The Modern Retail Podcast is a weekly show that hears from executives in the retail space, from legacy companies to the buzzy world of DTC startups. Cale Weissman, editor of Modern Retail, hosts.
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The Modern Retail Podcast
169 Subscribers
Reviews
Arlie K
5 out of 5 stars
Fun and informative!
Modern Retail has quickly become a favorite in my feed! I'm consistently impressed by the engaging conversations, insightful content, and actionable ideas. I truly learn something every time I listen... thanks Cale!
Quags
5 out of 5 stars
Excellent, unique, personal insights
I’ve been listening to this show for some time, and it always brings interesting insights and perspectives to the table. I particularly enjoyed the Atoms episode, what a unique and intriguing story! Great listen for marketers looking to stand out.
HoupA
5 out of 5 stars
Stay up to date on marketing trend!
Today’s marketing changes by the day! This pod cast helps me stay on trend and sometimes ahead! Thanks!
boogs122006
5 out of 5 stars
So insightful!
Great explanation of the Foot Locker business and the importance of product and consumer diversity.
ChristianB2014
5 out of 5 stars
A “Must Listen To” for Marketers
Making Marketing is one of my favorite podcasts. Shareen does a fantastic job building relationships with the guests which leads to open and insightful conversations. This podcast is a must for anyone in the advertising/marketing space.
Katie Joy B.
5 out of 5 stars
Marketing Magic
Shareen and her incredible guests talk all things marketing, not only providing insight we wouldn't have otherwise, but also giving business owners the tools they need to get hands-on with their business. The best part is it all comes from truly engaging individuals that know the industry inside and out. Thanks so much for putting out such a spectacular show Shareen - keep up the great work!
christianmeissner
5 out of 5 stars
The best
I look forward to this podcast every week. Shareen delivers a genuine and informational conversation with industry leaders on creative, media, emerging technologies, evolving client needs and everything in between. Highly recommend.
JoeyRobinson15
5 out of 5 stars
Outstanding
I’ve been enjoying this podcast recently. The host does a great job letting the guests really go into detail on topics all while staying on course. I recommend listening to multiple episodes because you will hear many common themes on the state of Marketing but also different perspectives on what’s happening in the industry today based on the guests position and experience . Keep up the great work.
Podcast information
- Amount of episodes
- 279
- Subscribers
- 169
- Verified
- No
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- Explicit content
- No
- Episode type
- episodic
- Podcast link
- https://podvine.com/link/..
- Last upload date
- March 25, 2023
- Last fetch date
- March 26, 2023 7:30 PM
- Upload range
- WEEKLY
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- Digiday
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susbcribers
- Modern Retail Rundown: More layoffs, Panera Bread's Amazon One rollout & Foot Locker reviving its Nike partnershipThis 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.1 comments1
- Saks CMO Emily Essner on building a digital business off of a legacy retailerSaks 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."1 comments1
- The Modern Retail Podcast Mar 18 · 21m Modern Retail Rundown: SVB's woes, TikTok faces ban threats and H&M gets into resaleOn 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.1 comments1
- 'Like a car dealership': How Impossible Kicks is trying to become a digital resale empireSneaker 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.0 comments0
- Modern Retail Rundown: Allbirds woes, Shein vs. Temu and the rise of 'premiumization'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.1 comments1
- 'There were multiple times I thought maybe we won't make it': M.M.LaFleur CEO Sarah LaFleur on the women's wear brand's new store strategyAfter 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.1 comments1
- Modern Retail Rundown: Instacart once-again prepares for IPO, the end of Nordstrom's Canadian dreams and anti-dollar stores sentiment growsOn 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.1 comments1
- 'There's going to be a lot of consolidation': Aviron CEO Andy Hoang on growing a fitness brand during a cooling economyAviron, 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."1 comments1
- The Modern Retail Podcast Feb 25 · 28m Modern Retail Rundown: Marketplaces lean on ad growth and big-box stores prepare for the worstSome 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.1 comments1
- 'There will be some contraction': Camino Partners' Elle Lanning on rocky consumer VC landscapeThe 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."0 comments0
- Introducing: The Modern Retail Rundown PodcastModern 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.1 comments1
- Sundays co-founders Barbora and Moe Samieian on taking a Canadian home goods brands internationalSundays 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."1 comments1
- 'It's all about diversification': Nutrafol CEO Giorgos Tsetis on scaling a DTC wellness brandFor 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.1 comments1
- XRC Labs partner Diana Melencio on investing during an economic downturnXRC 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.1 comments1
- The Modern Retail Podcast Jan 26 · 46m 'We write Nature papers and we write Instagram posts': Seed Health's Ara Katz on evangelizing the microbiomeSeed 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."1 comments1
- Goodbuy co-founder Cara Oppenheimer on building a small business platform to rival mega-retailersGoodbuy 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."1 comments1
- Sunday Citizen co-founder Mike Abadi on expanding beyond its DTC rootsBedding 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.0 comments0
- 'A new resting heartbeat': Instacart's vp of retail partnerships Ryan Hamburger on what's next for grocery deliveryTwo 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."1 comments1
- Inflation, changing demand & major C-suite shuffles: The Modern Retail Podcast looks back at a volatile 2022This 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.1 comments1
- 'We're not just a brand from the '80s': Esprit CEO William Pak on relaunching the nostalgic apparel brandEsprit 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.1 comments1
- The Modern Retail Podcast Dec 15 · 42m 'We didn't expect the consumer response to be as great': GoodwillFinds CEO Matthew Kaness on bringing the thrifting experience onlineGoodwillFinds 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.1 comments1
- 'We had gotten old': Lee Jeans exec Chris Waldeck on energizing the century-old denim brandLee 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."1 comments1
- 'These kinds of tech solutions really have to be for the less affluent': Voyage Foods CEO on making food alternatives accessibleVoyage 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."1 comments1
- 'There's only so many really illustrious people out there who put out products': Ntwrk's Aaron Levant on expanding the livestream platform beyond its celebrity rootsLivestream 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."1 comments1
- 'Far less transactional': PetSmart's Chief Customer Officer on establishing a modern brand voicePetSmart 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."1 comments1
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