Member Exclusive   //   November 11, 2025

Brands Briefing: Substack will play a bigger role in brands’ holiday plans this year

By Julia Waldow
Ivy Liu

Brands are celebrating their first holiday season on Substack with a flurry of festive content.

M.M.LaFleur, a woman’s workwear brand that started its Substack in February, is planning pieces about how to dress for occasions like office holiday parties. Rare Beauty, Selena Gomez’s makeup brand that launched its Substack in April, is drafting articles that focus on protecting one’s mental health during the holidays. And Loftie, a sleep-device brand that published its first Substack in February, is preparing posts about the upcoming pre-Christmas events it will throw in its New York City headquarters. All the while, startups hoping to get eyes on their products and show up in AI search results are asking PR agencies for help with Substack gift guide pitches.

It’s all a sign of how brands are making Substack an important part of their marketing mix during the busiest — and, for many, the most lucrative — time of the year. The National Retail Federation expects holiday sales to surpass $1 trillion for the first time ever, in 2025, and Substack could play a key role in that, brands told Modern Retail. 2025 was the first year many brands launched their own Substack newsletters, and many are now making seasonal plans for the platform, alongside TikTok and Meta. Since Substack is more blog-like, brands are planning holiday content that plays to that strength and encourages loyalty.

M.M.LaFleur is kicking off seasonal content on its Substack, “The M Dash” (85,000 subscribers), in November. The brand publishes new stories once a week, and the holidays will be no different, it told Modern Retail. Posts will include everything from a piece about the art of layering sweaters to a how-to on dressing for work drinks. The brand is also considering publishing a gift guide authored by its head of design, Jennifer Cote. It will partner on posts with thought leaders, including journalist Brigid Schulte, and it will publish a look back at some of its biggest stories of 2025.

M.M.LaFleur has also started to see some sales accumulate from product links in “The M Dash,” amounting to thousands of dollars. Its biggest revenue-driving Substack post of 2025 was timed to Labor Day and titled “Five Outdated Workwear Items You Should Swap Out in Time for Fall.” As Black Friday and Cyber Monday are sales events, the brand will mention products on sale in relevant Substack posts. But styling will be a big focus, as many of the brand’s customers will likely be self-gifting, said Emma Steinbergs, the company’s brand manager.

Heading into the holidays, M.M.LaFleur’s typical customer is thinking about everything from catch-ups with coworkers who are in town for Christmas parties to summits in the first half of 2026, said Maria Costa, director of brand and integrated marketing at M.M.LaFleur. “She wants to know, ‘What am I wearing?'” Costa told Modern Retail. “We’re really thinking about approaching our content to speak to those needs.”

Rare Beauty, meanwhile, is making mental health content a key focus of its Substack, “Rare Beauty Secrets” (5,200 followers). The brand, which has a foundation called the Rare Impact Fund, is planning a holiday newsletter series called “Keeping Spirits Bright.” Starting Nov. 11, the series will roll out in weekly posts for four to five weeks, MacKenzie Kassab, Rare Beauty’s director of creative strategy, told Modern Retail.

The first post, about protecting your mental health during family get-togethers, will feature an interview with Dr. Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist. The second post will be about “adding whimsy to the everyday.” It will be a collaboration with Jenna O’Brien, who writes the Substack “Feeling!“, and will mark the first time Rare Beauty has invited another Substacker to collaborate.

Rare Beauty’s Substack strategy is informed by a 2023 statistic from the American Psychological Association: 41% of Americans say their stress level increases around the holidays. “We thought [Substack] could be a place where we could be a [source of] support for people; we have resources through the Rare Impact Fund and our partners that we work with,” Kassab said. “It felt like the right thing to do, and the right place to do it, because we can tell these longer stories [on Substack]. We can go more in-depth. We’re not limited by 30 seconds.”

For its part, the lamp and clock brand Loftie, whose Substack is called “Little Book of Sleep” (around 125 followers), plans to publish behind-the-scenes content related to activations held at its recently renovated office. As the company tries to make public events a greater part of its marketing playbook, it’s planning everything from art shows to wellness classes in its building. “With that new mission, we’re planning to transition our Substack [content] to focus on that community aspect,” Lin Tyrpien, the brand’s creative director, told Modern Retail.

One upcoming post will be about a birthday party for CEO Matthew Hassett’s dog, Emma. Another will be about a metal-themed party, timed to a new metal finish for Loftie’s clock, which is being rolled out for the holidays. “We want [our Substack] to feel more like a magazine,” Tyrpien said. “We’re still building up our portfolio on Substack, and my opinion on that is to not lead with gift guides or Black Friday sales, because that’s what people are used to getting through email.”

For brands that do hope to get onto gift guides this holiday season, Substack remains an alluring option. Publications including “Hung Up”, “What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking” and “Five Things You Should Buy” have all published holiday gift guides in the past.

“We know that [Substack] is a really powerful tool to meet a really niche and engaged audience,” said Hannah Cranston, founder of the PR firm Hannah Cranston Media, which represents brands like Winx and Uresta. “If [a Substack] has 30,000 subscribers, that’s 30,000 inboxes that you’re going into, of people who already trust [the author],” she told Modern Retail. “We’re seeing much, much higher conversion from [Substack], so it is a big part of our strategy [for the holidays].”

Agencies like Cranston’s are in the process of pitching clients to Substack writers who are drafting gift guides. It’s a delicate art and one different from pitching a legacy media publication, Cranston said. “We are looking at taste-makers and influencers [with] micro communities,” she said. “We have parenting clients. We have fashion clients. We have wellness clients. So, we can target those specific Substacks for those specific audiences.”

Lauren Kleinman, whose agency Dreamday works with clients including Quince and Ruggable, agreed that pitching Substacks is “more personal.” “There’s no hierarchy and no gatekeeping, and it’s more about audience alignment,” she said.

Dreamday has worked with many Substacks in the past, including “The Quality Edit” and “Big Salad,” and it’s making Substack editors “a core part of our holiday outreach,” Kleinman said. This holiday season, Dreamday is also using ShopMy’s discovery tool, which includes more than 300 self-identified Substack creators, to recruit for gifting programs. –Julia Waldow

Grüns is hiring for several roles after raising a Series B

This month, the gummy supplement brand Grüns is hiring in several departments, including creative and logistics. According to a LinkedIn post, one of the open job listings is for a senior e-commerce manager to lead the Shopify operations for Grüns’s DTC storefront. The company is also looking to bring on a creative strategist to create campaigns and manage the brand’s ad presence across digital platforms. Other newly posted jobs include R&D and operations roles, such as director of product innovation and R&D manager of gummies.  

Grüns is coming off a breakout year, in which it launched in mass retailers including Target, Walmart and Sprouts. In May, the brand announced a $35 million Series B round, valuing it at $500 million. For 2026, the company’s focus is on entering international markets and expanding into more grocery and convenience stores. –Gabriela Barkho

Stat of the week

38%: The share of consumer products M&A over the past five years that comes from deals valued at less than $2 billion, according to a Bain analysis of Dealogic data. That may not come as a surprise to those who have been following the direct-to-consumer space since Unilever’s $1 billion acquisition of Dollar Shave Club, but it’s still remarkable how quickly things have changed. From 2014 to 2018, deals valued at less than $2 billion made about 16% of consumer products M&A. The stat comes from a new Bain report that looks at steps insurgent brands can take to speed up their growth post-acquisition. – Anna Hensel

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