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Brand and retail employees have mixed feelings about returning to the office full-time. In an April-May 2021 Glossy and Modern Retail survey of brand and retail employees, 28% said they've gone back to work full-time, and 32% said they'd be willing to go back to the office full-time in the next month.
A lot of changes have happened at Asheville, North Carolina-based East Fork Pottery over the last year. For one, its CMO and co-founder Connie Matisse became the brand's CEO earlier this year. What's more, the ceramics company grew during the pandemic -- and became profitable. "We are coming up on 11 months of consistent profitability, which is huge for us," Matisse said on this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast.
On Tuesday, Marriott Bonvoy and Pinterest teamed up for the latest activation in Marriott’s broader “The Power of Travel” campaign, a multi-platform investment across streaming platforms, social platforms and even gaming platforms like Twitch. The hotel chain is adapting to a new travel landscape, moving away from its traditional business-traveler consumers and instead shifting platform spend to appeal to younger and leisure-focused travelers.
The line between store and e-commerce retail associates continues to blur. This month, Apple became the first major company to test a "flex" work schedule for its retail associates beyond the pandemic. The tech giant is reportedly allowing the pilot program's participants work both in-store and at-home during the test run.
In the first quarter of 2021, online-only retailer Overstock’s revenue rose 94% year-over-year and active customers nearly doubled. In 2020, the retailers' full-year revenue rose 75%, to$ 2.5 billion. Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson talked to Modern Retail about Overstock’s unique ability to navigate furniture supply chain issues, the company's expansion to Canada and the longevity of the patio furniture boom.
Thanks to consumers' changing tastes and eating habits, the plant-based trend has been growing for years. The success of brands like Oatly and Beyond Meat helped prove the trend's staying power. Seth Goldman, founder of Honest Tea and new plant-based jerky brand Eat the Change, explains why the pandemic helped further popularize the category.
While other footwear brands struggled in 2021, Hoka One One managed to grow sales. Hoka (which ended its fiscal year in March 2021) reported a full-year revenue increase of 62% to $571 million, outpacing performance footwear peers like Nike or Adidas. Now, the brand is continuing global expansion, partnering with fashion brands and driving sales on and offline.
Walgreens' 17 million vaccinations drive a 12% revenue increase and a 9% boosts to filled prescriptions this quarter. Going forward, however, the brand will rethink its retail plan -- retail sales were relatively flat year-over-year -- and further invest in digitization and a VillageMD partnership to drive continued success.
It's not easy launching a new brand -- and even harder doing it during a pandemic. But that's what United Sodas of America did. The startup soda company hit U.S. shelves in 2020 and has been growing ever since. Co-founder and CEO Marisa Zupan joined the Modern Retail Podcast and talked about the past year's trials and tribulations.
The auto industry is famous for its pricy television commercials: during the 2020 Super Bowl LIV, for example, auto manufacturers invested $77 million in television ads, outpacing any other product category, according to data insights firm Kantar. However, brands like Honda, Hyundai and Toyota are increasingly shifting investment to digital platforms like Twitch, Pinterest and Instagram, for new campaigns.
Last year, sales of a few specific items -- like hand sanitizer -- largely kept the travel-size goods market industry afloat. Because of lingering concerns about supply chains, shuttered gift shops and potentially downstream impacts from the collapse of business travel, the recovery of travel-size goods might happen more gradually compared to other travel-adjacent industries.
These days, brands going viral on TikTok is becoming the norm, leading these brands to build on the buzz by creating challenges or releasing in-demand products. The latest example is Gap, which is re-issuing its recently-viral vintage hoodie and crowdsourcing which new color it will release next.
Despite a record-breaking year helped by online sales, Apple is moving forward with opening more stores this year. The tech giant confirmed that after a nearly a year of relying on e-commerce, it's ready to resume building more physical locations and expand its global footprint.
Many fashion retailers see resale as a way to grow business, diversify income streams and capitalize on their existing inventory. But despite consumer appetite for used clothing, even established resale platforms haven’t yet figured out the profitability puzzle.
Most analysts don’t mark the beginning of back-to-school season until mid-July. According to one estimate, only 17.1% of back-to-school purchases typically happen in June, compared to 42.2% in August. But the new timing of Prime Day seems on track to jumpstart the season early.
Every interaction a customer has with a brand is an opportunity to nurture the customer-brand relationship. This report highlights tactics that top brands are using to improve the customer experience.
After acquiring Transplace for $2.25 billion, Uber Freight is cementing its status as an important player in the growing world of digital freight brokerage. But it is also opening itself up to an entry into the parcel shipping space.
Read MoreAt Modern Retail’s Livestream Commerce Trends, we’ll explore how the growth of livestream and video shopping trends are transforming how retailers, brands and marketing teams are engaging with consumers in-stream and live across social and owned-and-operated websites.
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