Brands Briefing: Nori, the brand looking to shake up the iron aisle, is going nationwide at Target

“It was almost this caveat of, ‘Well, you made something new, so no one knows what it is. And unless you look and you feel like an iron, you can’t sit on our shelves,’” Toll said. “It was a huge uphill battle.”

But ultimately, the pieces came together. Nori launched in 115 Target stores in April and sold out less than four weeks into a nine-week placement, beating expectations by 85%. This week, it’s going nationwide.

The expansion comes at a time when direct-to-consumer brands are chasing omnichannel strategies to increase their customer base and raise awareness. For Nori, the winning pitch centers on the fact that the product could help reinvent a low productivity aisle with something different — and, with its tools selling for $120, it could bring in more dollars.

“The big case we were trying to make was: ‘Give us the same amount of shelf space as legacy brands, and, because of our more premium price point and differentiated offering with the same levels of efficiency, we can increase the whole aisle’s productivity,” Toll said.

Amar Singh, senior director at Kantar, said an omnichannel strategy is critical for brands that want to gain market share. Beyond the store sales themselves, the expanded presence often offers a brand lift: In the case of Nori, online sales went up 200% after the Target debut, compared to the prior 30 days. 

“For any brand to be successful, you need to have that strong salience,” Singh said. “But you also need to be present where shoppers are looking and where they’re buying. You can be digital-native all your life and get share. But if you truly want to capture market share in the category, you need to be in stores.”

Nori’s unique value proposition of being both a steamer and an iron will automatically help it stand out, Singh said. The bigger challenge is brand awareness, especially compared to the legacy competition in the home category. Target sells irons and steamers from familiar big-box brands like Black & Decker, Sunbeam and Conair, as well as higher-end companies like Rowenta and Oliso.

To better compete, Singh said startup brands like Nori can lean into their strengths, like creating a strong online presence. “What challenger brands do have is a lot of ability to be a digital native,” he said. “They start their campaigns online, on apps like Instagram or TikTok, and they create a little niche.” 

Nori launched in 2021 and has raised about $4.8 million to date. It started with DTC sales, then began selling on Amazon in 2022 and earned a place under the banner of “Oprah’s Favorite Things.” It closed out that year with about $5 million in revenue and more than quadrupled that to around $20.8 million by the end of 2024.

On the social side, the company has amassed around 71,000 Instagram followers and more than 17,000 on TikTok, where a video of the product in action has racked up over 5 million views. It has also received shoutouts from influencers and networks like The Skimm, though a reviewer from Wirecutter wasn’t impressed.

But the path to brick and mortar was beset with learning curves. Retailers felt more comfortable putting the product online, Toll said. Some were unsure where the product fit in a store — or if it would even resonate with shoppers. By the time the first brick-and-mortar launch happened with The Container Store in 2023, Toll said Nori used it as an opportunity to dial in how to introduce itself to shoppers in person. It decided to put out multiple versions of its packaging by using a sleeve around a box that held the product, and putting different messages, photos and color schemes on the sleeve.

“When we were starting to create in-store packaging, we were like, ‘We have no idea what will work!'” she said. “And so we needed to somehow come up with something iterative so we could test different versions … Some worked, some just wouldn’t move. And it really taught me the importance and power of in-aisle packaging.” 

Beyond a product photo and brand name, the packages have QR codes that link to more information about the product. But beyond that, minimal text and calls to action worked best.

“When you are this direct-to-consumer, more elevated brand, the easiest way to stand out is actually sleekness,” Toll said. “ On a shelf, all the legacies tend to over-communicate and put a million value props. But one or two really clear taglines is what seems to work.”

Toll said one of the biggest keys to brick-and-mortar success is also putting the full weight of the brand’s marketing behind a launch. When it had its Target test earlier this spring, the company pumped its organic social posts full of content from the stores. As a result, its engagement rate on Instagram hit 2.4%, up from about 0.5% the month before. The posts scored more than 1 million organic views, and at least one Reel went viral — it captured a special moment of Toll showing the end cap to her grandfather, one of her first investors, and garnered more than half a million views on TikTok alone. More recently, Nori has already been teasing the nationwide launch to followers.

Nori’s other content mostly addresses how its tool works and how to use it properly. These details are also worked into the path to purchase, with product description pages loaded with videos and examples of how to use a Nori. In addition, customers receive supplemental emails with instructions and tips once purchasing a Nori.

Looking back at Nori’s growth, Toll said that younger brands have an advantage over legacy competitors because they can put their entire marketing dollars behind a big launch. Other companies, meanwhile, have to differentiate between products and aisles. She also noted that retail at scale is more profitable than DTC, when factoring what’s required from the company in direct spend.

Looking ahead, Nori plans to allocate most of its inventory to Target and mass retail versus DTC — though its site will continue to be the home base for its other category-related items, like fabric shavers and laundry baskets.

“Having that in-store buy-in has been the reason we’ve been able to have this really positive story, versus having gotten stuck online and never given the opportunity,” Toll said. -Melissa Daniels

3 questions With: Set Active Chief Brand Officer Kira Mackenzie Jackson

Earlier this month, the activewear brand Set Active launched a new, crowdsourced collection of leggings, bras and sweatshirts that it’s calling “Set Summer.” It created the pieces based on questions posed to its community via Instagram Stories back in the fall. According to Kira Mackenzie Jackson, the brand’s chief brand officer, about 100,000 Set Active fans weighed in. She spoke with Modern Retail about the approach.

How did you settle on this strategy?
“Every year, we do two community collections, usually one around this time – early summer – and then one later in the year, in fall. They are different opportunities for our community to get involved in selecting styles and colors — and sometimes, even driving campaign direction, which is really fun. Every time, it’s a little bit different. For June, we went with existing styles and colors and then remixed the selection. So, it’s new, but it’s reminiscent of something that [customers] are already obsessed with.”

How did the voting work?
“We’ll put on our Stories, ‘Hey, our community collection is coming up. We’d love your input. Get ready to vote.’ And then on the next slide, we’ll say what fabric we’re doing. We’ll have the CADs for each of the styles or the color frames that we’re choosing between, and then people can select their favorite. Then, we take the vote on a sliding scale, and that’s what we use to actually design the collection. … What we have been saying is, ‘If you vote, then you also have the opportunity to be seeded [the collection].’

We did our first vote at the end of October. … It’s [based on] a one-Story series, usually. However, this one was a little beefier, because we were remixing the styles we wanted their input on, so we ended up doing a second vote right before Black Friday. Participation was a pretty high percentage. We had over 100,000 votes, and we have 400,000 followers [on Instagram].”

How do sales of these crowdsourced collections compare to your other sales?
“Historically, community collections have sold out really fast, because people have a stake in buying them. So what we’ve done this year, and what I’m really excited about, is we’ve significantly expanded our buys. The goal for our community collection is that it’s more of a seasonal drop that exists for a couple of weeks. It’s not meant to be very limited-edition. It’s supposed to be something that [customers] are able to access. It’s sort of the next step up from our core offering.” –Julia Waldow

Customizable beauty brand Prose opens West Coast facility 

This month, customizable beauty brand Prose is opening its second manufacturing facility in Los Angeles, meant to serve West Coast customers and help relieve pressure off of Prose’s existing Brooklyn factory. 

Prose began planning the new facility about two years ago, based on its growth rate, and needed production capacity. Having launched with hair care in 2018, the brand expanded into personalized skin care in 2023. Prose generated $160 million in revenue in 2024, the same year it achieved breakeven profitability, a year ahead of plan.

Prose CEO Arnaud Plas told Modern Retail that the company decided to make the Los Angeles investment for a number of reasons, including the opportunity to add more automation to its manufacturing systems. “It was important for us to serve all West Coast customers from the West Coast,” he added, to reduce both fulfillment costs and Prose’s carbon footprint. The new facility includes waste-minimizing automation tech and a 43,000-square-foot product customization center.

In total, Prose has invested about $65 million into its technology and manufacturing, with about $9 million going to the new facility. While plans for the new factory were already in place pre-tariffs, Plas views the brand’s vertical integration as an advantage during the ongoing supply chain disruptions. –Gabriela Barkho

Quote of the week

“The line of the last two days was ‘the right format to the right customer at the right time’ — it is like email 2.0”  

Katya Constantine, founder of the agency Digishopgirl Media on what Meta’s pitch was like at its annual Performance Marketing Summit last week, where Meta announced a bunch of new AI-powered features that it claims will help brands reach the most valuable customers.  – Anna Hensel

What we’re reading

• Sneaker culture has made its way to Fortnite, as The New York Times explains. Companies including Nike and Adidas are offering replicas for sale in Fortnite for players’ avatars to wear.
• Trade wars are affecting jobs at the Port of Los Angeles with almost half of longshoremen going without work in late May into early June as cargo activity slowed.
• Creators accusing Capital One Shopping of interfering with their affiliate commissions scored a victory in federal court, with a judge ruling their case can proceed.

What we’ve covered

• Consumer startups like Poppi, Touchland and Rhode are making big exits — to larger corporate giants. Where are the IPOs?
• Apparel brands like Lululemon and Gap Inc. are pulling back the curtain on how tariffs are impacting the fashion industry in their new earnings reports.
• Ear piercing studio company Studs is updating the look and feel of their stores as they approach 40 stores nationwide.