The Modern Retail Podcast
413 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★★ - 35 ratingsThe Modern Retail Podcast is a podcast about the retail space, from legacy companies to the buzzy world of DTC startups. Every Thursday, Cale Weissman, editor of Modern Retail, interviews executives about their growth and marketing strategies. And every Saturday Gabi Barkho, senior reporter, sits down with the Modern Retail staff to chat about the latest headlines in the retail world.
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Episodes
‘The purchase cycle is very considered’: Carvana’s Ryan Keeton on how the pandemic changed used car sales
January 28, 2021 05:00 - 35 minutesIt’s been a big year for online shopping -- online car shopping too. Last summer, for example, Edmunds.com reported that used car and truck sales were the highest they’ve been since 2007. And online used car retailer Carvana was able to ride that wave (or, perhaps, drive that used ’09 Camry). It reported year-over-year revenue growth of 41% at its third quarter earnings. According to chief brand officer Ryan Keeton, the nine-year-old company was able to use the momentum it built over the last...
‘Big companies are not as good at innovation’: Canteen Spirits CEO Brandon Cason on disrupting the hard seltzer industry
January 21, 2021 05:00 - 34 minutesCanteen Spirits was ready to take on the hard seltzer industry -- and then the coronavirus hit. The company launched in late 2019 and began 2020 expecting to grow to new heights. According to co-founder and CEO Brandon Cason, the first few months of the pandemic were hard when the country shut down and many channels slowed down. But things began to quickly ramp up once the first coronavirus peak subsided -- and the beverage brand is in growth mode once again. Canteen makes canned vodka-based ...
‘An experience that’s bad, or at least a little weird’: Alto Pharmacy’s Matt Gamache-Asselin on why he entered the space
January 14, 2021 05:00 - 33 minutesHealthcare and insurance aren’t the sexiest areas, but they are both ripe for disruption. That’s why Matt Gamache-Asselin, co-founder and CEO of Alto Pharmacy, decided to enter the space, as he said on the Modern Retail Podcast. The five-year-old company has raised over $350 million thus far and has been building digital pharmacy to compete with the likes of CVS and Walgreens. Pharmacies are a big umbrella to tackle. Gamache-Asselin estimated the entire industry to be worth half a trillion do...
Cure Hydration's Lauren Picasso on growing a beverage brand and utilizing micro-influencers
January 07, 2021 05:00 - 32 minutesLauren Picasso is both an athlete and an entrepreneur -- and she used both skillsets to help launch her company. Picasso is the founder and CEO of Cure Hydration, an electrolyte beverage that comes in powder form. She has a background in e-commerce, hailing from startups like Jet.com, but Cure was her first foray in beverages. On the Modern Retail Podcast, Picasso described the process of launching and growing Cure -- and the lessons she's learned. Picasso has grown the company over the last ...
A legal challenge for Amazon, and boom times for TikTok: Modern Retail's top trends for 2021
December 24, 2020 05:00 - 36 minutesIt's an understatement to say that 2020 was a strange year. A global pandemic turned everything upside down, and retail was no exception. In this week’s episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, a few members of the editorial team take a look ahead at what 2021 may have in store for the retail industry. We cover quite a bit -- from a quiet time for IPOs to a bill targeting e-commerce companies. But the one tying bind is that things are very different from what they were a year ago.
'A proxy for independent retail': Shopify President Harley Finkelstein on how retail was revolutionized in 2020
December 17, 2020 05:00 - 34 minutesIt's easy to talk about retail doom and gloom, given a nearly year-long shutdown for brick-and-mortar stores and bankruptcy filings by many big name retailers. But Shopify president Harley Finkelstein is bullish on the sector's resilience and potential -- especially in e-commerce, which has grown by double digits in 2020 (even retail sales generally were up 6.6% in the January to November period this year, if you exclude gas, car and food services). "In many ways Shopify is a proxy for indepe...
Herman Miller Retail president Debbie Propst on 'softening' Design Within Reach's image in tough times
December 10, 2020 05:00 - 32 minutesThe pandemic has quickly changed the typical office chair shopper. It's no longer entire companies investing in ergonomic seating, but individuals working from home. "Most consumers have never had to think about this type of product purchase before," Herman Miller Retail president Debbie Propst said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "They've relied on procurement teams or ergonomic specialists who have decided what chair you sit on while you're working." Herman Miller Retail includes Herman Mille...
'It's never easy': Clorox's Jackson Jeyanayagam on hiring DTC talent in a post-pandemic world
December 03, 2020 05:00 - 38 minutesAs the pandemic's third wave mounts, Clorox wipes are still a hot commodity -- the product's shortage is expected to last into the new year. That outsized demand has led to a bump in sales for the company overall, and a stock that's risen by a third this year. Clorox's general manager of DTC Jackson Jeyanayagam, who oversees new digital business ventures and brands for the CPG giant, said that the edge extended to hiring power. "Here I come at Clorox trying to sell someone to come from a Netf...
Cuyana co-founder Karla Gallardo on how the pandemic strengthened the brand's mission statement
November 19, 2020 05:00 - 32 minutesIn Karla Gallardo's estimation, the world got tired of fast fashion just as the direct-to-consumer model was being proven out. "By 2010 there was fatigue, there was dissatisfaction with the quality," Galardo said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "A lot of of news was coming out in terms of the conditions of the factories where these products were made. There was an opportunity for something better right after that bubble burst." Gallardo co-founded Cuyana with Shilpa Shah in 2011. The idea was t...
Adore Me's Camille Kress on accompanying a woman's journey through life with satellite brands
November 12, 2020 05:00 - 32 minutesWith a pandemic driving its six brick-and-mortar stores to little use, lingerie company Adore Me has relied on a try-at-home model. "We basically send you a bunch of items, you decide what you keep, and you only pay for what you keep," Adore Me vp of growth Camille Kress said on the Modern Retail Podcast. At the height of the pandemic, half of the brand's new customers were shopping this way. "The key metric for this model is the 'keep rate.' You definitely want people to keep as much as poss...
Waze's Suzie Reider on the return of road traffic and the retailers that depend on it
November 05, 2020 05:00 - 30 minutesGDP and unemployment are one set of statistics, but another way to measure the extent of the economic slowdown brought by the pandemic is a bit more mundane: Traffic. According to the maps and navigation app Waze, traffic was down around 70% in the early days of the pandemic. "It was like a light switch," Suzie Reider, a managing director of global ads at Waze, said on the Modern Retail Podcast. Within its app, the Google-owned company can offer ads for nearby businesses for drivers, includin...
Semihandmade's John McDonald on hitching his wagon to Ikea, and then competing with it
October 29, 2020 04:00 - 34 minutesIf you're going to ride behind another brand's success, Ikea isn't a bad choice. That's, in fact, what Semihandmade did. Semihandmade makes and sells cabinet doors for the giant retailer's fixtures, which can themselves be bought without the doors. For a small price increase, according to founder John McDonald, you get a big step up in quality. But even though business is good on that front -- Semihandmade has been profitable every year, according to McDonald -- he's looking to cannibalize hi...
How Blk & Bold capitalized on Target and Amazon's coffee shortcomings
October 22, 2020 04:00 - 24 minutesIt's hard to find good coffee online, and roaster Blk & Bold found that to be a competitive advantage. The company saw huge growth over the last year, thanks to its placement on retail shelves at stores like Target -- as well as being a top-selling brand on Amazon. On the Modern Retail Podcast, which was recorded live during our Modern Retail Summit this week, co-founder and CEO Pernell Cezar Jr. spoke about how he has grown the company. Being on Amazon became a competitive advantage -- espec...
'We're always watching the competition': Farfetch's Kelly Kowal on Amazon's growing luxury presence
October 15, 2020 04:00 - 29 minutesLuxury retailers have historically been slow to go online. But in the age of coronavirus, digital remains one of the only viable channels. Kelly Kowal, chief platform officer at Farfetch, is one of the people heralding this transition. Farfetch offers both its own consumer-facing marketplace of luxury items as well as sells white labeled services to brands and retailers that want to create their own online experiences. Both sides of the business have been booming over the last few months, she...
Mattel COO Richard Dickson on entertaining young consumers everywhere they are
October 08, 2020 04:00 - 31 minutesBarbie is Mattel's most iconic brand, but the toy company has more than 400 others that CEO and president Richard Dickson is, in his own words, looking to revive. In an age where smartphones and games like Fortnite present stiff competition for analog toys, Dickson says the company needs to create media everywhere it can. "Continuing to be where our consumers are means, today, being everywhere," Dickson said on the Modern Retail Podcast. Mattel is producing short videos for YouTube, on its ow...
Bloomscape founder Justin Mast on shipping living things and why it acquired a plant care app
October 01, 2020 04:00 - 30 minutesSome DTC founders pick a sector just because they spy an opportunity. Bloomscape founder Justin Mast said did that too with his direct-to-consumer plant company, Bloomscape, that he founded in 2018. But he had a bit of a leg up, as he's also a fifth-generation greenhouse grower. His parents met in a greenhouse, in fact. Bloomscape ships thousands of plants a week, including full-grown ones that only survive within a narrow set of conditions. "The thing we did differently was to say 'how do we...
Thrive Market CTO Sasha Siddhartha on supercharged growth and the grocery website's future
September 24, 2020 04:00 - 31 minutesThrive Market, which first launched in 2014, had been growing at a rate of 40% a year before the pandemic. Now, with new customers joining the membership-based online grocery service, that growth rate has more than doubled to 90% a year, according to the company's co-founder and CTO Sasha Siddhartha. "We were already a digital native experience, so there were lots of parts of the business that scaled naturally," Siddhartha said on the latest episode of the Modern Retail Podcast. Thrive Market...
'We want you to like our brand': Truff co-founders Nick Guillen and Nick Ajluni on making their TikTok channel a destination
September 17, 2020 04:00 - 30 minutesMost companies use social media as a way to point consumers to the brand's website. In hot sauce company Truff's case, social media -- and TikTok, in particular -- is an endgame in itself. "They eventually become customers, but we don't tell them, you know 'go to our link and buy our sauce,'" Truff co-founder Nick Guillen said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "We don't want you to go to the link and buy. We want you to like our brand." Nick Guillen and Nick Ajluni co-founded the company in 2017 ...
'A little bit of a rocket ship': Abbio co-founder Jonathan Wahl on growing a kitchenware brand during a pandemic
September 10, 2020 04:00 - 31 minutesJonathan Wahl sees the boom in kitchenware companies as a good thing for the sector as a whole. "Seeing others recognize the same opportunity reaffirms that yes, we're on the right track," Wahl, who co-founded the cookware company Abbio last year with his brother, said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "In terms of competing, I believe that at the end of the day the best products are going to win out." That last bit is worth saying because Wahl sees a proliferation of low quality products in the ...
'A perfect storm': Article Director of Marketing Duncan Blair on cornering the furniture market
September 03, 2020 04:00 - 35 minutes2020 hasn't been a good year to travel or go on vacation, and Americans are spending more on home improvements instead. Furniture brand Article was lucky enough to corner that market with a DTC model that eschews the need for expensive floorspace that has gone unused for several months this year. "We saw this perfect storm for us, where not only were we effectively reaching a whole lot more people who were super motivated to buy, but we also had this really compelling offering for them, becau...
Strong Roots founder Sam Dennigan on the growing popularity of vegan food
August 27, 2020 04:00 - 38 minutesSam Dennigan launched Strong Roots with a single item -- sweet potato fries -- in Ireland in 2015. The frozen vegetables company has since raised $18.3 million from private equity firm Goode Partners to expand into the U.S., where Dennigan is now based. His experience on both sides of the Atlantic helps him highlight some of the competitive differences among markets. "The key difference between the U.S. market and the U.K. and Irish market is the fact that private label is much stronger in na...
GT Dave on the challenges of being a kombucha leader
August 20, 2020 04:00 - 35 minutesBack when GT Dave, founder of GT's Living Food, single-handedly proved that there was a market for kombucha in the U.S., "probiotic" was hardly a buzzword. "Fortunately today, that hurdle or barrier is no longer there," Dave said on the Modern Retail Podcast. Kombucha is big business; sales exceeded $480 million in 2019, according to Nielsen. GT's Living Foods, which was founded in 1995, makes for a big piece of that pie -- 60% of it back in 2015, as he then told a profile writer. He wouldn't...
Blueland CEO Sarah Paiji Yoo on how the pandemic changed the cleaning supplies aisle
August 13, 2020 04:00 - 24 minutesBlueland CEO Sarah Paiji Yoo wants you to know that when you pay for cleaning supplies at the grocery stores, you're mostly buying water. "Oftentimes consumers are paying really for a new plastic bottle -- and water, which we already have at home," Paiji Yoo said on the Modern Retail Podcast, which was recorded live during our Modern Retail Virtual Summit this week. Blueland sells concentrated tablets for consumers to mix their cleaning supplies on their own. The relatively tiny packaging is ...
Pop Up Grocer founder Emily Schildt on rethinking the grocery experience
August 06, 2020 04:00 - 34 minutesIt took a trip to London for Emily Schildt to realize that American grocery stores could do better. "I came back personally really yearning for a grocery store experience like I had there," she said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "They were just beautiful spaces in which to shop -- gorgeous products, but really thoughtful display and design." Last year Schildt founded Pop Up Grocer, a traveling showcase of a few hundred products that sets up in U.S. cities for a month at a time. It had four lo...
'We're humans, we're aspirational by nature': Reel CEO Daniela Corrente on what consumers are saving money for
July 30, 2020 04:00 - 31 minutesPiggy banks aren't especially in vogue, but the idea behind them sticks. By saving up a little over the long haul, you can pool quite a bit of money — enough, in Reel's experience, to pay for a luxury handbag, furniture or some electronics. The personal finance app lets customers save up for specific items. Users pick something and commit to wiring Reel a few dollars a day for it, setting an enticing timeline into motion. Put aside $5 a day for 12 weeks, for instance, and Reel will take care ...
Bacardi CMO John Burke on e-commerce and at-home drinking
July 23, 2020 04:00 - 33 minutesClosed spaces, mingling strangers and loud music to shout over -- bars seem purpose-built for spreading the coronavirus. According to Bacardi CMO John Burke, that means people will be doing their drinking, and less of it, at home. "This summer there'll be a lot more drinking out of home because people feel much more comfortable social distancing at home," Burke said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "We predicted that trend back in early April, and we've switched to producing quite a lot of our b...
Cleo Capital's Sarah Kunst on scouting for business ideas in unlikely places
July 16, 2020 04:00 - 35 minutesCleo Capital's Sarah Kunst thinks the investing landscape focuses a great deal on the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- in plainspeak, that's stuff that isn't really essential. Or, in Kunst's words, the kind of product that answers the question: "what will make you feel better in the moment?" Her investments are in companies that supply basic needs. "There's the whole thing on the bottom: where you do you live, where do you eat, how do you feel loved?' Kunst said on the Modern Retail Podc...
'It's completely inverted': Sanzo founder Sandro Roco on the coronavirus's effect on DTC demand
July 09, 2020 04:00 - 37 minutesBefore the pandemic, the zero (or low) sugar beverage brand Sanzo had all the scrappy upstart charm and aesthetic of a DTC brand. But, it still sold mostly through wholesale -- 70 to 80%, in founder Sandro Roco's estimate. That's changed. "Since the pandemic, it's completely inverted, and even more extremely so," Roco said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "During this pandemic, if you're looking at CPG sales and specifically sparkling water, a lot more folks are willing to order sparkling water ...
How Brightland founder Aishwarya Iyer fashioned an olive oil company after beauty brands
July 02, 2020 04:00 - 40 minutesAishwarya Iyer started Brightland, an olive oil company, in 2018 with the idea of describing the products like wine and marketing it like a beauty brand. "Beauty leads the way in terms of talking about benefits, packaging -- the shine and glimmer that beauty's able to do, food just isn't able to do that. Maybe there are some standouts!" Iyer said on the Modern Retail Podcast. What's more, many DTC beauty brands rely on less traditional revenue channels, like big box retailers. Over the last f...
'An incredible return to activity': StockX CMO Deena Bahri on how sneakerheads are still spending
June 25, 2020 04:00 - 41 minutesBusiness lost to the pandemic has rebounded for StockX, an online marketplace where people selling and buying items -- sneakers, mainly -- negotiate on a price before StockX provides authentication and shipping. "We've seen an incredible return to activity in the marketplace," StockX CMO Deena Bahri said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "By mid-April we started to see an incredible return back to normal -- and even better than normal -- shopping behaviors." That's the case even though the compan...
Trade Coffee CMO Melissa Spencer Barnes on capturing the at-home brewing market
June 18, 2020 04:00 - 41 minutesThe professional world may have been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, but there is one thing that still powers our workday: coffee. The subscription-based Trade Coffee, for one, has seen its mail-in customer base go up by a factor of 10, alongside other food startups that have seen a bump in subscriptions. Earlier this year, company CMO Melissa Spencer Barnes told Modern Retail that the company was on track to ship its millionth bag of coffee sometime in 2020. It also started selling fi...
Cat Person co-founder Jimmy Wu on how the pet supplies industry could be pandemic-proof
June 11, 2020 04:00 - 38 minutesAs existing commerce companies adapt to survive a global pandemic, Jimmy Wu instead launched one. Cat Person sells cat food, toys, furniture and treats in a market that Wu sees as skewed toward dog owners. The coronavirus gave pause to Wu and his co-founder, Harry's alumnus Lambert Wang. "If we were in another category in another industry -- selling travel accessories, luxury fashion -- we probably would have made a harder decision" about delaying the brand's launch, Wu said on the Modern Ret...
'This year you won't be buying DTC suitcases': The Inside founder Christiane Lemieux on why home brands are seeing a boom
June 04, 2020 04:00 - 36 minutesRetail stores are slowly reopening, but Christiane Lemieux, founder of the DTC furniture brand The Inside, still thinks people will want to invest most in the place they're spending most of their time: the home. "What you will be doing is focusing your time and disposable spend on making your home into everything it should be -- not only for now, but for what the future of our lives is going to look like," Lemieux said on the Modern Retail Podcast (people are spending so much time in doors, i...
Homebrew's Hunter Walk: The current crisis is a second punch for DTC, not the first
May 28, 2020 04:00 - 41 minutesLooking to the past doesn't always work. For one, many current founders or CEOs were "still in high school" during the last economic crisis, according to Homebrew partner and co-founder Hunter Walk. For another, even for those entrepreneurs who survived the last global downturn, the big takeaways might not apply to current circumstances. "The answers from those entrepreneurs in 2008 may or not be the right answers for companies in 2020. But the questions they asked themselves might be the thi...
Grove Collaborative CEO Stuart Landesberg: A culture of expense discipline is key
May 21, 2020 04:00 - 35 minutesFor a time, Grove Collaborative was one of the rare places where you could order reasonably-priced hand sanitizer online. That availability wasn't for a lack of demand. "Demand had been building, and all of a sudden for a week it was off the charts. And we had a big decision to make that week," CEO Stuart Landesberg said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "Do we want to prioritize our existing customers or do we want to prioritize going after new customers? Grove ended up focusing on existing cust...
Coefficient Capital co-founder Franklin Isacson on investing in times of crisis
May 14, 2020 04:00 - 35 minutesCoefficient Capital co-founder Franklin Isacson describes himself as a cautious investor, especially in times of uncertainty like today. That comes in handy during a time of crisis. For Isacson, this has been a good time particularly to invest in certain companies, especially in grocery and consumer goods that can weather a recession. "The new funds that are being deployed over the next 24, 36 months are likely to be very good vintages, much like the '09 and '10 funds were excellent vintages,...
'I don't think anyone will ever be able to pay what they were paying before': Lunya founder Ashley Merrill on the future of real estate
May 07, 2020 04:00 - 31 minutesBiossance president Catherine Gore has always considered skin care as medically significant, and believes customers will be more inclined to share that thinking as coronavirus lockdowns continue around the world. "Our skin is our largest organ, and it's also our first line of defense against outside aggressors," Gore said on the latest Glossy Beauty podcast. Education is a big part of Biossance's marketing strategy and value to customers. One of Biossance's central ingredients for skin care, ...
Pattern co-founder Nick Ling: Marketing investments now can have very uncertain outcomes
April 30, 2020 04:00 - 33 minutesIf Nick Ling's latest brand launch wasn't so right for this moment, he would have delayed bringing it to market. "If I was launching a new brand I'd wait. There's just too much change in consumer behavior," Ling said on the Modern Retail Podcast. But Open Spaces, the second brand under the umbrella company Pattern (where Ling is CEO) is all about getting the most out of the place many consumers are stuck in these days. "How also do we help separate home into different activities, where now wo...
Burrow CEO Stephen Kuhl: 'We're re-forecasting on a weekly basis'
April 23, 2020 04:00 - 32 minutesThrough this crisis, Burrow CEO Stephen Kuhl is sticking to a piece of advice he got back when the furniture store was just another startup at Y Combinator. "The advice we got then was 'just launch your first product. Get it out there into people's hands and you'll get feedback,' Kuhl said on the Modern Retail Podcast. That's what the company has done with a virtual design consultation program delivering an "in-store experience" to customers from their homes. It had been in development for a ...
Parachute founder Ariel Kaye: 'Great businesses do come from difficult moments'
April 16, 2020 04:00 - 29 minutesAmericans may have more reason than ever to appreciate the comforts of home and the value of making theirs their own. But even a company like Parachute, a luxury linens and home goods company founded in 2014, is feeling the pinch from the downturn in retail. "Our [physical] retail is about 25% of our business -- but it's a profitable part of our business," the company's founder Ariel Kaye said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "And it's really also how we connect with our customers and build rela...
Recess CEO Benjamin Witte: I reject the idea that being on Amazon hurts your brand
April 09, 2020 04:00 - 28 minutesIf Benjamin Witte talks about his beverage brand Recess as if it were a budding empire, it's because he's noticed the same broad ambitions among the sector's big players. "Red Bull is a media company for the action sports community that monetizes through selling cans," Witte said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "We're speaking to creatives, just like Red Bull is speaking to the action sports community, and Gatorade is speaking to athletics." To that end, Recess -- which sells fruity sparkling w...
Rhone CEO Nate Checketts: The current crisis may act as a clearing house
April 02, 2020 04:00 - 29 minutesRhone CEO Nate Checketts said his company "saw the writing on the wall really quickly" in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Companies like his men’s activewear brand would soon be bloated with inventory and feel the pressure to boost e-commerce promotions. "If everybody's getting promotional all at once, that's going to shift customer demand away from us if we're continuing to operate at full price," Checketts said. "So I challenged our team in 24 hours to get a promotion ready and ...
Resident co-founder Eric Hutchinson: 'Uncertainty is the most difficult thing to manage to'
March 26, 2020 04:00 - 34 minutesWhen people go shopping for mattresses, according to Resident co-founder Eric Hutchinson, they often know more or less what kind they're after. "The person who wants a memory foam mattress opts into that category very quickly," Hutchinson said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "They say: 'I am looking for a memory foam mattress,' so they're doing the comparative shopping versus other memory foam brands." In other words, people don't go mattress shopping as much as they go "memory foam" or "tradit...
ShopShops founder Liyia Wu on making a digital QVC for China's livestreaming generation
March 19, 2020 04:00 - 31 minutesMuch has been written about the Chinese consumer that shops abroad in stores. But there is a growing movement among customers in China that, through livestreaming apps like ShopShops, are shopping at stores outside China, just through their phones. ShopShops founder Liyia Wu explained the experience from the customer's perspective: "Open up your phone, and with a click of a button you can be [on] any street, anywhere, opening the doors of stores that are interesting." The app allows viewers t...
RSE Ventures' Matt Higgins: We're having a little bit of a backlash against DTC
March 12, 2020 04:00 - 34 minutesShark Tank investor and co-founder of RSE Ventures Matt Higgins thinks a change is coming to the DTC playbook. "I think it's amazing that you can come along and challenge taboo thinking around ED, or you can go ahead and create an entirely new cereal brand, launch it right away and get scale. That's not going away," Higgins said on the Modern Retail Podcast. What is going away, he added, is the idea that digitally-native companies can stick solely to the online world and survive. "That part i...
'Influencer marketing is the biggest thing': What retailers need to know about WeChat
March 05, 2020 05:00 - 25 minutesWhen it comes to financial technology, China has Silicon Valley beat. WeChat is a big part of that. What started as a messaging app in 2011 is now a mobile payments giant. "People use it for everything. For utilities, for gaming, obviously to communicate with their family and friends, and to do business," said Yiren Lu, a software engineer (at Google) and a writer who covers WeChat and Chinese technology. WeChat users can transfer money to their friends. But they can also pay for groceries, l...
Hatch founder Ariane Goldman on the inevitability (and the dangers) of the DTC funding spree
February 27, 2020 05:00 - 28 minutesThe direct-to-consumer model didn't exist when Ariane Goldman started her first clothing brand in the mid-2000s. But by the time her second company, Hatch, launched in 2011, "the only way to really start the business was DTC," Goldman said on the Modern Retail Podcast. Hatch makes clothes to be worn at all stages of pregnancy -- and before and after too -- sold both online at stores in New York and Los Angeles. "The genesis was really what didn't exist out there. I was pregnant with my first ...
Studs CEO Anna Harman: DTC-only businesses pivot back into retail as a growth mechanism
February 20, 2020 05:00 - 36 minutesStuds co-founder and CEO Anna Harman recently got a second piercing in her ears. One place she looked at would have charged her $500. The other, which she went for, was a tattoo parlor. "And while the piercing experience was great -- they pierce with a needle, it was healthy and safe -- the overall environment was really not suited to me. I felt really personally out of place there," Harman said on the Modern Retail Podcast. She reached out to Lisa Bubbers, who would go on to co-found Studs -...
How lawn care startup Sunday is trying to build a subscription business (and beat Home Depot)
February 13, 2020 05:00 - 33 minutesCoulter Lewis got the idea for Sunday when he saw the state of his local Home Depot's lawn care aisle. "You can smell it before you get there," Lewis said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "It's pallets stacked high with bags of chemical fertilizer, covered in caution labels." That was in 2017, the year before he launched the company out of Boulder, Colorado. First, Sunday asks customers to ship it a bit of soil from their property. Then it analyzes that alongside pre-existing soil and weather da...
The Body Shop's Andrea Blieden: Why Amazon search ads work better than Google
February 06, 2020 05:00 - 33 minutesFor the Body Shop, it's about selling where the customers are -- even if that means it's not necessarily on your own sites or in your stores. "Stores for us are the bread and butter of the business, the biggest portion of the business, and will always be," U.S. general manager, Andrea Blieden said on the Modern Retail Podcast. At the same time, being on Amazon has been a big boon to the business, mostly because that's where a significant part of new customers are. "I just don't think that you...