The Modern Retail Podcast

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses the numbers behind this year's Prime Day, and what people bought during the two-day Amazon sales event. Following that, we’re talking about Limited Too’s comeback as it relaunches in Kohl's this week. Finally, mall-based retailer Pacsun is expanding further into activewear with a new men's athleisure line called ARC.

A little over a decade ago, energy drink brand Celsius was being delisted from many of its retail partners. Now, it's become one of the hottest beverage companies on the market. According to CEO John Fieldly, it took time and effort, but the company was able to rebrand itself as a lifestyle beverage associated with health and wellness. When it first launched, "it was positioned as a negative calorie drink. It got tons of interest from retailers," he said. The brand, however, "just couldn't get that connection or that conversion with consumers." So what helped Celsius rebound? It was a newfound focus on health and beauty. As part of the original turnaround, it started focusing on distribution in gyms and health clubs, as well as retailers like GNC. Then, when Celsius decided to return to grocery, it was placed in the health and beauty aisles. "In hindsight, when you look at it, [this] differentiated the brand very much so from those traditional energy drinks that are in the aisles today," Fieldly said. Fieldly joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the brand's evolution over the years. Now, it's become a premium player in the energy drink space. "It's really important we continue to partner with premium brands alongside to build that credibility," he said. At its most recent earnings, the company reported year-over-year revenue growth of 37% and its stock price has grown 6,000% over the last five years. Which is to say: The current strategy seems to be working. The focus now is on growing even more. "We've got to continue to talk about our brand story and really share those brand attributes, which differentiates ourselves in the category," Fieldly said.

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses the latest funding round raised by NA beer company Athletic Brewing in an effort to meet demand. Meanwhile, Nike announced it's bringing former executive Tom Peddie back to be vp of marketplace partnerships as the company refocuses on wholesale. Lastly, in September, Costco is raising its annual membership fee by $5 -- the first increase since 2017.

Lucky Energy wants to take on the Red Bulls and C4s of the world. The company's drink line, Lucky F*ck, launched last year and has been slowly building out its distribution. It's now available in around 2,000 store doors in Texas and California and is also sold on Amazon. According to CMO Hamid Saify, the strategy of growing Lucky Energy has been to get people's attention. Thus, the name of its product. The company has also launched some splashy guerrilla campaigns -- including a Coachella activation that involved a billboard asking people to call a phone number if they're looking for a "quick f*ck." Saify joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about Lucky's growth so far and its future plans. In the early days, when Lucky's founder was distributing the beverages himself, "we just started seeing really crazy velocity because people were just leaning in and [were] like, 'What is this thing?' Saify said. Now, the focus is to continue that momentum. This includes launching in more convenience stores over the next year, as well as expanding to new regions like Florida. For a beverage brand, the best early-stage growth strategy is focused on getting people to try the beverage. That's why Saify is so bullish on convenience stores. "I would say our first-year approach is: we really want to start making a ton of inroads into C-stores," he said.

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses Amazon's next move to compete with cheap marketplaces like Temu and Shein. The Information reported this week that the e-commerce giant is planning to launch a program for sellers to ship cheap goods directly from China. This week, the Fancy Food Show also took place in New York City, and we review some of the buzziest trends from the event. Finally, Walgreens announced plans to close its underperforming stores and focusing on profit-driving locations.

Babylist is making moves to be more than just a registry for soon-to-be parents. The company has been building a media business over the last four years, becoming its fastest-growing revenue stream. "The original business model was affiliate," said Lee Anne Grant, Babylist's chief growth officer. "So it was working with a ton of different retailers and getting paid a commission. And then, fast forward 13 years later, we are now this platform with a bunch of different offerings like health, e-commerce, content -- anything a family needs." Grant joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about how the company has grown over the last decade. This includes growing its media business and expanding into health and wellness. Grant joined Babylist four years ago. She began as a consultant, given the task of building the company's media business. Now, she's its chief growth officer -- overseeing new business opportunities like media and health care -- to help Babylist expand beyond its registry roots. This includes a retail concept the company opened in LA last year as well as a content business catered to its customers. As she sees it, a company like Babylist has the potential to be a media giant. Its customers read its newsletter and seek it out for educational content. Which is to say: new parents are looking for any help they can get, and that's great news for advertisers. Alongside that power, Grant also makes sure that Babylist maintains trust with its customers." We have pretty strict editorial guide guidelines, both for our organic editorial as well as our paid," she said. "We actually say no a good amount." Grant sees a bunch of potential as Babylist continues to grow. "We're very much an audience company," she said. "We're not as big as Amazon, but the amount of money that new parents, expecting parents [as well as] grandma spends -- it's a big enough opportunity to keep me excited to stay here."

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses what May's slowdown of U.S. retail sales could mean for consumer spending -- and, in turn, the economy. Meanwhile, Amazon aggregator Thrasio lays out its comeback plan after filing for bankruptcy. Lastly, the team talks about updates at the subscription vitamin brand Care/of, which was acquired by Bayer in 2020.

Venture studio Squared Circles has lofty plans to launch the next big health, wellness and food products. The project first began a little over three years ago when Lukas Derksen, who hailed from the creative firm Sid Lee, began angel investing in brands alongside entrepreneurs Alexander Gilkes and Osman Khan. One of its early investments was in the hair wellness brand Nutrafol. They decided to formalize the program into an incubation studio. Over the years, however, Squared Circles decided to take a more hands-on approach -- instead of acting as an incubator and investor for external brands, the studio is now focused on launching and scaling its own businesses. With that, the company just raised a $40 million Series A led by L Catterton. "The pitch to the partners that we're building with in the future is: OK, how do we actually build these things all the way to launch -- and even Series A -- without actually giving up necessarily any more of the cap table people?" said co-founder Derksen. He joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about Squared Circle's growth so far. Currently, Squared Circles has incubated two brands -- cooking oil startup Algae Cooking and skin care company Magic Molecule. It has plans to launch other brands too in spaces like "nutritious food products tailored to the GLP-1 generation" and "delivering functional medicine to children in tasty alternatives," according to its website. According to Derksen, all of these ideas come from data. "We start very much from a consumer insight place -- and that's something that we strive for every single time," he said. The focus now is to continue launching new products and getting them ready to market as quickly as possible. Though VC funding isn't as plentiful as it was a few years ago, Derksen said there is still an appetite for certain areas. "The two categories that have been outspending on disproportionately are health and wellness and food and beverage," he said.

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff starts off discussing Shein's strategy to quietly raise its prices ahead of its anticipated IPO. Meanwhile, TikTok Shop is beginning to compete with Google and other platforms by testing a new image search. Finally, a new report by The Vitamin Shoppe shows a spike in sales of nutritional supplements like protein and meal replacements thanks to the rising popularity of medications like Ozempic and Wegovy.

Most people don't think about the brand behind their disposable plates, but Repurpose is trying to change that. The company, which is now sold in major retailers like Kroger and Costco, makes eco-friendly disposable products like plates, cups napkins, trash bags and toilet paper. While its prices are competitive, they still are at a slight premium to foam and plastic players. "It just felt like, why couldn't this be its own little category and brand that represented a whole kind of better-for-you disposable product?" said Repurpose co-founder and CEO Lauren Gropper. Gropper joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the 14-year-old company's growth. While Repurpose is in most major retailers today, it took a lot of work to convince buyers. "Any of the buyers that had any experience with it in the past [were] like, 'This doesn't work -- we've tried it, so don't even bother,' said Gropper. But after multiple news headlines around plastic disposable products hurting wildlife, more retailers began to seek out better alternatives. "We went from being in the knocking-down-every-door business to the incoming-call business," she said. Repurpose's growth has helped it figure out a sustainable business model. The idea from the get-go was to make products that could be competitive with the likes of Dixie. While the company had very slim margins at first, volume has helped Repurpose cut down on costs. "In the early days, we just went in with a lower margin knowing we're going to make this up as time goes on," Gropper said.

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses the latest changes at Shopify, including the reported sunsetting of Shopify Plus branding. Meanwhile, after five years of trying to grow Walmart Health, the retailer shut down the health-focused business after reportedly losing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Lastly, better-for-you soda brand Poppi is facing a class action lawsuit in California by customers who say they were duped by its gut health claims.

Online resale may be a hot retail buzzword now, but ThredUp has been around for over a decade building out its business. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, ThredUp CEO and co-founder James Reinhart spoke about rising demand for resale and how the platform has expanded its offerings. Not only does ThredUp have its own marketplace business, but the company has been building out its resale-as-a-service offering, allowing brands to use its infrastructure to create their own consignment programs. "In some ways, I describe us as really the infrastructure and backbone of how resale works on the internet," Reinhart said. Compared to some of the recent fast-fashion upstarts, ThredUp is an older player. The company was founded in 2009, and went public in 2021. Still, ThredUp has been able to stay current with recent business movements. The rise of Shein and Temu -- as well as the backlash to their fast-fashion value-focused offerings -- has given ThredUp some helpful tailwinds, for example. "It's easy to have a boogeyman," Reinhart said. Reinhart also said that resale as an industry should be treated like other nascent technologies contributing to a greater good, like electric vehicles and solar energy. As such, he's calling for more government assistance as companies try to figure out ways to build new sustainability-focused technology. "I'm a big believer that government has a role to play in bridging the economic and innovation gap that it takes to develop some of these new technologies," he said.