on Meta platforms each day, which represents around 70% of its total marketing budget. "We have definitely diversified away from Facebook, because we realized that if anything ever goes wrong with Facebook, we can just tank the business," Bartlett said. "So we've been very strategic about spending more on Google, spending more on non-branded search on Amazon, spending more on podcasts and OTT -- but really testing into it. We really are sticklers on data and analytics and understanding attribution at the highest levels." Even though paid social is so important to True Classic's business model, Bartlett also thinks the product is just as important. The company makes predominately casualwear, like crewneck t-shirts. "I wanted to create something very narrow and a very specific SKU, which was just the t-shirt -- just the crewneck t-shirt," Bartlett said. "I wanted to make the best possible version of that I possibly could, I wanted to prove it out. And once I did, we eventually started rolling out into every single category that you see on the website now, which is activewear, denim, underwear, socks, absolutely everything." Now that True Classic has found a formula that's worked, the focus is on growing it as big as possible. For example, last year the company launched internationally -- "it was like 30% of the business overnight," Bartlett said. "So that was a monster for us. And we it was literally just flicked the light switch on and go." In the beginning, the company launched in dozens of countries including most of Europe and Australia -- but still shipped from the U.S. Now, True Classic is trying to tweak its international strategy even more by seeking out fulfillment centers overseas and producing content in native languages. Additionally, the brand is also expanding into womenswear. For now, expanding beyond the U.S. and into the women's category are what's taking up a lot of Bartlett's time. "Between those two initiatives, I really got my hands full," he said.

Every week on the Modern Retail Rundown, we analyze the most important news within the retail world. This week's episode starts with a discussion on Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette's announcement that he will step down next February and what it can mean for the department store's future. Next, we dissect Uber Eats' mission to crack down on low-rated ghost kitchens, to improve food and service quality. Lastly, a dive into Telfar’s new dynamic price model, which is generating excitement and some confusion among fans of the fashion brand.

Macy's is in the process of rethinking its entire store business. Recent moves emphasize this shift: at its most recent earnings, the company said it was focusing on opening more off-mall locations, a distinct shift from its place as a mall stalwart. According to Marc Mastronardi, Macy's chief stores officer, this shift is a long-time coming and indicative of a longstanding strategy to rethink its stores and the way they operate. The company's strategy now, Mastronardi said, is "us defining it more explicitly for ourselves to now say: what does it take for us to be great at discovery, to be great at convenience, to be great at service and engagement?" Mastronardi joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about how he approaches his role. He spoke onstage at Shoptalk, held in Las Vegas, and afterward sat down to speak with Modern Retail. While this episode was recorded a day before Macy's announced its CEO was stepping down, the theme of change was palpable throughout the conversation. One of the big focuses for Mastronardi has been rethinking how store associates interface with the entire brand. The Macy's of old was focused on specialization -- an associate for menswear, another for bedding, etc. Now, Macy's has shifted this to make most store associates generalists in all areas of the business (with the exception of very specialized departments like makeup, jewelry and furniture). "We created a front-of-the-house team and a back-of-the-house team," Mastronardi said. "And that front-of-the-house team now works the entire store on the front of the house. And you could work in many different areas on any given day, any given week." Meanwhile, Macy's has been putting more focus in new store concepts. It currently has eight Market by Macy's off-mall stores, which are located in what Mastronardi described as "power centers." These are smaller stores with more curated assortment. And then idea is to target a different type of shopper -- one who isn't leisurely perusing a mall, but has more intent. "The customer shops at a different level of frequency in a power center," he said. Putting it all together, the focus is on rebuilding Macy's by paying attention to where customers are and rethinking the role of the store associate. What's more, Macy's no longer thinks of e-commerce and in-store as separate entities -- a strategy very different from competitors like Saks. "There is not a store customer and a Macy's dot com customer in this market," he said. There's a Macy's customer. And sometimes they use their store and sometimes they're online."

This week on the Modern Retail Rundown, we analyze the most important news within the retail world. This episode starts out by giving up update on the latest Amazon layoffs, in which the company announced it's cutting 9,000 employees. Next is an overview of Panera rolling out Amazon One's palm checkout, becoming the first major restaurant chain to adopt the tech. The rundown then moves into how Foot Locker and Nike planning the next phase of their partnership.

Saks has big plans to grow its business by focusing on digital initiatives and targeting younger shoppers. The company spun off its digital business from its well-known stores in late 2021. And the retailer says the two-business strategy has worked out: it's acquired 3 million new customers over the last year-plus. According to CMO Emily Essner, it's because Saks is more focused on being new than ever before. The problems the business had before the spin-off, she said, was "a lot of the things you would think about -- [Saks] was certainly much less data-oriented, much less digitally oriented, a lot of feelings, a lot less science. And then I think there was just less orientation, candidly, around the customer." Essner joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the new strategy and how the last year has gone for Saks. One of her big priorities has been reorienting Saks' marketing strategy. While the company has for decades been advertising, Essner said it wasn't as targeted as she would like -- especially on the digital side. For example, she's been focusing more on search than ever before. "I think [we] got a lot more sophisticated in our strategy," she said. The company, she added, has been investing in live commerce and continues to see it pay dividends with engaged shoppers. Meanwhile, Saks has been focusing on expanding to new customers -- such as younger shoppers and men -- while also leveraging its immense customer data to focus on loyalty. With that, said Essner, retention has been a big part of the puzzle. "We use [all the customer data] within all of our owned channels to really tailor our messaging. It plays a huge role in getting you to come back," she said. With this, Essner sees more growth on the horizon for the retailer. The focus, she said, is about "retaining more customers. And it's getting them to shop with us more frequently, which is all around figuring out -- through our personalization efforts -- how we serve them better."

On this week’s episode of the Modern Retail Rundown, we continue to analyze the latest shakeups in the industry. The program starts by giving an update on Silicon Valley Bank, including a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. It then discusses TikTok's recent pressure to sell or face a U.S. ban, and how that can impact retailers and brands' marketing outlooks. Finally, the show looks at how feasible resale is for fast fashion brands like H&M, which just announced a partnership with ThredUp.

Sneaker resale marketplace Impossible Kicks is taking a more analog approach to sneaker resale. In a world where most valuable hype beast-esque kicks are sold on platforms like StockX, Impossible Kicks has been focused on opening stores over the last two years. It now has over two dozen locations in ten states, with plans to open seven more this year. But it also is now expanding into online, trying to compete more directly with its digital counterparts. So far, the business has been working: the company brought in around $50 million last year and expects double that in 2023. According to co-founder and CEO John Mocadlo, Impossible Kicks' success has been in the way its standardized operations. "We've been extremely successful with it just because we set up all of our sneaker stores kind of like a car dealership," he said on the Modern Retail Podcast. That is, "we train the associates like essentially salesmen from a car dealership." There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the underlying ethos of what helped the company grow. Now, Impossible Kicks has big plans to expand its digital presence -- which currently represents about 10% of its revenue -- as well as go beyond footwear and apparel into luxury watches. One of the things that helped Mocadlo grow his company was partnering with the right people and being in the right place at the right time. His business was predicated on brick-and-mortar retail, and that takes a lot of capital to do well. "When we realized -- hey, we're going to be the alpha in brick and mortar' -- we knew that we had to A, raise money and B, move as fast as possible," he said. Now, the company has raised millions of dollars and is investing that into expansion. That being said, Mocadlo added that "on a consolidated basis, the box retail is extremely profitable as a whole." But even as store sales continue to grow, Impossible Kicks is trying to make sure it figures out the right formula for online. That space is much more crowded and filled with big names. "There are some fantastic companies that are DTC with resale -- StockX, Goat, Stadium Goods are all fantastic companies," he said. But the one thing he doesn't want to do is grow to big and ruin the brand cachet the company has thus far built. "We've launched [online] very slow, because there's a lot of fraud in our field of work," Mocadlo said.

On this week's episode of the Modern Retail Rundown, the team continues to dissect the new economic realities the retail industry faces. This episode discusses a few hot topics coming out of the retail industry. First up is a look at Allbirds’ first year as a publicly traded company. We then discuss the new Shein vs. Temu rivalry. Finally, we ask why a lot of mainstream brands are reinventing themselves to court the premium shopper.

After a difficult 2020 and 2021, women's work apparel brand M.M.LaFleur is once again in growth mode. The company is investing in new stores and showrooms, and says that sales are picking up again after business cratered during the pandemic. "There were multiple times where I thought maybe we won't make it, maybe the business won't survive," said founder and CEO Sarah LaFleur. She joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the company's new focus on stores and how it's positioning its overall marketing going forward. M.M.LaFleur is celebrating its 10th anniversary. And its trajectory as an online business provides a great glimpse into the changing dynamics digital brands face. It first launched with a subscription model with the aim of bringing women into the fold and giving them a variety of options to try out every month. While the intent wasn't to solely be a subscription business, M.M.LaFleur was known as one for years. During this time, the brand relied on all the old digital acquisition strategies to grow. "I remember there was a time where we used to acquire customers for $16 per customer -- I mean, it was kind of crazy," LaFleur said. But then two big things happened: customer acquisition costs skyrocketed and the pandemic hit. Beginning in 2019, M.M.LaFleur stopped its subscription business. And it also worked to diversify its marketing budget. Now, LaFleur said that stores have become one of its best-performing customer acquisition channels. "The thought there was let's shift our acquisition channel to now be from something else, and [using] our stores [as] a source of acquisition," she said. The company uses two types of retail models -- showrooms and ground-floor retail. The showrooms have long catered to power M.M.LaFleur customers, giving them an intimate environment in which to shop. Meanwhile, the larger, ground-floor retail formats are intended to catch people's eyes on the streets. It recently opened a ground-floor store in the Upper East Side, is about to launch another in the Upper West Side and has plans to open two more similar stores by the end of the year. According to LaFleur, while these stores don't bring in the majority of revenue -- 90% of the company's sales still come from online -- this is where she really sees healthy growth coming from. "In terms of where I'm putting my energy right now, I'm really focused on making sure that the stores we have right now are performing well," she said.

On this episode of the Modern Retail Rundown, we continue to dissect the new economic realities the retail industry faces. This week, we discuss the whispers surrounding Instacart's long and winding road to an IPO and why Nordstrom Canadian ambitions failed. We also contemplate why dollar store chains are receiving so much resistance from the American public. The Modern Retail Rundown is a weekly program where the Modern Retail staff breaks down the week’s top news.

Aviron, which makes a connected rowing machine that starts at about $1,800, is taking a more sustainable growth approach than counterparts like Peloton. The company launched a couple of years before the pandemic hit. The focus was on bootstrapping and slowly building a business via B-to-B sales from wholesalers that would sell to hotels and other large businesses. But then the pandemic hit and the company had to switch its business model. While it did lose money during the first half of 2020, Aviron was able to completely transform itself into a DTC fitness brand -- and has been seeing growth ever since. Founder and CEO Andy Hoang joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about Aviron's transformation as a fitness brand. One of the ways Aviron was really able to hit its stride was by joining Y Combinator in 2021. Up until then, the company had been mostly bootstrapped. That wasn't by choice, but because Hoang had yet to find an investor to take the leap. But, according to Hoang, the industry cachet the accelerator program provides really paves the way for future investments. "As soon as we got into Y Combinator, a lot of those same investors who said no to us and didn't give us more than five or 10 minutes of their time were asking us: Hey, can we really participate in this round?" Hoang said. Thanks to this funding the company has been able to grow. It now has about 60 employees. And while demand for fitness has cooled of late, the company has not had to make any big cuts or layoffs. Hoang credits this to his focus on making sure sustainability was in front of growth. This is in contrast to some other players he's been watching. "I love Peloton as a brand, I think they've done great things," Hoang said. "I don't understand how they hired so many people in such a short period of time." But even with the industry cooldown, Hoang is still very bullish on the future. "There's going to be a lot of consolidation, and there's going to be a lot of companies that just won't make it because they don't have the right fundamentals," Hoang said. "So it's exciting to me, because if we do make it through this period -- which I think will be a challenging period -- the companies that come out of this period are going to be really strong."

Some of the largest companies are making big changes to their business models. That was the overall theme of this week's Modern Retail Rundown, a weekly program where Modern Retail editors break down the week's biggest industry news. In this episode, we talk about how ad sales are boosting revenue for marketplaces like Ebay and Etsy – even during rough times. Next, we discuss how major retailers are warning of a slowdown in demand in the coming year. And finally, we delve into Starbucks’ buzzy new olive oil coffee line. The Modern Retail Rundown episodes drop every Saturday morning.

The brains behind the snack giant Kind are now bringing their expertise to the investment space. Kind founder Daniel Lubetzky unveiled Camino Partners earlier this month, an investment and incubation platform looking to help the next wave of entrepreneurs. The idea is to harness what made Kind -- which sold to Mars in 2020 for reportedly $5 billion -- so successful into a program that will fund the next successful consumer-facing brands. That's no easy task, according to Elle Lanning, managing director at Camino Partners. She joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about Camino, and its plans with the $350 million it raised. She also talked about the overall consumer brand investing space, and what industry changes are likely on the horizon. "The thesis is heavily rooted in our operating experience," Lanning said. Lanning herself is a Kind alum. She worked at the company for over a decade, starting in the marketing department and ultimately becoming chief of staff. Once the company sold to Mars, Lanning said Lubetzky and the Kind team were trying to figure out their next move. "We've amassed this experience -- we have great talent from different stages and different functions along the way of Kind's growth," she said. But the big question remains: what will Camino invest in? Past investments from earlier iterations of the platform include the snack brand Belgian Boys. As Lanning described it, the focus is on "value creation, from the sense [that] we're supporting products and services that better a consumer's life." That could be a better-for-you snack bar, but it could also be a wellness brand. This fund comes at an interesting time. Money was flowing to consumer startups over the last few years, but things have begun to cool. In Lanning's eyes, the industry may have been too flush with cash, which made it nearly impossible for some companies to stand out. Camino, then, is a way to suss out the real next industry leaders. But that may come at the expense of other brands -- and Lanning is aware of that. In fact, she thinks the next few years are going to be tough. "I do believe that there will be some contraction," she said. "I think that [over] the next couple of years, you're going to see some brands that might have had early shoots of promise probably cease to exist."

Modern Retail is excited to unveil our latest podcast: The Modern Retail Rundown. This weekly program, hosted by senior reporter Gabriela Barkho, goes through all the big retail headlines of the week, providing deep analysis and insights into these large industry happenings. We'll bring in guests such as reporters and editors who know retail inside and out to discuss why these stories are important, and what they mean for the overall ecosystem. This week, we talk about Amazon's grocery ambitions -- and how the company says it's investing in brick-and-mortar stores while also scaling back some recent investments. We also dived into the latest from Bed Bath & Beyond, which narrowly escaped bankruptcy thanks to an 11th-hour investment. And we also discussed rumors that Away is looking for a buyer -- and what that means for later-stage DTC brands seeking an exit.

Sundays is trying to become the leading DTC home furnishings brand in Canada, but it also has its sights set on international expansion. The company started as a side hustle of two married entrepreneurs and has snowballed into a full-blown international business. While most of its business is in Canada, Sundays has been slowly building out its U.S. business -- and has plans to open a pop-up in the country hopefully sometime in the next year. "We started just with living room pieces, and over time we moved into dining room and bedroom," said co-founder and co-CEO Barbora Samieian. "But what we really stayed committed to is that curated line. So, not going very broad in any of those categories, but really selecting the best pieces for our customers and iterating on those pieces." Barbora and her husband Moe, who serves as the other co-CEO, joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the company's growth plans. Sundays first launched in 2019, and after about a year of trial and error -- along with a pandemic-induced home goods boom -- started seeing sales consistently grow year-over-year. Sundays sells a variety of home furniture including sofas, end tables, beds and chairs. While it has expand its product-line, the co-founders insist that its focus has been on curation over expansion. Much of its growth was thanks to leveraging social media and local influencers to grow its presence in key cities like Vancouver and Toronto. But now, with rising customer acquisition costs and changing digital dynamics, Sundays is trying to diversify its digital marketing to include a variety of channels including podcasts and Pinterest. While the co-founders admitted that the last six months didn't have the same growth as the previous two years, given the changing economic landscape, things are still looking good for Sundays. "We're still able to have growth numbers even in q3 and q4 of 2022," said Moe Samieian. "But we've been we're going forward cautiously."

For years, Nutrafol has focused predominately on DTC. But now it's taking a big step into retail. This month, the hair wellness brand started selling in Sephora. It's one of the first big wholesale relationships Nutrafol has made. Though it's been around since 2014, Nutrafol -- which sells supplements to help with hair loss and other health issues like menopause -- has sold predominately on its own site, as well as Amazon and in certain physician offices. This has remained the case even after it got sold to Unilever last year. According to Giorgos Tsetis, co-founder and CEO of Nutrafol, "the Sephora partnership is really serving as credibility, but also just brand awareness overall." That is, it gets the brand's name in front of more people than it ever could before. Tsetis joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the company's evolution. Nutrafol started as a laser-focused wellness startup. It had two formulations to help both men and women with hair loss. A few years ago, it expanded to help with more ailments but has aimed to stay true to its promise of providing researched and lab-tested wellness products. "There's skepticism with supplementation in general," he said. "And that's for the right reason because there are a lot of companies that are manufacturing supplements and making claims that they cannot substantiate." But, he said, Nutrafol has been focused on educating its customers to explain how it works and what exactly it does. That's easier to do on its own website, but now the company is trying to tell its story to more people by expanding retail channels. But not every channel will have the same expectations as the others. For example, about 85% of the customers on Nutrafol's website are subscribers. That's not the same with Amazon customers. "As we scale, understanding the ratio between these channels is going to be very important," said Tsetis. For now, the focus is on figuring out how to make each channel work and growing Nutrafol's presence. While the company is dead set on making its Sephora partnership work, it may have some other announcements soon. "With the Unilever infrastructure and resources available to us, I think the most impactful move in the next few years is going to be about scaling globally," said Tsetis.

XRC Labs is looking for the next consumer brand winner. The organization is both a venture capital fund and accelerator that has been around since 2015. Its portfolio companies include Outlines, Caraa and Billie. Partner Diana Melencio is constantly trying to figure out what's next -- and what market is under-tapped. On the Modern Retail Podcast this week, Melencio spoke about her investing process and the areas she's most excited about for the year to come. For example, she sees men's skincare having a moment soon. She also sees older generations as a demographic that remains overlooked by many startups. "Women over 40, women over 50," Melencio said. "They're a demographic that has some of the highest purchasing power in the world in the country. They're at a stage in their career where they have a lot of disposable income, and there are very few brands that try to directly speak with them." One of XRC's main theses is that digital is the way of the future for consumer-facing brands. And even though foot traffic is coming back to some stores, there is still too much under-utilized retail space. If you go to a mall in suburban New Jersey or Connecticut on a weekday, she said, "there are not a lot of people shopping there." As such, she's looking for ways that companies can rethink the spaces they once relied on. But perhaps most top of mind for her -- and most entrepreneurs -- is how to stay afloat given the current economic uncertainty. It's true that it's tough to raise money as a startup right now, said Melencio. But now is when brands can prove they have longstanding business models that can outlast downturn. "The first thing is that you should be profitable on your first sale," said Melencio.

Seed Health is a microbiome company trying to disrupt the way health, business and science overlap. While its first product is its probiotic line, Seed has more lofty ambitions to do deep research into human health and rethink the way most people think about the microbiome. The microbiome technically is the community of microbes that live inside an organism, but it's most commonly referred to as a generalized term for human gut health that supplements like probiotics help to support. On the Modern Retail Podcast this week, co-founder and co-CEO Ara Katz spoke about the company's growth and its big plans for the future. It raised a $40 million Series A in 2021 and it just announced a new partnership with a Swiss research institute to help develop a new line of home and personal care products. Its first product, Seed, comes in two versions -- adult and pediatric -- and are daily non-prescription probiotic supplements that go for about $50 a month. The overall goal of Seed Health, said Katz, is "to realize the potential of the microbiome to improve human and environmental health." But with such a big mandate comes a lot of work -- and some of that has to do with branding and marketing. For example, the very concept of a microbiome may be foreign to most people. For someone like Katz, who works with scientists and influencers, that means figuring out the best way to explain the company's message. According to Katz, it means wearing a bunch of hats and figuring out the best method of communication for the audience at hand. "We write Nature papers and we write Instagram posts," she said. "And they're wildly different." With that also comes the task of figuring out sales growth. For now, most of Seed's sales come from its website, but it has been dabbling in brick-and-mortar retail. For example, Seed supplements are available for purchase at Erewhon. But even that isn't a straightforward wholesale partnership -- because Seed relies on a subscription model, Erewhon and Seed have an affiliate relationship so that the store gets a cut of sales even after the first in-store purchase. The Erewhon partnership, she said, is working out "better than we thought better than we thought it would." For now, the focus is on growing Seed Health's research which will go into its new products. "Now that we we have an understanding of what we believe -- and we know the efficacy of our first few products," she said. She's now figuring out "how do we scale them in a way that creates the greatest amount of health impact."

Goodbuy is trying to be the anti-mega-retailer. Goodbuy, launched in 2021, is a startup that gives shoppers small-business alternatives to bigger retailer websites. The company offers a browser extension that, when launched on a site like Amazon and Walmart, highlights other smaller brands that offer similar products. Goodbuy also launched a mobile shopping site that lets users search for brands based on different criteria such as product type, region or founder demographic. "I wanted to create a really efficient way to have folks be able to shop consciously," said co-founder Cara Oppenheimer. She joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the idea behind Goodbuy and its plans for the future. Over the last year, Goodbuy has amassed a brand list of 180,000 companies it links out to, 40,000 user profiles and has helped facilitate nearly $2 million in sales. Now, the focus is on growing both the user and partner brand base -- while finding new ways to monetize. That includes paid brand offerings, as well as growing affiliate business. In its first year of business, much of Goodbuy's focus has been around proven out the concept. While the future business model will be based on affiliate commerce -- brands will pay Goodbuy a cut of the sale if a shopper used the platform to discover a product -- Oppenheimer wanted to get more people to try the service out before she started charging a fee. So for last year, Goodbuy didn't charge a fee and instead focused on building out its list of brands and customer base. With that, she and her co-founder built a tech stack that would automatically onboard small brands into its search capabilities and then categorize them by different attributes. That is, a Goodbuy user could search for women-owned brands or companies that pledge to be more sustainable. Now, with tens of thousands of shoppers and growing brand attention, Oppenheimer plans on implementing the affiliate program this year. The hope is to create an online shopping experience that can rival Amazon, while still focusing on small businesses. But that will require scale. "A lot of our priorities are around onboarding more businesses at scale," said Oppenheimer, "so there's more opportunity for our consumers."

Bedding brand Sunday Citizen first started in 2018 as a small side hustle. In 2018, Mike Abadi was living in China and helping connect entrepreneurs with product suppliers. The owner of a boutique hotel asked him to make a soft yet hearty blanket. Abadi met the request and realized he had stumbled upon a pretty great product. A year later, that blanket became the beginnings of the brand Sunday Citizen. And today, Sunday Citizen has grown into an eight-figure business that makes blankets, pillows, bedding and more. It's sold online, in stores like Nordstrom as well as in its own store in New York City. Abadi joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the company's growth and expansion plans. In many ways, Sunday Citizen is a very traditional DTC brand. It chose to be online-only from the beginning, despite having a product intended for business purposes. According to Abadi, this is because of his background in brand building and digital marketing. "I felt comfortable at the digital advertising game -- acquiring customers online," he said. "And my wife, her background was also on the website side of things. So we both felt that that's where we felt a little bit more comfortable." This online-only strategy worked and helped it stake its claim as a premium bedding brand. In fact, he said this helped Sunday Citizen ink wholesale customers. "Most of the wholesale partners that we've had, they've come to us," he said. But now the company is hoping to grow beyond its online roots. While wholesale represents only about 5% of its business, "the wholesale business is growing faster than our website business at this point," he said. And with its new store, which opened in December of last year, the hope is expand its customer base even more. The secret to growing the brand, Abadi said, was in creating a product that people would remember. "The way we've always developed product has been: we start with engineering," he said.

Two years ago, grocery delivery platforms like Instacart saw huge gains thanks to pandemic-induced consumption changes. Now, the road is a little bit bumpier. But Instacart's vp of retail partnerships Ryan Hamburger is conservatively bullish about the future -- both for his company and the overall grocery delivery industry. He joined the Modern Retail Podcast and went deep into the trends he's observing as of late. One thing is for sure, though: given the tough economic climate and recent industry-wide rocket ship growth, gains won't look like what they did a year or so ago. "What you'll see in '23, is we have a new resting heartbeat," Hamburger said. "We've had all of these gains in the sense of e-commerce penetration in the grocery space ramp since Covid hit that haven't gone back, and so that new resting heartbeat is how we all need to be acting in this industry. And so you'll see probably '23, from a growth perspective look more like pre-pandemic years." This resetting of expectations comes amid some industry tumult. For example, e-commerce growth is beginning to flatten out, a number of quick-delivery grocery platforms have started to fizzle and even Instacart itself recently reportedly slashed its valuation. But Hamburger still sees big gains ahead for both grocers and platforms. One things he's focused on, for example, is Instacart's Canadian expansion. Over the past year, the platform has grown its presence in the country by 60%, he said, and has plans to grow that store fleet even further. Additionally, Hamburger has been working to get retail partners to use a variety of in-store tech that Instacart powers. This includes smart carts and other omnichannel bells and whistles that the platform is trying to introduce. "We've been a delivery company, but we want to bring some of that magic to our retailers' stores," he said. But even with these areas of growth, Hamburger is cognizant of the precarious economic environment. "I think the unfortunate reality that we're in today is customers have a weekly budget that they use for their grocery shopping, and that we haven't really seen change," he said. "So while they might still be spending that same $100, they're coming home with fewer items, which means they need that money to stretch further." For retailers and platforms like Instacart, that means there's a newfound focus on affordability and accessibility. This is a big topic Hamburger said he works with retail partners on. And, in his mind, the problem isn't going away anytime soon. "At the end of the day, grocery costs are not coming down anytime soon," Hamburger said. "And so we're still going to be in a world in '23 where your grocery bill is higher than it's ever been."

This year, brands and retailers faced a myriad of changes. Inflation went up, demand for some products went down and marketing became an increasingly difficult nut to crack. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, our reporters sat down and talked about the biggest themes they wrote about. They ran the gamut -- from consumer demand shifts to price fluctuations to the difficulties many c-suites faced. Senior reporter Melissa Daniels spoke about shifts in consumer sentiment that led to product and marketing changes. "There were some big shifts in what people were buying," she said. For example, home goods were huge during the 2020 and 2021 but started to stagnate this last year. This impacted even the biggest players, according to reporter Maria Monteros. Retailers like Target miscalculated demand early in 2022, and that hurt profits throughout the entire year. "I think they really expected that growth to continue," she said. "And so they ordered a lot of these goods, only to find out that consumer spending has really shifted from discretionary items to travel and experiences." This is just a snippet of the wide-reaching conversation that covered all the ups and downs the retail industry faced this year.

Esprit was once a luxury California apparel brand, but it has had a rough couple of decades. In its heyday in the '80s and '90s, it was known for its high-end clothing like sweatshirts. But most of its U.S. business dried up in the 2000s, and the company's German and Hong Kong business began to lose their luster with shoppers. As part of a major restructuring beginning in 2021, William Pak became CEO. Earlier this year, the company posted its first profit since 2017. And now Esprit has big plans to relaunch in the U.S. Pak joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about his plans for the brand refresh. "What happened was prior teams or management have kind of changed Esprit from a bold, creative, high-quality product into what was prevalent at the time, which is fast fashion," Pak said. Esprit is the first apparel brand Pak has worked for, but he and his wife have spent much of their professional life helping businesses on the brink. "We've done a lot of business turnarounds, and expansionary business plans," Pak said. "We're quite an optimistic couple, so we like to [take on] optimistic projects." The first phase of the plan was a complete business restructuring, and bringing the company back to profitability. Now that's finished, and Pak is focused on the fun part: rebranding. With that, Esprit is moving its entire business to New York City, with the plan to make it an apparel leader once again. "Whe brand will globally be created, designed, thought through, photographed all in New York City," he said. "And it will resonate globally from there." Currently, Esprit has a pop-up in Soho, but it plans to open a new flagship store next year. What's more, the company is completely refreshing its assortment, and plans to unveil all the new designs later in 2023. In Pak's estimation, now is the right time to relaunch such a brand. Decades like the '80s and '90s are in vogue these days, which gives Esprit the chance to resonate well with multiple generations. But Pak has bigger hopes for the brand beyond regurgitating its prime from 30 year ago. "But we're not just a brand from the '80s, we're now a modernized version of Esprit," said Pak.

GoodwillFinds is trying to bring the century-old Goodwill network to the era of ThredUp. The new e-commerce platform has only been live since October, but has already seen pretty steady growth. When it first hit the market, GoodwillFinds offered 100,000 items for sale from four different Goodwill locations around the country. Now, that number is approaching 200,000 items. CEO Matthew Kaness said the organization plans to have a catalog of over 1 million products for sale by the end of the year. GoodwillFinds is in the process of onboarding four more locations -- and Kaness said dozens of other locations are in the pipeline to be added in 2023. Kaness joined the Modern Retail Podcast to talk about the growing program. While most anyone in the U.S. knows about Goodwill, the organization has never had a centralized online presence. The idea with GoodwillFinds is to try and do just that -- as well as compete with other digital resale leaders like Thredup and the RealReal. While the platform has only been around for a few months, Kaness said that the struggle hasn't been finding customers, but instead making sure the program can run smoothly while scaling. "We didn't expect the consumer response to be as great," he said. "So we are chasing some of the operations -- staffing up customer service, and adding more staff at pick, pack and ship [sections] within the various Goodwills." The business is also trying to figure out what sells best on the online platform. While apparel has been one of Goodwill's most popular categories, Kaness said GoodwillFinds has seen "such a strong demand for non-clothing." In fact, apparel currently only accounts for one-quarter of the platform's sales. The platform is still constantly being upgraded, with more products and features being added everyday. But the hope is to create the Goodwill experience online. That being said, Kaness was clear that the well-known treasure-hunt Goodwill experience can't be mimicked by an online app. "What we're trying to do is augment and expand and enhance the experience," he said.

Lee Jeans is over a century old, but it's trying to remain hip with younger generations. One way it does this is with collaborations. For example, the apparel brand recently worked with the menswear company Brooklyn Circus on a new joint collection. The products are an update on some of Lee's oldest designs -- an attempt to bridge a heritage brand with something newer. According to Chris Waldeck, evp and co-chief operating officer at Lee's parent company Kontoor Brands, the philosophy behind these types of collaborations is to tell a story that one brand alone couldn't tell. "There's no connection between Brooklyn Circus and Lee," Waldeck. The strategy behind joining to disparate brands is "bringing them together to tell a fantastic story and to make some great products." Waldeck joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the denim brand's updated strategy. Lee has been around since 1889, but has had its ups and downs. Lee used to be a part of VF Corporation, which owns brands like North Face and Timberland. But in 2019, VF spun out both Lee and Wrangler to their own parent company Kontoor. Now, the company is focused on bringing Lee to new -- and younger -- shoppers. A lot of that, he said, is about finding Gen Z on new platforms, and figuring out ways to make its products accessible to youth audiences. Waldeck joined Lee in 2017. He said his mandate was "to energize the brand." At the time, he said, "we had gotten old and our consumer was getting older." As such, he's spent the last five years trying to give the legacy brand a facelift of sorts. The challenge, he said, has been keeping with Lee's legacy and styles while still reaching new people. To make it even more difficult, the strategy isn't the same around the world. For example, China, which is one of Lee's biggest markets, has a markedly different selling and marketing strategy than the U.S. and Europe. "What underpins [our approach] is a really strategic approach to segmentation," said Waldeck. "And that goes back to our icons, to our archives and how we think about the different products that we bring through."

Voyage Foods envisions a world where the most popular food products aren't reliant on their source ingredients. And it believes business-to-business is the best way to reach its lofty goals. The company, which is only a couple of years old, currently makes peanut-free peanut butter spread, cocoa-free chocolate and coffee-free coffee. The idea is that these are some of the most popular foods in the world, but they all carry their own allergen, environmental and political baggage. CEO Adam Maxwell joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about Voyage's trajectory. Voyage is different from other brands for a few reasons. For one, it isn't targeting wealthy consumers looking for food alternatives. Instead, it is making competitively-priced products in the hopes that it can reach the masses. "The people who need food tech and these kinds of food tech solutions aren't rich white people in San Francisco or New York City," Maxwell said. "It's the parts of the world that can't afford the real thing." That is, cocoa and coffee are expensive commodities and Voyage thinks it can replicate its flavor more cheaply. Voyage first started out online, but just launched in Sprouts supermarkets a few weeks ago, and is hoping to continue expanding its retail footprint. But Maxwell said the real business plan is to focus on B-to-B. He hopes to partner with large CPG brands who want to expand their flavor offerings in more sustainable and allergen-friendly ways. For example, an ice cream company could partner with Voyage on a peanut-flavored ice cream that people with peanut allergies can enjoy. Grocery, he said, is a way to initially build the brand. "Retail is a small function of what this business will be," he explained. "It's the easiest, fastest way to get to market." The company is still small -- it raised a $36 million Series A last May. But it hopes to ink key partnerships to continue its growth in the coming hear, with the plan to become a CPG powerhouse. "We're bringing our next facility online, around this time next year," he said. "We'll have around 100 million pounds of annual capacity."

Livestream shopping has yet to hit true mainstream levels in the U.S. but Ntwrk thinks it can help. The platform has been around since 2018, and says it has doubled in size every year since launch. Ntwrk's approach to livestream commerce consists of a combination of brand, retailer and celebrity partnerships, along with limited-edition drops. As Aaron Levant, Ntwrk's CEO, described it, the idea at inception was to create a "live, engaging, entertaining platform where some of the biggest brands and celebrities in the world are dropping exclusive products creating that kind of FOMO and tune in moments that you feel like you can't miss -- and things sell out fast." Now, he went on, "we've done that at scale -- and now we've gone much beyond that we've moved into new categories, new verticals, new supply side of the product." Levant joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about Ntwrk's growth and ambitions, along with the overall U.S. livestream shopping market. One of the early inspirations for Ntwrk was the game show app HQ; "Once or twice a day, you get a push notification. And people would tune in at mass and be highly engaged. And I wanted to take that same ideology, but apply it for a product drop," he said. Levant has a background in fashion and streetwear, and those past professional connections helped give Ntwrk its initial cultural cachet. Leveraging past celebrity relationships, he said, "allowed us to build a pretty big audience base very quickly for very cheap because of these relationships we had." The platforms has featured drops from brands like Nike as well as celebrities like Billie Eillish and Odell Beckham Jr. It's this direct relationship with the brand or creator that Levant said makes Ntwrk successful -- and different from competitors. "We're not a peer-to-peer platform," he said, "not just anyone can sign up and start using our tools to sell." While Ntwrk is still seeing growth -- and is expanding to new categories like collectibles and toys -- it still represents a niche market in the U.S. Levant, however, still thinks the U.S. will catch up with other countries like China where livestreaming is more prevalent. "Their use and adoption of intuitive mobile-first technology is still drastically ahead of us," he said. "I think it's just a few years before we catch up."

PetSmart is trying to maintain its dominance as a leading pet retailer. The privately-held company, which has been around since 1986, reportedly brought in $2.5 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year. But the retailer is also trying to stay relevant with its shoppers and find new ways to engage them. Stacia Andersen, PetSmart's chief customer officer, joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about her role and the evolving pet space. PetSmart is not a startup by any means. Its loyalty program boasts 55 million members, and it works with a variety of talent, like HGTV's Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent. But the landscape is getting more competitive. With that, Andersen said PetSmart has been evolving its marketing strategy. "We evolved our brand voice most dramatically probably a couple of years ago, when we went back and looked at our customer base," she said. "Our brand voice evolved from individually marketing different sales or individually marketing services … to this overall brand platform and voice about why customers do what they do." The idea behind it was to connect with customers. "This is really what our brand voice is about," she said. "It's far more emotional, it's far less transactional." With such a large business, figuring out the customer profile becomes difficult. But Andersen said the retailer has figured out a few things. For one, most of PetSmart's customers are female; they often have multiple pets; lastly, they're often from families with children. Understanding this overall profile, Andersen said, has helped PetSmart refine its overall marketing strategy, as well as its loyalty plan. One of Andersen's most important mandates is establishing a retail presence that is more than just a place to buy pet food. With that, she's been leading various campaigns and partnerships to make the company more of a lifestyle brand. The idea isn't just to grow sales, but to do something deeper and give the brand more credibility. "There is a buzz factor," she said, talking about PetSmart's influencer partnership strategy. "There is a wow factor. And it also lends credibility to our own design."