Modern Retail Podcast: M&A slowdown, Walmart’s beauty play and how a U.S. manufacturing boom could create a more circular economy

The pair also analyzes Walmart’s announcement that it’s testing out beauty bars in some stores as part of its spring beauty sales event. While a bid to compete with the likes Target and Ulta, it’s also a continuation of a strategy to up its a beauty game. It’s added more than 40 premium brands in the past year, expanded its assortment in its core business and launched a beauty accelerator program.

Then, in honor of Earth Month, Daniels sits down with Rachel Kibbe, the founder and CEO of Circular Services Group and American Circular Textiles, for this week’s featured segment. Tariff policy changes are throwing sourcing and supply chain into the spotlight, including conversations about American manufacturing and near-shoring. Advocates for circular manufacturing, or systems that can help material be reused, recycled or remade, see the potential shift to more U.S. factories as an opportunity to stand up this infrastructure.

Daniels and Kibbe discuss the promise and pitfalls of circular manufacturing and what it would take to get more infrastructure and industry in place here in the U.S. And Kibbe discusses the advocacy efforts ACT is undertaking in Washington, D.C.

They also lay the land of domestic manufacturing, and the challenges businesses face if they’re looking to nearshore their supply chain in an effort to avoid tariffs.

Here’s some highlights from the conversation.

On the definitions of circular economy and circular manufacturing
“How I define circularity overall is just the life extension of the products we’ve already created, with the goal of reusing those resources or recycling them over and over. And what I’ve come to believe is that it’s just a new way of manufacturing.”

On existing circular manufacturing in the U.S. and the scope of the reuse economy
“We have a lot of parts of the circular economy supply chain here. We have thrift stores and we have resale and rental platforms. We have a certain number of repair and care networks through dry cleaners and other means. And, as for the reuse portion of circularity, meaning just taking a garment and ensuring its life cycle is extended, … we have that capability here. And the good thing when we’re thinking about U.S. manufacturing is that those jobs are here, because that supply chain is best done regionally.

What we don’t have is large-scale textile-to-textile recycling. I think a lot of consumers are confused about that, because some collection and reuse programs are called recycling, which isn’t necessarily wrong because reuse is a critical aspect of ‘recycling.’ But in terms of the actual recycling infrastructure, meaning taking your T-shirt and turning it back into a new T-shirt, we’re almost at ground zero.”

On the benefits of circular manufacturing
“The opportunity here is rebuilding a manufacturing system in the United States, which could support cotton farmers because they might be able to begin to sell their products to American mills. Consumers would be able to buy used and new fashion alongside each other. Repair networks could be reinvigorated. And really, we would start to move into a resource-efficient, energy-efficient, job-creating economic opportunity, should we really capture the full potential of the circular economy. 

The challenging part is getting started in those initial investments and policies needed to support that framework. But you can provide value to businesses, value to shareholders, and value to the environment and the workforce economy through ‘alternative’ ways of manufacturing.”