The Modern Retail Podcast

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."

Bala Footwear is the latest apparel brand going after working professionals. The company makes shoes aimed specifically at medical professionals. Co-founder Brian Lockard worked at Nike for nearly five years. And the ethos of that brand informed Bala's thesis. "At Nike, one of the phrases that was so important that we always used was: Always listen to the voice of the athlete," said Lockard on the Modern Retail Podcast. "And we've decided we would build a company where we always listen to the voice of the health-care professional." On this week's program, Lockard spoke about how he's grown the brand, which first launched in 2020, as well what he's planning for the future. So far, the company has raised over $2 million in venture capital, saw $4 million in revenue its first year and says that sales continue to grow month-over-month. The idea behind Bala is that essential workers like nurses are on their feet for most of the work day. Yet, there's no footwear that's designed with that in mind. Some nurses wear clogs for comfort, others wear running shoes for support. But both of those items have drawbacks to nurses. To get a sense for their needs, Lockard interviewed many members of the health-care community. This served both a product research and marketing function. "What's really cool about the health-care marketplace is how tight knit the community is," said Lockard. "If you reach early adopters and they drive word of mouth -- they're always around colleagues." With this, Bala has its own rotating group of health-care professionals it leans on for product development and marketing outreach. "They're involved in telling us where we should be showing up, from a marketing perspective," said Lockard. While Bala is sold predominately online, the company is now slowly seeking out other sales channels. It's inked a few retail deals with select shoe stores and is looking into other possible partnerships. But, according to Lockard, he is still focused on making sure the brand doesn't grow too quickly. "One of the worst things that can happen is getting 100 new retail locations overnight," he said.

Levi's Latin American business is growing -- but it's very different from its Northern counterparts. The apparel brand's svp and managing director of Latin America, Rui Carlos Da Silva Araujo, spoke on the Modern Retail Podcast about how the company approaches this part of the business -- and its overall approach to DTC. This episode was recorded live at the Modern Retail DTC Summit held in Miami. Levi's Latin American business grew by about 70% in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, and Araujo said the company plans to continue growing and opening more stores. While the brand's digital business is continuing to grow, Araujo said stores remain one of the most important sales channels. "We see this opportunity still in Latin America that people want to go to the physical stores," he said. Currently, Levi's has 400 stores in the Latin American region, and the company is in the midst of an overhaul of its entire experience. It recently unveiled its Indigo store concept, which Araujo described as a way to showcase Levi's as lifestyle brand. It features fewer products and more experiences, such as in-store tailor shops. "The stores are really happier, the product is different," Araujo said. He hopes to have 50% of the Latin American stores to feature the Indigo model within the next two years. But no one store is the same. That's because Levi's customers are different not only between regions, but also between countries. Latin American customers, he said, "are much more European-driven -- south European, like Spain in Italy -- much more than the U.S. in some countries in Latin America. So the Colombians, the Argentinians and the Brazilians, they are really, really fashionable." Even with the emphasis on stores, Levi's is still focusing a great deal on digital. It has its own DTC sites for all the countries it serves, but local marketplaces like Mercado Libre also play a big role. "You need to have your mark, you have your own sites," he said. "But you need to have your marketplace players there." Even so, a big focus for Levi's right now is thinking about new retail concepts that customers will want to hang out in. Said Araujo, "we are seeing this momentum and the physical retail is working for us. So I think that's a huge opportunity."

Outlines is trying to be the Quip toothbrushes for bathroom and home cleaning products. The company launched earlier this year with a shower liner subscription service. The idea is that customers can buy the shower liner along with other accessories. Then, every few months they can pack up their used musty one, send it to Outlines who will recycle the material and then send another brand new clean liner. But Outlines isn't stopping at shower liners -- the startup is launching both a replenishable body scrubber and a toilet brush soon. "I knew that if I was to replace [a product like a shower liner], it was simply going to landfill," said Luke Young, one of Outline's co-founders. "So I would live with it for far too long -- and you wouldn't live with dirty sheets or any other product like this in your home." Young and his fellow co-founder Meg Murphy joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the genesis of Outlines and how the direct-to-consumer business is trying to grow and get its products into new homes. Both Young and Murphy were working in DTC before Outlines. Young was working in adtech for a U.K.-based DTC company that sells education products, and Murphy was also working at a British CPG startup that made glue products. They met at a coworking space and got to talking about the state of shower liners, and decided to launch their own company. Thus, Outlines was born. The company launched its first product at the beginning of 2022. The big question was whether or not a humdrum product like shower liners would work with a subscription model. As the two founders put it, it's all about education. The website focuses specifically on detailing how much waste is made because of thrown-out used plastic. And the hope is that people will align with the sustainability ethos around the company. The strategy to get eyeballs was to be available on the company's website first and try to find new customers who were searching online for new products like a shower liner. "I think we made a lot of mistakes in the first couple of months of what we were bidding on [and] where we were specifically marketing, but it was really just a process of testing and learning," said Young. Now that the two founders feel confident in the branding and messaging, their expanding the product base as well as looking toward new sales channels. And those announcements may be on the horizon. "We love retail, we're very excited about it," said Murphy. "we've spoken with some buyers to get some early feedback -- they're definitely ready for a refresh and a new brand to come in."

Cloud Paper is trying to get more people -- and businesses -- to try its products. The company makes bamboo-based tree-free toilet paper. When it first launched in 2019, co-founder Ryan Fritsch said the goal was to grow via business-to-business partnerships by selling to businesses like corporate offices and hotels. Its first major account was a Seattle WeWork. But then the pandemic hit, and office buildings shut down. As a result, Cloud Paper had to pivot its business to be consumer-facing. Two years later and the company is continuing to see year-over-year growth. But it's no longer a business focused solely on supplying toilet paper to other businesses. "Consumer sales are still driving the majority of our sales today," Fritsch said on the Modern Retail Podcast. The idea behind Cloud Paper was to make an environmentally conscious toilet paper. "Toilet paper hasn't changed much for many, many decades -- and it hasn't changed much, especially in terms of sustainability," said Fritsch. "It's very much lagging behind other household goods." With this in mind, the company decided to use bamboo as its source since the plant is both abundant and renewable. In addition, Cloud Paper decided that its consumer-facing business needed to be subscription-only when it first hit the market as a way to rope in repeat shoppers. The bet seems to be working out, even after the coronavirus-induced toilet paper mad dash. The company recorded a huge sales bump in 2020, but didn't see much churn after inventory leveled out. "We actually didn't see much change at all kind of once things got back to 'normal,'" Fritsch said. But even though the subscription business is healthy, Fritsch is dubious of it as a one-size-fits-all model. He's seen many subscription companies come and go -- and it's usually because the product didn't fit with the business plan. "Everyone wants to launch a subscription box or a product on subscription," he said. "But it was our idea early on that most products out there don't need to be subscription." Luckily for him, toilet paper does seem to be working -- at least for now.

Better & Better is taking an unconventional approach to oral care. The startup makes a toothpaste infused with vitamins -- a way to kill two daily-needs birds with one stone. But educating shoppers about how the product works is easier said than done. On the Modern Retail Podcast this week co-founder and CEO Vladimir Vukicevic spoke about how he's been positioning the company. "I [wanted] to build something that's really personal and near and dear to my heart," he said. "Better & Better stems from my personal desire to not have to take any more vitamin pills or supplement pills ever again." The big question for Vukicevic was, at first, whether or not Better & Better could make a product as he imagined. The second was if people would buy it. It took a few years, but both questions were answered. After hundreds of test formulas, Better & Better's first vitamin-infused toothpaste went to market. The company manufactured 20,000 units in early 2021 and sold out within six months. With that under its belt, the company has expanded into new products like toothbrushes and floss, and raised a $4 million round of funding last March. Better & Better is now using that to expand its product offerings and toothpaste varieties as well as to go into new sales channels. For example, Better & Better entered Amazon after focusing initially on its DTC website. According to Vukicevic, the company realized that it needed to be sold at the places customers most often bought their essentials. "Amazon is the starting point for a lot of people -- for most people -- when it comes to these types of products," he said. Since launching on Amazon earlier this year, it has become one of Better & Better's fastest-growing channels. The focus now, according to Vukicevic, is to continue expanding Better & Better's product line as well as get into retail stores. The last few years, he said, have been a test to see if people want such a unique oral care product. Said Vukicevic, it's clear that people do. With that, he said, "hopefully we'll be in retail by the end of this year."

Grocery and CPG are certainly hot areas for startups, but it hasn't always been that way. Brooklyn Delhi, a company that makes Indian-inspired sauces and condiments, has been in the business since 2014. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, founder Chitra Agrawal talked about growing the business -- and the current DTC landscape. Brooklyn Delhi began as a predominately local company. Agrawal got laid off from her marketing job but had already been building a following as a food blogger. It seemed only natural to try her hand as an entrepreneur. In its early years, Brooklyn Delhi made its achaar products, an Indian pickled condiment, and mostly sold it locally in New York City. The brand started getting on shelves in small grocers, as well as became featured in trendy Brooklyn restaurants. "We always pictured our product on store shelves one day," said Agrawal. "But to get there, I think we first knew that we needed to start at this very local market level to kind of understand what was it that people thought about the product." It took some time, but the strategy worked. Today, Brooklyn Delhi is available nationwide in stores like Whole Foods, as well as available on its direct-to-consumer site and with meal kit services like Blue Apron. And it's expanded its products beyond its hero achaar product to simmer sauces. There have been some road bumps. For example, Agrawal said Trader Joe's was in talks with Brooklyn Delhi for a potential private label partnership, and then she noticed that the retailer ended up making its own achaar product that looked suspiciously similar to hers. Agrawal decided to go public about what she viewed as blatant product copycatting. "I wanted to say something because I wanted people to know that we did not pack the watered-down version of Trader Joe's," she said. "Because so many people had come to us and they were just like, 'this doesn't taste right, is this your product?'" Even so, the company has moved on and moved up. The focus now, said Agrawal, is to grow the DTC arm as well as expand its product line. Currently, Brooklyn Delhi has 11 SKUs, but Agrawal hopes to have as many as 15 launched in the next year. "There's going to new a lot of new product coming out for Brooklyn Delhi," she said.

Evite has big plans to be more than just a free digital invitation service. The online platform has been around since 1998, providing essentially the same service: online invitations. But the business has had many ups and down. Two years ago, David Yeom and George Ruan purchased the business -- Yeom hails from e-commerce businesses like the Honest Company and eBay; Ruan co-founded Honey. Yeom joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the company's transformation. "Evite, from a user activity standpoint [and] from a financial standpoint, has never been healthier, more profitable in its history," he said. The two believed Evite was in need of fundamental changes. For one, the company's revenue was long ad-based. But, as Yeom said, that was "too much compromising on the user experience." Additionally, Evite's look wasn't current -- it looked dated, he said. "For a brand that has the history that it has -- is it still cool to the younger millennials and younger moms?" Yeom said. With that in mind, Yeom implemented some major changes. For one, he wanted to focus more on commerce than ads. Now, the company both facilitates gifting -- it has become Amazon's biggest gift affiliate -- as well as earns revenue from premium digital invitations. True, 90% of Evite's customers still opt to use free cards, but 10% now shell out for a nicer design. In addition, Evite changed its entire look and feel. Before, the company had outsourced most of its design. "The priorities were just a little baffling," Yeom said. Now, it's all done in-house and the company has a more up-to-date look and feel. The hope is to attract more younger users -- Yeom said that one-third of the invites sent today are for children's birthday parties. With all this, Evite has been able to grow its business. It turned a profit in 2021 and now has big international ambitions. The company plans to expand to other English-speaking countries like Canada, Australia and the U.K. "We're a party company, and Americans aren't the only ones that want to party," said Yeom.

Nearly five years ago, Aaron Luo co-founded the DTC luxury bag company Caraa. Now, his latest venture zeroes in on Spanish meats. Luo and fellow Caraa co-founder Carmen Chen Wu launched charcuterie brand Mercado Famous this past summer. Both Luo and Chen grew up in Spain, and have fond memories of tapas hours with friend and family. "The mission behind Mercado was to bring not only the best we can find in Spain when it comes to charcuterie, but change the narrative around charcuterie a little bit," Luo said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "We just felt that there's a newer and younger audience that's somewhat neglected." The company sells meat products ranging from an $11.99 serving of sliced jamón to a $300 entire cured pork leg. While the company is selling predominately through its website right now, Luo said he has ambitions to grow other channels too. "I think wholesale will have a bigger play in Mercado Famous than Caraa, for sure," he said. "The goal for the brand is to go mass to a certain extent, if we can." True, handbags like Caraa's are made from leather -- the same material many meat products come from -- but the businesses are very different. Still, Luo said the earlier experience helped prepare him for this latest one. "The reason we felt very confident starting Mercado Famous back in 2018 is all the scar tissues and the learnings we've had in the DTC world," he said. That is, through Caraa he learned the ropes of brand storytelling and customer acquisition. And he's using all that knowledge to help grow Mercado Famous. Some things are very different, however, than they were when Caraa first launched in 2014. For one, the VC environment is very different. That being said, Luo has long believed that most retail brands are not best for venture investing -- and that thesis, he said, is being proved today. "I think it works for tech," he said, but "this is not a tech company." For now, Mercado Famous is still figuring things out. Luo has big plans to ink wholesale deals and other types of partnerships. But, he admits, the brand is still a baby; "we're not even crawling, just moving our heads."

For the Swiss athletic apparel company On -- known by many as On Running -- the focus has always been on being both premium and exclusive. According to co-founder Caspar Coppetti, the concept when it first launched in 2010 was "we want to be the most expensive product on the market." On's shoes retail for between $130 and $200 a pair. It took a few years, but the strategy worked out. In its most recent earnings report, On's quarterly revenue hit around $307 million and direct-to-consumer sales represented 38% of its business. Coppetti joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about how the brand, best known for its running shoes, has tried to focus on growth while maintaining its brand integrity. "When you have a strategy, and it's a premium strategy -- it's a very simple strategy," said Coppetti. "You have to always keep supply below demand. Nothing builds desirability, like scarcity, right? And you have to be 100% buttoned up and prepared to walk away from things that could be good for business in the short-term but would hurt the brand long-term." For the first few years, this made things difficult. On walked away from some retail partnerships that likely would have jumpstarted business. But now, Coppetti said he's happy the company was so selective because it cemented On's name as a premium product. That helped make it a brand that athletes sought out. Tennis star Roger Federer, for example, is not only a spokesperson for the brand but an investor. And even beyond Federer, On is trying to take its athletic partnerships even further by offering new types of sponsorships and contracts. "The sponsorship model is broken," he said. "It's basically a duopoly, where two large brands control the market and they play very ugly games at the cost of the athletes." Despite the brand's early focus on exclusivity, Coppetti also spoke about the need to leverage key wholesale partners. The company is sold in thousands of individual running boutiques, as well as larger retailers like REI and Foot Locker. "We felt we needed the validation, not just [from] the best runners but also of the specialty shops," he said. Even with DTC representing over one-third of On's business, the company still focuses on growing retailer partnerships. What's more, Coppetti said that the two businesses aren't antagonistic; "they are very complementary and additive to each other," he said. "When we start working with a retailer, our online sales will go up in that area." Now, On is on an upward trajectory and expanding into new products and regions. According to Coppetti, this success was thanks to the company holding true to its values and keeping the big picture in mind. "It took a lot of discipline. But, you know, we're Swiss -- we're known for discipline," he said.

Home goods sales may be cooling, but Fernish is still seeing growth from furniture rental. On the Modern Retail Podcast this week, Fernish co-founder and CEO Michael Barlow joined to speak about the state of the industry and how he's been growing his company. Fernish first hit the market in 2018 as a furniture rental service. The idea was that many young professionals often moved to cities and were expected to move into new apartments and completely furnish them. For a monthly fee, they get access to nice items to showcase in their home, and are also given the option to rent to own. "This is a problem that's indicative of the apartment renter in urban metros that's moving every one to three years," said Barlow, "between finishing college or secondary education and ultimately settling down." But more than just making it easier to move from city to city, Barlow insisted that there's a sustainability angle to this business too. "You can call that flexibility, you can call that convenience, you can call that sustainability -- those are the pillars that we've defined our business around, which really marries the service economy and the subscription economy to a very legacy and old asset class," he said. So far, things are working out. Fernish first launched in Los Angeles, but has recently expanded to the East Coast in cities like New York City and Washington, DC. The company has raised $75 million to date and says that its revenue increased by more than 17x over the course of the pandemic. When Fernish first started, it sourced from other high-end retailers like Crate & Barrel. Now, most of its furniture it makes in-house. "We prioritize North American manufacturers now," Barlow said. But part of what has made the business work, he said, is its focus on curation; "We offer a couple hundred [products] because we can go really deep with our suppliers and our manufacturer partners on core SKUs." The big question is whether growth will slow. Some bigger players like Wayfair have reported rough earnings -- and the retailers like Target that invested in home goods are having difficulty selling inventory. Barlow says those headwinds haven't hit Fernish yet. "I can tell you, June was our best month ever, a little bit stronger than July in terms of new business added. And July was our third best month ever," he said.

Express was a ubiquitous mall retailer, but it's now trying to become much more than that. CMO Sara Tervo gave some insight into this brand. This week, on the Modern Retail Podcast, Tervo spoke about the Express's evolution. The apparel retailer first began in 1980, and was known as a mall mainstay. Now, Tervo has spent the last three years trying to refresh the retailer's image. "When I joined the brand, we were needing a transformation," she said. Slowly but surely, that change has started to happen. "What we really had to do was rebuild our approach to content, understand what was most relevant and connected across all the different platforms, rebuild our budgets and constantly iterate, learn and generate more content -- in an effort to connect and create conversation [as well as] to create a more relevant brand," Tervo said. Much of this focus was about livening up the company's social presence, as well as figuring out the types of inventory that worked best with Express's customers. Additionally, Tervo realized the company couldn't be considered a retailer dependent on promotions. "We needed to pull back and drive value in different ways than just discounting," she said. So far, said Tervo, things have been going well. At its second-quarter earnings released last May, net sales increased 30% year-over-year to $450.8 million and e-commerce revenue grew 21%. Right now, said Tervo, the company is focused on growing its e-commerce revenue to over $1 billion. "We have bold goals for that channel," she said. Beyond that, Tervo is laser-focused on figuring out customer acquisition in this wonky marketing environment. The big thing she's learned over the last few years is to be authentic -- even tapping store associates -- and to try out everything. "We're always curious about beta partnerships and different ways to test and try new ways to connect with customers," she said. In the end, Tervo has unveiled a new Express -- one that's focused on digital and resonating with customers. Even so, Tervo doesn't think malls or in-store retail is dead. "I'm sure you've heard a lot of different people say that you can never replace an in-person experience. There's just absolute value in that," she said. "What's dying is probably bad in-store experiences or malls."

The coffee business changed overnight when the pandemic first hit, and Counter Culture Coffee has been rolling with the punches. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, Counter Culture founder and president Brett Smith spoke about where the industry is going and how his company has evolved over more than two decades. Counter Culture, which first launched in 1994, was one of the first roasters to focus on direct trade, meaning it took great pride in working directly with coffee growers and suppliers. "What we felt was important was to go down that supply chain and really understand the source, the farmers," Smith said. "Because we felt like there was an opportunity to, in essence, have a conversation with the suppliers." At the time, roasters directly sourcing from growers and including them in their consumer-facing marketing was unheard of. But it's now become commonplace, and Counter Culture was one of the early businesses doing such practices. According to Smith, the fact that coffee companies like Counter Culture have become known for their ethical sourcing is a nice after-effect. he didn't intend for it to be such a big marketing hook. "The litmus test is are we going to do this if no one knows about it, will we still do it?" he said. Now, the market has changed. It's table stakes for most higher-end coffee roasters to tout their direct supply chain relations. What's more, the way people buy coffee has changed. Counter Culture first grew by partnering with restaurants. Then, it expanded to coffee shops. And it evangelized its business via local training centers it opened around the country. Here, baristas can stop by to learn about the products, and even average customers can stop by to get a sense for what the business is about. Today, Counter Culture has over a dozen training centers in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. When the pandemic hit, Counter Culture's wholesale business cratered by 90%, but its direct-to-consumer revenue soared. Now, things are leveling off. But Smith said that he is focused on new areas of growth -- including airports and grocery. All of this means the company is still growing, but Smith is trying to figure out how to handle the growth sustainably. For example, he's expanding his facilities to better handle grocery and DTC orders -- which were straining the business due to their different packaging sizes. "I think that the growth question is, ultimately, it comes down to working hard to grow sustainably. Would we all like to double every year? Yeah, in a certain way. But you got to understand what that means," he said. "You got to understand where is that going to create pressure? Where's that going to potentially compromise a long-term relationship?"

The eyeglasses industry is very competitive, but EyeBuyDirect is focused on cornering the market via affordability. The EssilorLuxotica-owned company has been around since 2005 and its primary focus has been on value: a pair of frames from EyeBuyDirect can be as cheap as $6. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, CEO Sunny Jiang spoke about the company's trajectory and how she's been steering the ship. Jiang has been at EyeBuyDirect for 15 years -- she first took a job there when she was fresh out of university as a finance controller. She's risen the ranks ever since, going from operations director to general manager and then ultimately becoming CEO in 2017. "Since I've become CEO the company has grown nearly 300%," she said. EyeBuyDirect was one of the first online-only glasses players. Though Zenni is a few years older, Warby Parker is much younger. And, according to Jiang, the way the company is able to sell glasses so cheaply is because of its business model. "we manage everything from the beginning to the end," she said. This includes manufacturing, logistics, even returns. "This allows us to have the ability or possibility to forward a lot of profitability directly to customers." When EyeBuyDirect first launched, there were hardly any digital competitors out there. Now, the playing field is a lot more intense, thanks to leaders like Warby Parker and America's Best. Over the last two years specifically, Jiang said that a number of competitors have also been upping their digital games. Still, she's confident that the company can continue to grow. According to her own competitive analysis, the top three or four eyeglass players only account for about half of the market. To her, that means she can continue taking market share and finding new customers. To do that, EyeBuyDirect recently underwent a rebrand, upgrading the look of the website and the company's marketing materials -- including its logo, fonts and overall imagery. On the program, Jiang described the entire process. "One of the reasons why we were thinking to rebrand is that we found the brand or the company didn't have a clear purpose," she said. With that done, Jiang is currently crafting a five-year plan for EyeBuyDirect's growth. This means boosting its customer service options and also trying to up its delivery speed. "The category will continue to grow, and I will make sure that EyeBuyDirect will beat the benchmarks."

The next billion-dollar brand probably won't be a DTC startup. That's according to Jason Bornstein, principal at Forerunner Ventures. He's out there trying to look for the next big business to invest in, and he's not so sure online-only brands are the best way to go. Instead, he's focused on bigger innovations. Bornstein joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about his background, investing thesis and the areas on which he's focusing right now. "What we're really looking for here are new business models -- innovations -- on the tech side," he said. "So is there technology underpinning the business?" Bornstein has been in digital retail for decades, hailing from early DTC entrants like Bonobos. And while those brands caught investors' eyes and were able to grow using a direct-to-consumer-only model, Bornstein isn't sure that will fly anymore. "To be successful as a brand -- as a digital brand… there's going to be fewer venture dollars going into those businesses," he said. In his eyes, VC doesn't work well with most consumer-facing brands unless they have a real differentiator that the market has never before seen. And the tricks that earlier brands used to grow customers aren't enough to merit billion-dollar valuations. Instead, Bornstein is looking at new ways traditional business models are being upended. He named digital health care as one example, along with the rise of resale. But beyond that, Bornstein said he's also interested in the ways companies find customers and keep them. In the past, he said, 'there was very little focus on loyalty and on retention." Now, "I think we're going to see the next generation of brands be successful by focusing on that." Does that mean Bornstein and Forerunner aren't going to invest in any of the new digital-only retail brands? Not exactly. But, he said, "it's going to be fewer companies than we've done in the past."