Before startup founders woo thousands of customers, they often try to convince investors to get onboard with their company's mission. As a principal investor at Lerer Hippeau, an early-stage venture capital fund based in New York, Caitlin Strandberg is on the other side of the table. The fund has invested widely, including in DTC brands like Allbirds, Casper, Everlane and Lola. Strandberg joined the Modern Retail Podcast to talk about how the VC game has changed since the rebirth of direct-to-co...
Jan 02, 2020•43 min
This week, it's a look ahead at what 2020 may have in store for retail. Modern Retail reporters Cale Weissman and Anna Hensel join host Shareen Pathak for a roundtable discussion about the beats and developments they know so well, from how Walmart and Target will seek to challenge Amazon to whether venture funding for direct-to-consumer startups will dry up.
Dec 19, 2019•32 min
Michael Wieder, the co-founder of Lalo, is betting on the baby stroller market. "We know that you're putting your most precious belonging in our products," Wieder said on this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast. "They have to be safe, they have to look good, they have to be an extension of who you are. If you don't trust us, then why buy us?" Wieder and his co-founders Jane Daines and Greg Davidson saw the new-to-parenthood customer as one facing many first-time purchasing decisions wit...
Dec 12, 2019•34 min
For Helena Price Hambrecht the abundance of alcohol at every after-work event meant that hangovers seemed inevitable. "I knew that I had a problem. I knew that everyone else I knew had a problem where we were like 'god, are we supposed to do this forever and not die?" she said on this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast. "We're supposed to drink, drinking is part of life, but we all feel terrible. Why isn't there a better way to drink?'" She and her husband Woody Hambrecht founded Haus t...
Dec 05, 2019•41 min
Making Marketing is making some changes. Starting with our very next episode, we'll be the Modern Retail Podcast, bringing you conversations with people innovating in retail, including the oh-so-buzzy world of DTC. But before that, this episode rounds up a few highlights from Making Marketing's interviews in the past year: Kevin Lavelle, the founder of menswear brand Mizzen and Main "I’ve spoken with a couple VC firms. We had positive feedback, but one VC said she couldn’t see how we could [make...
Nov 21, 2019•25 min
Equinox took the gym and turned it into a premium product. Now the company is looking to do the same with the fitness instruction videos you watch online -- think high-end camera work instead of vertical video shot on an iPhone, featuring some of their 6,000 instructors and full-fledged classes. Equinox Group is serious enough about it that they've put a new division of the company, Equinox Media, to the task. "We're really running a half fitness club, half production studio every single day," E...
Nov 14, 2019•30 min
Working at the NFL gave Rhone CEO Nate Checketts a pretty good lay of the land as far as men's activewear went. And what he saw was a big hole in the supply-side of the market. "Lululemon was really leading the charge" in marketing premium workout clothes to women, he said. "And then you had all of these brands that were there going after the same customer." But no one seemed to be doing that for men. "If you were to look at the men's side -- at, call it a 40% price premium to the Nike, Under Ar...
Nov 07, 2019•33 min
Amazon doesn't just dominate the market for paperbacks and e-books. Through its subsidiary Audible, they've got the audiobook market (worth $2.1 billion, according to Bloomberg) cornered, too. They're also not limiting themselves to putting existing books on tape. "We want to give our customers experience beyond traditional audiobooks," said Audible CMO John Harrobin. The company's range of audio products -- like Audible-exclusive books and listenable stories from The New York Times -- means tha...
Oct 31, 2019•31 min
Even in states that have legalized marijuana, opening a business that sells it can be hard. Some of it, according to Kristi Knoblich Palmer, the co-founder of Kiva Confections, which makes edible THC products, is just down to people not wanting cannabis retail in their backyards. For a time, even Instagram was skeptical of letting Kiva's products -- mints, gummies, and chocolates -- show up on their platform. "Our account kept getting shut down," said Knoblich Palmer, even though they were "keep...
Oct 24, 2019•32 min
Reddit bills itself as "the front page of the internet" with more than 300 million average monthly active users. But from a marketer's perspective, much of it represents an untapped audience "We're very lucky in that we have seen our top-line awareness continue to grow year over year, largely organically," said Roxy Young, vp of marketing at Reddit. Next comes bridging what she calls "the relevance gap" -- convincing people who know about Reddit to browse and join the website. On this week's epi...
Oct 17, 2019•28 min
Gin Lane was the ad agency behind some of the most well-known digitally native brands that have sprung up in the past few years. And co-founder Emmett Shine helped create the look, feel, and digital interfaces of modern brands like Harry's, Recess, and Sweetgreen. But then he wanted more. This summer, Gin Lane shut up shop. In its next iteration -- under the new name of Pattern -- Shine wants to now create what he calls the next generation of brands: It's not just about transactions, but buildin...
Oct 10, 2019•35 min
MetLife is as opposite to a start-up as any company you can imagine. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't think like one, says the company's U.S. CMO, Hugh Dineen. "How does a 150 year old company stay in the game? It's the same thing in terms of how you think about marketing. Our customer is dynamic, and so must we be." Hugh Dineen joined Shareen Pathak on this week’s episode of Making Marketing to discuss the digital side of best in class marketers, why advertising is overblown, and how enlistin...
Oct 03, 2019•29 min
When's the last time a shoe company made you feel all warm inside? Atoms is looking to do that. Its two founders moved from Pakistan to the United States to craft shoes with a personal touch, not solely in their customization -- they come in quarter sizes, and you can get slightly different measurements for each foot since "most people have shoe size difference between their left and right foot," co-founder Waqas Ali says -- but in the hand-written notes and other inviting customer engagement me...
Sep 26, 2019•26 min
At any given moment, millions of articles of clothing are coursing through ThredUp's logistics behemoth. Founded 10 years ago, the company will send you an empty bag for you to fill with clothes that you want to cash in on. Then they'll take them off of your hands to photograph, price, and ultimately sell online -- after which, of course, you pocket some consignment money. “The source of all of that amazing product are the closets across America. It turns out that people buy a lot of stuff, and ...
Sep 19, 2019•36 min
You'd be hard pressed to find a more beautifully packaged product than The Laundress's detergents. The company, which was acquired by Unilever in January for a reported $100 million, started off as a special-care laundry brand, and now makes a line of detergents and cleaning products. “We've had, since early on, women and men contact us about how we've saved their christening gown that's been in their family, or we saved a quilt of their grandmother's,” said Lindsey Boyd, co-founder of The Laund...
Sep 12, 2019•30 min
Direct-to-consumer is coming to furniture. The Inside, a one-year-old startup, is going down the path of companies like Burrow, by selling furniture online. The twist: It's also customized.
Aug 29, 2019•28 min
When Kara Goldin founded Hint in 2005, she was searching for a way to get herself to drink more water. Her solution: adding chopped fruit to pitchers of water, to offer flavor without the sweeteners of traditional flavored beverages. Thus, Hint was born. Now, almost 15 years later, Hint has become one of the largest independent, non-alcoholic drink companies in the U.S., boasting over $100 million in sales each year. The brand sells on Amazon and inside grocery stores, as well as through its own...
Aug 15, 2019•38 min
Amy Fuller, CMO of Accenture, is overseeing an expansive list of functions throughout the company, and she likes it that way. For a company that seems to offer an endless list of services to its clients, this isn’t much of a surprise. Accenture hosts an expansive offering of services, which include everything from strategy, technology, consulting, operations, and with its recent acquisition of ad agency, Droga5, it now boasts a strong creative services offering as well. On this week’s episode of...
Aug 09, 2019•34 min
Rachel Drori started a company because she was hungry. But once the seeds of Daily Harvest were planted in her head, she dove in, and started trying to build a brand. Now, with a cushion of VC funding, Drori is looking towards the next evolution of her company. According to Drori, some of the funding will be used to build out the brand's content strategy and help them share their story. On this week's episode of Making Marketing, Shareen Pathak sits down with Drori, the brand's founder and CEO, ...
Aug 01, 2019•32 min
In the past few years, Foot Locker has been making headlines for its aggressive push to modernize, and according to the company's CMO, Jed Berger, that innovation has pushed their marketing department to start thinking about their customers in a new way. From investing in a handful of consumer startups, to rethinking their retail spaces, to launching their own incubator, the company has been working towards what it will be the next evolution of the retail industry. For Berger, this forward-think...
Jul 25, 2019•31 min
Electric toothbrush DTC brand Quip wants to grow up, and it is doing so by going beyond DTC. As is common with many direct-to-consumer brands looking to scale, Quip participated in a pop-up, took to the New York City subways, and recently began selling its products in Target stores (although refills can only be bought directly from their website). Now, following the acquisition of dental insurance brand Afora, Quip is looking to expand its offering into services. Quipcare, which will be rolling ...
Jul 19, 2019•33 min
When sustainable bedding brand Buffy, launched in late 2017, it looked like the archetypical direct-to-consumer company: online presence, purpose-driven marketing and no middlemen. However, that didn't last very long. In one of their earliest rejections of the direct-to-consumer tropes, Buffy did not take any VC capital. Instead, the founders opted for a few angel investments, and bootstrapped the rest of its funding strategy. According to Paul Shaked, Buffy's co-founder and vp of growth, growin...
Jul 11, 2019•37 min
When David Wolfe co-founded premium mattress brand, Leesa in 2014, he already had almost two decades of experience in the DTC world. Throughout that time, he says, he's learned to keep an eye firmly planted on technology. In the years since its launch, Leesa has expanded beyond DTC -- it now sells in West Elm, on Amazon and on its own site. Now, Wolfe is focused on finding new, more efficient ways to market the company, going beyond what he calls "traditional" digital marketing channels. On this...
Jun 27, 2019•37 min
Vuori clothing, an athleisure brand launched in 2015, is a rarity: The company, which does do most of its business direct-to-consumer, has a healthy wholesale operation, a few physical stores of its own and has raised only a small angel funding round to date. The company's founder, Joe Kudla, joined Digiday on the Making Marketing podcast to talk about why it was important for his business to not go down the VC-funding route when it launched.
Jun 13, 2019•34 min
Burrow is a digital-born luxury furniture company, that, like most DTC brands, put most of its marketing eggs in the Facebook basket. But it soon realized that it can't simply rely on social media to drive sales. Burrow's head of intelligence, Alex Kubo joins us on this episode.
Jun 06, 2019•41 min
As the traditional lines of luxury blur, luxury marketers are competing for attention and consumer spend across categories. Lee Applbaum, CMO of the high-end spirits brands Patron Tequila and Grey Goose Vodka, part of Bacardi Global Brands Limited, is making a play for more of the luxury customer’s wallet. Applbaum discussed how platform partnerships can help the brand reach customers differently, how he thinks of marketing channels and more.
May 30, 2019•33 min
In the past year, the agency world has been rife with news of consolidation. Most executives have explained this as part of a longer-term plan to create less siloed organizational structures and pitching more efficient, integrated solutions to clients. Peter Sherman, executive vice president of Omnicom Group, doesn’t buy it. Sherman discusses the best path to consolidation, how consumer centricity has changed over the years and more.
May 23, 2019•32 min
Brand purpose has become the go-to phrase for chief marketing officers. Stephanie Buscemi, CMO at Salesforce, claims brand purpose is imperative for every brand and it’s even expected by the employees.
May 16, 2019•29 min
Shopify has emerged anew in the direct-to-consumer era. The 15-year-old e-commerce platform that powered the small business segment is worth $25 billion. Now, it's setting its sights on the larger brands. Hana Abaza, director of marketing at Shopify Plus, the division in Shopify that works with larger merchants, says the pitch is about distinguishing between control and ownership. Abaza discusses evolving as a platform to retain bigger brands as they grow, why the DTC companies are here to stay ...
May 09, 2019•30 min
The direct-to-consumer era is changing consumer behavior and expectations across categories, be it retail or insurance. Liberty Mutual has felt this shift, and in its new products as well as marketing is attempting to change in line with those expectations. Emily Fink, CMO at Liberty Mutual, joins us on this episode.
May 02, 2019•30 min
