Brands Briefing: Prime Day results provide a boost of optimism to brands amid murky consumer outlook sentiment

Still, all things considered, things are going pretty well for Danudjaja. Blume’s business is growing 60% year-over-year. And during Amazon’s supersized Prime Day, held on July 8-11, Blume’s sales were up close to 220% compared to last year. Granted, Prime Day this year was four days compared to two days last year, but the results still exceeded Blume’s projections. 

“When going into big events like this, you’re not sure where the customer is at,” Danudjaja said, citing mixed reports on the state of consumer sentiment. But, Prime Day “ended up being a big, big sales period for us.” 

Amazon, unsurprisingly, reported that it was another record Prime Day, without sharing specific sales numbers. But, founders like Danudjaja were worried going into Prime Day this year, given recent decreases in consumer sentiment indexes.

While some businesses reported that sales were down — especially those whose inventory levels were impacted by tariffs — four executives who spoke with Modern Retail said Prime Day sales exceeded their expectations this year. 

To be sure, many of these executives represent startups that are in growth mode even outside of Prime Day. But, it was an important reassurance for executives who were worried about how consumers would show up for big sales periods like Prime Day, even amid the threat of tariffs.  Cookware brand Made In, for example, said it beat its Prime Day projections by about 20%. What’s more, Made In’s Prime Day this year ended up being bigger than its Black Friday sale last year.

“It almost feels like the headlines are a little bit more pessimistic than what’s coming through in shopping behavior,” Chip Malt, CEO and co-founder of Made In, said. But, he added, “It’s much more of a wallet share game, and wallet share overall has declined.”

That doesn’t, however, make planning for the rest of the year that much easier. Executives are still noticing small shifts in what consumers are buying this year and when, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when a new wrinkle may occur. 

Malt, for example, said his brand saw a good influx of sales for Father’s Day this year, but then the week or two after Father’s Day was “god-awful.”

His theory is that, while consumers are willing to spend, they’re still spending less “because they’re a little bit nervous.” And so, after a big sales period like Father’s Day, “they’re not going out the next week and doubling down and spending again.” 

What’s more, during Prime Day this year, Malt said traffic was down, but conversion was up. And Made In’s branded search is up pretty heavily on Amazon. While Malt isn’t 100% sure what the cause of that is, he thinks some of the brand marketing tactics that Made In is investing in — and even seemingly small changes like simply having more product reviews on Amazon — are making the brand more recognizable to customers and, in turn, helping to increase conversion. 

Similarly, vitamin brand Ritual said it beat its Prime Day forecast. The company’s vp of marketplace and retail, Rachel Lin, said it helped that Ritual saw a huge lift this Prime Day in the percentage of sales that came through branded search. In the three years that Ritual has been active on Amazon, Lin said the company has focused on “watching the channel” to make sure it was a top seller in categories like prenatal vitamins and women’s multi-vitamins, and then using Amazon Marketing Cloud to drive new-to-brand acquisition. 

Ahead of Prime Day this year, Ritual also focused on retargeting people who had added Ritual’s products to their cart. 

“We did see that a lot of brands held back, in terms of depth of discount, and it helped us lean in and capture that early wallet share,” Lin said. She added that her takeaway from Prime Day was that, “for a brand like Ritual, where value meets brand trust, shoppers will act very decisively even amidst all the broader uncertainties.”

It’s a mantra that brand executives have repeated over and over again for the past year — that shoppers are still willing to spend when they sense something is a good value. “Value doesn’t just mean the lowest price for the deepest promotion. We think value is really the intersection of a great product that is of great quality and is differentiated at a great price,” Billy May, CEO of the home goods brand Brooklinen, said. 

But that leaves brand executives with a never-ending list of questions about where they should invest to prove their value to customers and to help their brand truly stand out in an increasingly crowded landscape.

Danudjaja, for example, said Blume found success with doing more seeding with influencers who are big in the Amazon space ahead of Prime Day. And May said Brooklinen invested in a big brand campaign called “Best in Bed,” which he believed help the company have a better-than-expected Prime Day.

Overall, executives said their Prime Day results have left them optimistic as they plan for the second half of the year. They’re now thinking about how they can push tactics like bundling and new product launches to stand out to discerning shoppers. Lin from Ritual said her brand saw shoppers use Amazon’s AI shopping assistant Rufus to figure out the prices of Ritual’s products over the past 90 days leading up to Prime Day, indicating that shoppers are doing their research to figure out whether something is actually a good deal. 

Still, Danudjaja said that despite the rosy Prime Day results for Blume, she hasn’t been convinced to get more aggressive when planning for the rest of the year. The era of growth at all costs has come to an end, she said, and investors are less likely to give money to a business to fuel unprofitable growth. 

“This year is about making the business as strong as it can be,” Danudjaja said. “So if we can grow while improving gross margin and adding additional channels to diversify, … then we’ll  continue to push the needle.” –Anna Hensel

Fair Harbor’s collabs strategy 

For Fair Harbor, a primarily men’s swimwear and resortwear brand using recycled products, 2025 has been the year of collaborations. The company, which launched in 2014, kicked off the year by partnering with HBO’s “The White Lotus” on shirts and swim trunks. Then, in May, Fair Harbor launched two shoes and a pair of swim trunks with Rothy’s. Now, in July, the brand is looking to make waves with its “Shark Week” collection.

The collection, in tandem with Warner Bros. Discovery, includes tees, board shorts and trunks for boys and men. The products have had “great initial readings,” Fair Harbor co-founder Caroline Danehy told Modern Retail. The pieces are selling on Fair Harbor’s website for $24-$92. The partnership made sense considering Fair Harbor’s interest in sustainability and “Shark Week’s” emphasis on ocean preservation, Danehy said.

Fair Harbor is eager to collaborate with brands that share a similar audience and aesthetic, but may dabble in areas Fair Harbor doesn’t. It decided to partner with Rothy’s because both have “aligned missions” around sustainability, Danehy said. The partnership was also the first time Fair Harbor sold footwear. “It’s fun to see what other products our customers respond to,” Danehy said. The Fair Harbor x Rothy’s boat shoe and flip-flop “exceeded sales expectations and sold out really quickly,” Danehy added. 

Still, Fair Harbor isn’t targeting every brand under the sun. “On the consumer side, we look to see who our guy is shopping with, as well,” Danehy said. “How do we collaborate with a brand that’s already in the sphere of how he builds his closet?” –Julia Waldow

By the numbers: How Butcher Box’s Lightning Deals sale went 

Meat and seafood subscription company Butcher Box launched its first-ever Lightning Deals this year to capitalize on activity around Prime Day and summer sales events. ButcherBox is not available on Amazon, so the sale consisted of listing three new discounted items every hour, and texting and emailing subscribers to let them know about new deeply discounted items to add to their next box. 

Kerin Norton, head of PR and corporate communications, said that while the company had done sales before to align with big retail days, this was its first Lightning Deals event. “We have done some sales over the years alongside these bigger retail days, but they have never performed better than a normal day for us,” Norton said. “On a day like Prime Day, we learned we need an interesting mechanism to get people engaged, and it has to be a standout day of merchandising techniques because a deeper discount simply isn’t going to pull them out of Prime Day madness.”

20X: The amount above normal daily revenue that Lighting Deals generated. “The team was encouraged to see the success, given the scrappiness of the campaign, while creating urgency to capture consumer attention during established deal periods by being nimble and customer-focused.”

3: The number of new rotating deals posted each hour. Meatballs were the top seller, Norton said, but the top burgers, chicken nuggets, chicken thighs, chicken tenders and ground beef also performed well. 

15%: The number of customers who participated. “We’ve done a lot of work on our SMS channel over the last year, which has proven to be a successful channel for a lot of our customers, especially those who identify as busy parents,” Norton said. 

55%: The number of customers who visited Lightning Deals more than once. ”A campaign rooted in urgency like Lightning Deals sales proved to us that having a multi-channel approach, and meeting customers where they are, is still very important.” –Melissa Daniels 

What we’re reading

• Business of Fashion interviewed new Everlane CEO Alfred Chang about his vision for the apparel brand. 
• Levi’s upped guidance during its second quarter earnings despite the pressure from tariffs.
• Bain is considering selling off Canada Goose, WWD reports, which it bought control of in 2013. 

What we’ve covered 

• Brands like Ghia and Smalls are embracing partnerships with Instagram accounts like SubwayTakes and GirlsCarryingShit as they move away from traditional influencer spots. 
• Inside Terence Reilly’s strategy for scaling both Crocs and Heydude. 
• Shopify quietly added a new line of code that dictates how its merchants can use agentic AI bots.