Modern Retail+ Research: How Lalo, Caraway and Boll & Branch are preparing for the holidays in a year dominated by tariffs

Here’s more on how these executives are preparing for the holiday season. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Focus group members

• Greg Davidson, CEO and co-founder of the baby and toddler brand Lalo, which sells furniture and accessories, like a high chair, bibs, play kits and more. Lalo got its start as a direct-to-consumer brand, and now sells through places like Amazon, Target and West Elm. 
• Jordan Nathan, CEO and founder of Caraway, a cookware brand that sells pots and pans featuring a non-stick and nontoxic ceramic coating surface, in addition to other kitchen items like food storage containers. Caraway got its start as a direct-to-consumer brand and now sells through places like Amazon, Target, Crate & Barrel, and Sur La Table.
• Katia Unlu, chief commercial officer at Boll & Branch, a home goods brand known for its luxury, organic bedding that has since expanded into other areas like bath robes and mattresses. Boll & Branch got its start as a direct-to-consumer brand and now sells through places like Amazon, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. Boll & Branch also has a dozen of its own stores. 

I’m curious how [holiday planning] looks different for you this year. What are the big things or questions you’re thinking through or the challenges you’re facing as you plan?

Nathan: “We always run our [holiday] offer from November 1 to December 31, so it’s a long promo period. We’ve done that five years in a row. And then we always have a tier discount where, depending on what you spend, you get 10, 15 or 20% off. And then we have a super tier, where you get a free gift, like a $200 gift with purchase, on top of the 20% off. We’ve run that same structure for five years, … but with the new pricing we have [because of tariffs], we’re in constant meetings all this week. We’re debating back and forth, like, ‘What should be the new minimum [spend per tier]?’

It’s not just the increased price, but we also have such a bigger catalog, so we’re gonna be resetting that. Aside from that, we’re not doing anything crazy different. 

I’m anticipating a massive holiday. … Last year, we spent more inefficiently in August, September and October, to build top-of-funnel. So this year, we are looking at some out-of-home opportunities, [hosting a] sweepstakes contest — it’s really building our email list for holiday — and then we’re putting a big emphasis [on our] repeat metric. For anyone who buys in November, we’re going to put in a big effort to get them to come back and buy again in December. 

And then we are running a brand campaign in the fall — we’ve never done a brand campaign in the fall. It’s called ‘Detox the Kitchen,’ and it’s about hosting in a non-toxic way. So, to start the holiday, we’ll seed a bit early with some core products we have on the site, and we will have a few new launches. But really, [we’ll be focused on] getting people in the mindset of hosting for the holidays and trying to capitalize on that in Q4.”

Unlu: “Building off a little bit of what Jordan’s saying, I feel like we have all been on this media roller coaster for the past five, six years of, ‘Meta’s algorithm changed this,’ ‘Google share of search is going down,’ all these things. A well-diversified media mix has definitely been the name of the game.  

So, we spent a lot of the first half of the year just testing a lot of different things in other channels that don’t have to do with Meta and Google — that is a big thing that we’re taking away into the second half of the year. And not just from a media standpoint, but also an overall consumer standpoint, we want to be able to meet them where they are, even in a physical location. We are now in almost 100 Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s locations. So, we’re making sure that those [brand presences] are also on brand, that the consumer experience is the same there as you would get from our store or our website, and that our Amazon storefront also looks and feels on par with what our website feels like. That is very much what we’re focused on.

We tested a huge buy around TV for the first time this year. We actually bought TV [advertising] in-house, which I feel like, for a marketer, is a very scary thing — but we did it, and it was great. It was actually super successful. So we did a lot around TV and audio in the first half of the year.”

Davidson: “We have the newness of having a major retailer be involved in Q4 [Lalo launched in Target earlier this year] and, obviously, what does that do? We have expanded ourselves into an omnichannel world. We definitely are thinking more this Q4 [about] how we are still protecting DTC, knowing it does drive a significant amount of velocity for us. The overarching theme that we have internally, where we feel like we can be pushing harder — and it’s also a category that is not in Target for us — is our play category. That has everything to do with our toys or play tables, and some larger items that carry higher AOVs that are just meant for holiday. So, we’re doing a much heavier concentration around play this holiday, as it’s a major driver for DTC and something that’s a little bit exclusive to that channel.”

It seems you all feel like customers are waiting for holiday, or Black Friday, this year because their wallets are stretched. Any other thoughts or predictions you have about how consumers may behave differently this holiday?

Davidson: “I feel like everything’s changing so fast, to be totally honest. … We’ve seen how quickly [things] can change on a dime. I don’t think the floor is totally stable yet, [in terms of] how people’s minds are going to be, between literally everything going on in the world: between wars, the economy, … it’s endless.”

Unlu:  “I think we’ll just continue to stay agile and nimble and reactive to what is happening. I feel like that used to be only reserved for Q4, right? But I feel like it’s now translating into the rest of the year.”

Nathan: “Again, I think it’s gonna be a big holiday. I think people might stock up. I also think spending money is probably a nice form of therapy, as well, for consumers, and it takes their mind off things. One thing I’m interested to see is — similar to the 2021 and 2022 holidays, where no one had inventory — I think we could be in a [similar] state where some brands are in a better position than others. I know some brands stopped ordering when tariffs came into play, and I think some that are over-inventoried might have totally crazy deals, and then you might have others that are out of stock. I think that will, kind of, direct customers where to go.”

My last question is: We’ve talked a lot about being nimble, but how do you keep your team focused and motivated during this tumultuous time? 

Nathan: “When tariffs rolled out, I called a full company meeting. We created this huge Notion board that I had started, and then we asked the company to contribute. It’s got, like, 500 things around tariffs. We basically had everyone add anything they could think of that could increase margin, or something [else] we wanted to explore. And we really rallied the whole company around tackling tariffs. And I do think it breathed new energy into the company.

We’re now coming up for air and starting to tackle some of the things we wanted to do [earlier]. We’re not gonna have all the time to get it done, but we’re trying to prioritize what’s gonna have an impact for the holidays.

One of our [other] big initiatives this year was building community. We’re further behind than we wanted to be at this point. … It’s probably going to be evaluated this year and pushed to next year.”

Davidson: “We were [also] building this document in Google Drive, just: What are the different things we can do [related to tariffs]? And what we said to the team was, ‘You’re going to be working on a lot of things that, unfortunately, may never get used because we don’t know which way this is going to turn.’ I think setting that tone definitely helped the company feel like they could stay nimble, knowing that things might turn on a dime and we might have to shift our attention.

It was [also] an amazing excuse to, like, turn over every stone. Like, we’ve been working with this vendor for seven years, and we have good terms with them, but now we need their partnership as much as they need us.”

Unlu:  “I think, in April, everyone just didn’t know what to expect next. We [at Boll & Branch] have had the benefit of now being in this for over 10 years, so I feel like we’ve been through several of these [crazy periods]. So, we’re just staying focused on the long term, and making sure the decisions we’re making now are not going to impact the customer experience long term.”