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Truff considers itself a luxury DTC hot sauce brand. And one of its most popular social media channels is TikTok. In fact, co-founders Nick Guillen and Nick Ajluni said their company is the biggest hot sauce brand on TikTok, with 69,000 followers and nearly one million likes as of this writing.On this episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, the co-founders spoke about growing the company its strategic retail decisions.
Business interruption insurance has become a new sore spot for retailers during the coronavirus pandemic. When Century 21 filed for bankruptcy last week, the New York City-based department store chain blamed its demise on failing to receive payouts from its business interruption insurance. Typically, business interruption insurance policies don't explicitly list viruses or pandemics as an event that they will cover. So rather, retailers and other businesses are looking at the rest of their language in their policies, to see if there's a section that they can argue should be applied to pandemics.
Retailers and tech companies are breaking a sweat trying to outgun one another in the red-hot subscription fitness space. Apple became the latest entrant on Tuesday, announcing at a product event that it would be launching a new service for Apple Watch users called Fitness+ by the end of the year. A big tech company like Apple entering the space brings a greater air of legitimacy to the idea that subscription fitness is set to be a lucrative revenue driver that many companies will want in on in the coming years.
Second quarter earnings season is almost to a close, and there are already lessons to be learned about what retailers must do to survive. Some companies are thriving in the age of coronavirus, while others continue to falter. The recent round of results may not be terribly surprising, but they do highlight the digital acceleration felt by every company around the world.
Even though some shoppers are still hesitant to visit stores, not every retailer is shying away from opening new brick-and-mortar locations. Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald said on Tuesday during the company's second quarter earnings that it plans to open about 70 pop-up locations during the second half of this year. Before the coronavirus, Lululemon primarily used pop-ups to test out new markets that the company was considering opening permanent stores on. Now, the company is leaning on these pop-up stores to help the company mitigate long wait times in areas where it is seeing a lot of foot traffic.
Jonathan 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. On this episode, he spoke about growing a brand during coronavirus and the myriad other kitchenware brands available online.
This year, alcohol brands are getting creative in the ways they're making up for lost hospitality and on premise marketing. In recent months, this has mainly involved delivery platform paid campaigns and social media ads. But with live events at a halt for the time being, brands like Grey Goose are attempting to get customers to buy their drinks from the couch.
Back-to-school season was retailers' first major test in the coronavirus era, and not every company passed with flying colors. While no major retailers have released exact figures about how sales were this back-to-school season compared to last, a few things have become clear. Retailers' spend on back-to-school advertising is down, and those that are spending are favoring digital advertising and social media campaigns rather than splashy national TV campaigns. And, the window of time during which people do their back-to-school shopping has grown. Both trends are likely to continue into the holiday season this year.
The retail industry is in flux, and the coronavirus has only complicated and accelerated an interlocking web of transformations set in motion over the past decade.
Founded in 1910, Everlast isn't exactly a young DTC startup. The legacy brand, which has historically been known as an equipment supplier for professional boxers, has goals to expand beyond its niche market. After experiencing double-digit sales growth in the last few months, thanks the home gym phenomenon, the strategy is to continue adding new distribution channels as well as venture into athleisure.
2020 hasn't been a good year to travel or go on vacation, and Americans are spending more on home improvement 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. Its director of marketing Duncan Blair joined Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about how the company has grown and why it's not opening a store anytime soon.
In an era upended by pandemic and recession, companies of all stripes have scrambled to survive, let alone innovate and scale. Nonetheless, some media, marketing, fashion, beauty and retail players have continued to succeed in the face of daunting odds.
As customers continue to do more of their shopping online, retailers are also seeing huge increases in the number of customers downloading their apps. Best Buy reported during its second quarter earnings last week that the number of customers who have downloaded its app have doubled compared to the same time last year. Home Depot similarly experienced a record number of app downloads during the second quarter. While people are shopping more online than they are in store, the increase in mobile app usage has also been driven by the adoption of services like curbside pickup.
While other retailers falter, Dollar General still flourishing. Despite relying on in-store sales, the dollar store continues to see big growth. Meanwhile, other dollar stores continue to face headwinds. While overall foot traffic was down, average purchases have increased, likely due to shoppers stocking up and making less store trips during the pandemic.
Amazon is about to open its first Fresh store, which lets customers put items in a cart and then leave without checking out. Meanwhile, this month, convenience store chain Circle K became the latest retailer to announce a new "grab and walk out" payments rollout across thousands of its stores. There's a growing race by retailers to implement this new type of cashier-less technology.
One thing is true for nearly all conversions on Amazon: They’re captured by products on page one of the search results. And a significant share of purchases go to just the top few results.
As one of the brand founders who've vowed to stay away from Amazon over the years, Camille Rose's Janell Stephens had a change of heart when the pandemic hit. In the past year, she went from attempting to stop second-hand product sales on the site to opening an official Amazon store. Speaking to Modern Retail, the haircare brand's founder and CEO discussed the divisive channel's addition to the company's retail expansion.
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