Fact: Everyone likes to wear hoodies.

Fact: Everyone wore hoodies during the pandemic.

Fact: We all love expressing ourselves in different ways.

Fact: Everyone can do with a little positivity in their day-to-day lives.

Combine all these attributes, put them into a wishing well, and what do you get? An optimistic brand that sells positivity-focused clothing, writes Monday motivation quotes, and sells really bright and happy hoodies.

Sounds Awful, right? Or rather, full of awe?

I sat down with Charles (Chaz) Zayed and Emmit Flynn from Awful Cloth to learn about their brand, its messaging, and their strategy for expanding to over 70 countries while in the middle of a pandemic. Here’s what we discussed.

The question isn’t whether or not there’s value in hiring creators—even over celebrities—to promote your brand. There is. The question is: what’s the best way to compensate creators so you can secure more mutually-beneficial partnerships and grow your brand?

So-called one-click checkout company Bolt underwent another round of sweeping layoffs this week, according to posts from several former employees across Linkedin.

“It’s a chicken salad.”If this phrase sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve heard it used as a trending sound in thousands of videos on TikTok and Instagram over the past several weeks. The entire sound features an exchange between frequent deli goer Nisha Godfrey and owner Wael Herbawi at East 81st Street Deli in Cleveland, Ohio.

While it’s still early on in the acquisition, folks are complaining on Twitter about Musk, his “sh*tposting” (for a lack of a better term), and these new changes (mostly the pay-for-verification issue.) One community that’s specifically concerned is the Direct-to-Consumer one—a small subset of Twitter where founders, marketers, and operators of eCommerce technology and brands came together and built strong connections over the past several years.

Nibble is a new eCommerce technology company that’s trying to disrupt eCommerce product pricing. The technology brings customer and merchant negotiation into the online shopping experience for Shopify stores.

I was at a marketing conference last month and heard a panelist tell the crowd that “Creators don’t only have an audience, they’ve built a community.”

This sounds valuable to advertisers but it puts creators at a disadvantage if they haven’t focused on building a community. I was about to raise my hand when another panelist piped up and responded with an important question: “What makes you think all creators have built a community?”

Building audiences has always been a lucrative endeavor. It’s the reason why the amount brands spend on influencer marketing keeps rising. Community is powerful on its own, too. Conferences and online memberships are thriving businesses. This begs the question, do all creators need to build community?

In the second quarter of 2022, the teen-centric clothing brand Hollister was ... not doing very well.

It experienced a 7% year-over-year sales loss. On top of that, its sister labels Gilly Hicks and influencer-led brand Social Tourist reported a 15% decline in sales. Conversely, Hollister’s parent company Abercrombie & Fitch saw a 5% lift in sales.

What was the issue?

After an internal study of sales data, executives at Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch found that brands targeting teens were losing sales. Part of this was due to inflation and the rising cost of living, but they found the key pain point was an age-old reality: most teens simply don’t have much purchasing power. After researching today’s Gen Alpha (teen) consumers, Hollister created the Share2Pay app to tackle this problem.

NEW YORK & TORONTO—#paid, a multi-channel creator marketing platform that empowers creators to partner with brands and build their businesses, today announced that it has become an official TikTok Marketing Partner. As a badged partner, #paid will bring more great opportunities to their engaged network of content creators and marketers.

“TikTok’s motto is ‘Make TikToks, not ads' because the most successful ads on TikTok aren’t ads,” said Bryan Gold, CEO of #paid. “This partnership provides an opportunity for brands to make more TikToks with the world’s top creators—and run all their creator campaigns, across social channels, from one central location."

While the overall attitude regarding the current economy is lackluster, NRF reports that retail sales will still grow between 6% and 8% to more than the $4.86 trillion recorded in 2022.Even if consumers are upset by inflation and the current state of the economy, the good news is they are still spending—especially during the upcoming holiday season. In fact, 30% of all retail sales typically happen between BFCM and Christmas.If you’re an eCommerce brand or retailer, now is the time to double-down and prepare to grow your sales this upcoming season. Here are effective ways you can grow your sales this year, according to eComm industry experts.