The key to DTC towel brand Weezie's success is staying in its lane -- or, bathroom. That's according to co-founder Lindsey Johnson who joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast. The company, which makes luxury bath towels along with other bathroom-related products like bathrobes and bathmats, has seen year-over-year growth and said late last year that it was on track to hit eight figures in revenue in 2021. "The bath towel is the hero product of Weezie, and we are going to stay in that world," Jo...
May 12, 2022•36 min
General Mills is known for being the company behind household name brands Wheaties -- but it's also trying to build out a robust DTC strategy. At the Modern Retail DTC Summit, held last week in New Orleans, General Mills' global e-commerce lead of DTC Carter Jensen took to the stage to talk about how he approaches his role. That conversation was recorded for this week's Modern Retail Podcast. Jensen isn't the usual CPG conglomerate leader -- he only joined the company about two years ago. "I com...
May 05, 2022•28 min
Bokksu, which connects U.S. customers with Japanese snacks, is still bullish on subscription boxes, according to its founder and CEO Danny Taing. The company, which first launched in 2016, began by offering a subscription box that featured Japanese snacks that were never before available in the U.S. Growth for the first few years was on the slower side, as the company remained mostly bootstrapped. Two years after launching, the company really started to hit its stride. And is now expanding beyon...
Apr 28, 2022•34 min
For the kitchen brand W&P, it's been a good time for the home products space. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, W&P president Kate Lubenesky spoke about how the company has evolved and grown. "We had great growth in 2020 and 2021," she said. W&P first launched 10 years ago with its first product: a mason jar-inspired cocktail shaker. Now, the company has expanded a great deal, with hundreds of different products including cups, cutting boards, cocktail kits and ziplock bag alte...
Apr 21, 2022•39 min
It's been a big year for TalkShopLive -- and for livestream commerce in general. The livestream commerce platform has been around since 2018. Until 2021, it was completely bootstrapped -- but it took a $3 million seed round a year ago this past February. Since then, TalkShopLive has been ramping up partnerships with major publishers and retailers, including Walmart and Condé Nast. Co-founder and CEO Bryan Moore joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the platform's growing pre...
Apr 14, 2022•39 min
Couplet Coffee, which sells both coffee beans and coffee-related products online, is only a few months old and is trying to enter the market with a bang. Currently, it's available online as well as at select partners like Lotto.com's Players Cafe. Founder and CEO Gefen Skolnick joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the launch. "Couplet was my side project in college," Skolnick said. "I've just been obsessed with coffee for over ten years now." For the last year, however, Sko...
Apr 07, 2022•36 min
Lightning-fast delivery services are taking cities like New York by storm. And Gorillas is trying to be the leader of the pack. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, Adam Wacenske, Gorillas' U.S. head of operations, spoke about the online grocery service's growth plans and strategy. Gorillas is a grocery delivery app that began in Europe, but is currently only available in New York. Its main value proposition is that it can give customers their items in the blink of an eye -- usually in less t...
Mar 31, 2022•35 min
It may seem simple to order a bouquet of flowers and have it delivered to your home, but a lot of work goes into such a task. On this week's Modern Retail Podcast, Seth Goldman, the CEO of online flower and plant delivery service UrbanStems, discussed the ins and outs of the e-florist business. Over the last two years, UrbanStems saw year-over-year growth in both 2020 and 2021 -- even after the company shut down its local delivery services in March of 2020, which resulted in a 60% decline in its...
Mar 24, 2022•34 min
For direct-to-consumer furniture brand Sabai, sustainability reigns. The brand, which launched in the summer of 2019, and saw a growth spike in both 2020 and 2021 -- much of which was spurred by the pandemic-induced home boom. According to co-founder and CEO Phantila Phataraprasit, much of its growth was thanks to increased interest in sustainability. Sabai's products -- which range from sofas to ottomans -- are all produced with sustainability in mind. [Sustainability] can be in so many differe...
Mar 17, 2022•34 min
Umamicart is trying to bring authentic Asian grocery items to more U.S. consumers. The app launched in early 2021 and, according to co-founder and CEO Andrea Xu, has been seeing double-digit growth month-over-month. It offers Asian products from sauces to meats to vegetables, growing from 400 SKUs at launch to now over 1,000. Xu joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the trials and tribulations of growing a digital grocery startup. According to Xu, Umamicart began because of ...
Mar 10, 2022•33 min
It’s been a turbulent few years for Reformation, but the women’s clothing and accessory brand is forging ahead. According to CEO Hali Borenstein, the focus now is on building trust both with customers and employees. “It is all about walking the walk,” she said on the Modern Retail Podcast. Borenstein became Reformation’s chief executive in 2020 when its founder and then-CEO Yael Aflalo stepped down after a former employee’s social media post went viral that alleged unfair treatment of non-white ...
Mar 03, 2022•39 min
In 2019, startup chai brand One Stripe Chai saw coffeeshops as the ticket to its success. Then the pandemic came and everything changed. After a bumpy few months, the brand focused predominately on its direct-to-consumer website and finding online customers. And while its foodservice business has resumed, founder and “chief chai officer” Farah Jesani says she’s still focused primarily on growing the DTC sales. Jesani joined the Modern Retail Podcast and described the quick change. Right before 2...
Feb 24, 2022•43 min
Online apparel marketplace Dia&Co is trying to tap into the $21 billion inclusive sizing market. Within the last few years, more brands have begun introducing a wider range of sizes. But according to co-founder and CEO Nadia Boujarwah, most businesses are only scratching the surface. Boujarwah joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about Dia&Co, as well as the current state of plus-size apparel. Dia&Co has been around for six years, and has witnessed big shifts in brand...
Feb 17, 2022•38 min
DTC startup Firebelly Tea is hoping to help the hot steeped beverage reach the celebrity status of coffee. That’s according to co-founder and CEO David Segal, who joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week. Segal isn’t new to the tea world -- he founded one of the biggest tea retailers in North America, DavidsTea. After selling his shares in the company in 2016, he is now embarking on a new tea journey. Tea, said Segal, “is the second biggest drink in the world, next to water,” even though, he s...
Feb 10, 2022•37 min
Win Brands Group has been around since 2017, but this is the year the DTC roll-up strategy is really beginning to gain steam. The company owns a slew of online businesses, including the candle company Homesick and the weighted blanket brand Gravity. According to founder Kyle Widrick, things have been building nicely since inception, but thanks to big pandemic-related changes Win is now set up for more growth. “We’ve built up our holding company and our structure and our process in such a way tha...
Feb 03, 2022•31 min
The non-alcoholic drink, which launched in 2020, tastes similar to a European apéritif. And, according to founder and CEO Mélanie Masarin, there’s growing demand. She joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about Ghia’s journey thus far. One of Ghia’s big markers is its branding. Ghia is available in the U.S. in both cans and bottles, and has a very retro eye-catching look. This was all by design. “I really wanted Ghia to not be another pastel-colored millennial brand,” Masarin said...
Jan 27, 2022•34 min
The leap from Richard Branson to crypto isn’t that big, as it turns out. For venture capitalist Mags Kala, all it required was quitting her day job. Kala used to work at Bain Capital, helping out big brand names like Shea Moisture and Virgin Voyages. But one day she decided to leave it all behind and strike it out on her own. After about a year of going solo, she’s become especially keen on the Web3 space. On this week’s episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, Kala explained how and why she made t...
Jan 20, 2022•33 min
Energy drinks are in the midst of a renaissance. According to Fabiola Torres, CMO and svp of PepsiCo’s energy drinks category -- which includes big brands like Rockstar -- the renaissance is about finding who the core customer is. Her focus, she said on the Modern Retail Podcast is to “really go deep into storytelling, making sure that our products continue to get better and better.” Torres joined the PepsiCo team in April 2020, right when the pandemic hit. Before, she worked at high-end brands ...
Jan 13, 2022•27 min
Another year has come and gone, and big changes came to the retail industry. Giants like Shopify and Amazon grew even bigger, while older retail models like department stores suffered. Meanwhile, online brands saw big growth but faced their own unique set of headwinds. And newcomers, like fast fashion mobile app Shein, became more of an everyday staple. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, we decided to take a look back and dive into some of the most important issues we wrote about over the l...
Jan 06, 2022•32 min
Oats Overnight, a spoon-free, protein-based drinkable oatmeal, has been made in-house since the company began. Founder and CEO Brian Tate started Oats Overnight in 2016 out of his kitchen, and after about a year of formula development, began selling the bottled oats via the brand’s website. Part of the decision to vertically integrate production was due to difficulties Tate found in securing manufacturers for the product’s unique formula. “At a very, very early stage, we opted to do it [producti...
Dec 30, 2021•32 min
As securing space on container ships gets more expensive, brands are coming up with creative ways to make sure their products take up less space. One such company is DTC luggage brand Paravel. Since launching in late 2016, the company has been working on ways to reduce its carbon footprint and optimize its freight routes. One reason for this is because the majority of Paravel’s products are made across Asia and in Italy -- two hubs that experienced delays during the pandemic. These delays prompt...
Dec 23, 2021•45 min
International manufacturing continues to create headaches for American brands. For card and board game maker Exploding Kittens, producing the majority of its products in China has had a domino effect on its overall distribution process. “We’ve had challenges for two years now,” Carly McGinnis, head of production, sales and logistics at Exploding Kittens, said on the Modern Retail Podcast. That’s mainly because “about 90 to 95% of all of our goods are produced in China,” she said. In 2020, Explod...
Dec 16, 2021•28 min
If a boutique wants to carry products from handbag maker Scout, they are going to have to plan ahead. In mid-2020, Scout transitioned to a pre-book wholesale model, which entails giving retailers an opportunity to secure their orders “almost a year in advance,” founder Deb Waterman Johns said on the Modern Retail Podcast’s new series: Chain Reactions. Previously, Scout took retail orders on an as-needed basis and by estimating demand for their upcoming seasonal designs. “It’s a commitment on our...
Dec 09, 2021•36 min
Yelitsa Jean-Charles says she was able to grow her business by being authentic. Jean-Charles is the founder and CEO of Healthy Roots Dolls, which makes toys that represent more diverse backgrounds. “I never really had dolls that look like me growing up,” she said. So, she designed Healthy Roots’ first product, Zoe, which Jean-Charles described as “a little brown girl with kinky curly hair.” Zoe was first devised in 2014 as part of a school project. In 2018, Jean-Charles launched a Kickstarter th...
Dec 02, 2021•34 min
It’s a good time to be an outdoor apparel brand. According to NPD Group, outdoorwear sales are up 45% this year, and some brands have been able to dominate this growing fervor. Teva, the shoe brand known for its velcro strapped sandal, has seen sales grow. In the ’80s, when the sandals first hit the market, Teva was the leader in the space. Then, after a couple decades of dominance, fervor died down, as other competitors like Chacos and Keens began to encroach on its territory. But over the last...
Nov 18, 2021•33 min
For Corkcicle, the company’s mantra is to focus on innovation through partnerships. The company, which makes a variety of consumption-focused products like cups, travel mugs and wine coolers, has spent the last decade expanding the types of items it makes. And over the last few years, its business has really begun to ramp up. Sales have been growing year-over-year and, according to CEO Chris McDonough, the company is nearing $100 million in annual revenue. Much of that is thanks to some big-time...
Nov 11, 2021•32 min
Telemedicine has taken the human world by storm, and Joe Spector thinks the next frontier is pets. Spector is the founder and CEO of Dutch, which offers telehealth services for pet owners -- connecting them with veterinarians virtually. He has some experience in this space as Spector is a co-founder of Hims -- another DTC telemedicine startup best known for its balding and erectile disfunction over-the-counter services. According to Spector, there’s a huge white space for pet care. “I just reali...
Nov 04, 2021•28 min
During the pandemic, most people sought comfort -- and many of them turned to weighted blankets. Bearby, which makes knitted weighted blankets, saw sales grow more around 5x in 2020. This year, things aren’t slowing down. According to founder and CEO Kathrin Hamm, revenue is on track to double in 2021. “It has been quite a ride,” she said on the Modern Retail Podcast. Though Bearaby considers itself primarily a direct-to-consumer brand -- most of its sales come from its owned online channel -- i...
Oct 28, 2021•32 min
One of the ways direct-to-consumer cookware brand Made In has grown was through its connection with chefs. “Chefs are the new athlete,” said co-founder and CEO Chip Malt. That idea has been core to Made In’s growth. Malt was the most recent guest on the Modern Retail Podcast -- his interview was recorded live at the Modern Retail Summit, held in Palm Springs last week. Indeed, Made In -- which first launched in 2017 -- has inked multiple deals with celebrity chefs, including “Top Chef” judge Tom...
Oct 21, 2021•30 min
After hitting it big in Australia, Glasshouse Fragrances is testing out the U.S. market. The company makes luxury candles among other high-end products, and since launching in 2005, has become one of the biggest candle companies in Australia. Now, it is focused on international expansion after launching in the U.S. last year. It is currently available in over 1,200 retail locations in the country, and has expanded to body washes, soaps and diffusers. Founder Nicole Eckels joined the Modern Retai...
Oct 14, 2021•36 min
