The Modern Retail Podcast

On this week's Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses major retail strategy shifts. First, Target reported a less-than-stellar third-quarter earnings. Next, REI announced plans to crack down on serial returners. Last up, the team dives into reports that Starbucks is considering selling its Chinese business.

The espresso martini has been having a moment for the last few years.

According to NIQ CGA’s cocktail tracker, in 2023, orders for espresso martinis doubled in velocity and dethroned the Long Island Iced Tea as the sixth most popular cocktail. Riding this wave is the coffee liqueur Mr. Black, which, since its U.S. launch in 2017, has driven one-third of the total retail sales growth in the coffee liqueur category.

Mr. Black launched in Australia but has become an international phenomenon; it was acquired by Diageo in 2022. According to the brand's co-founder and now-creative director, Tom Baker, though the espresso martini wasn't popular when it launched, he had a feeling a well-crafted coffee-based liqueur would be a global hit.

"I just had this sense that every bar in the world would one day want to buy this product from us," he said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "And that was all the strategy that went into it."

There were a few elements that led to Mr. Black's growth. For one, it became a key ingredient in a popular cocktail. Additionally, Baker knew that the brand's success was predicated on key placements in New York City.

"It was sort of the hub of cocktail culture," he said. "All roads kind of lead there, especially in liquor." So, Baker and a friend went door to door to get some of the best bars and liquor stores to sell the product. From there, the company made sure to keep the right celebrities and influencers abreast with its growth.

One thing led to another, and Mr. Black was able to reach the big time.

"All of a sudden, without you knowing, it's [Stephen] Colbert and [Hugh] Jackman drinking a Mr. Black Espresso Martini," he said. "So it definitely is equal parts an extraordinary amount of hard work and an extraordinary amount of luck."

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses Red Lobster's rebrand plan, which was outlined by its new CEO, Damola Adamolekun. Then, after more than a year of litigations, Tapestry said it is no longer pursuing its $8.5 billion acquisition of Capri. Finally, Amazon’s One Medical service announced it will begin offering virtual treatment plans for ailments like hair loss and skin care, among others.

KiwiCo has built a profitable subscription business, but it sees retail expansion as key for this year's holiday sales.

"We're really excited about our retail efforts," KiwiCo founder and CEO Sandra Oh Lin said on this week's Modern Retail Podcast.

Lin launched the children's education product company in 2011. KiwiCo sells themed packages -- what it calls crates -- to kids every month based on certain subjects. There are science crates, geography crates, art crates and more. It recently launched a revamped version of its subscription service, called Clubs, that is now more on interests.

Over the years, the company has expanded its product lines to encompass more ages and topics. In 2014, it expanded beyond preschool-aged crates into three additional age bands. "You can really draw a line to our first month of profitability from that particular set of initiatives that we launched," Lin said.

Now, KiwiCo offers products for kids age between the ages of 0 and 16, has sold over 50 million products and is profitable.

Lin spoke about why subscription was right for her type of product. "I think the key thing for us is that we have been very thoughtful about what makes sense for those customers," she said. "And the subscription model happens to have worked really well."

Now, the company is focused on expanding beyond that. Earlier this year it launched in both Target and Barnes & Noble. "I think there's a lot of different opportunities that are coming up thanks to the partnership with these with these retailers," Lin said.

Specifically, she sees these retailers helping grow holiday sales. "it's been really great because we've seen a real willingness from these retailers to work with us and to partner with us during the holidays," she said.

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, an overview of the potential importing tariffs the retail industry faces, as proposed by Trump’s incoming administration. Elsewhere, retail bankruptcies continue as companies like The Vitamin Shoppe and Blink Fitness seek bailouts to avoid going out of business. Finally, Shein has brought on another legacy American retailer, The Children’s Place, to sell on its marketplace.

"Even the most vanilla celebrity will do something stupid from time to time," admitted Woodie Hillyard. But Hillyard isn't working with the most vanilla celebrity -- he's working with Jake Paul.

Paul is an online star with over 20 million subscribers on YouTube alone, known for wild publicity stunts. Most recently, Paul has taken up boxing, with an upcoming scheduled match with Mike Tyson later this month. But Paul, like many other creators, is trying to build consumer-facing brands as well.

Hillyard is the CEO of W, Paul's personal care brand, which currently offers products like body wash, deodorant and shampoo. It launched earlier this year with distribution in Walmart. Hillyard knows a thing or two about growing brands alongside influencers. He's the former chief revenue officer of Safely, Kris Jenner's home cleaning startup.

He joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the launch strategy of W and how it plans to grow in the coming year.

In Hilliard's estimation, it's much harder to launch a new brand now than ever before. That's why he's so bullish on creator-led businesses. "During the heyday of DTC, when Warby Parker and Harry's and Casper were scaling, you could acquire customers for a pretty reasonable clip and drive a lot of traffic to your website," he said. "That arbitrage has gone away now. That new arbitrage, in my mind, is creator, because creators have this massive embedded audience of people who want to associate with them."

According to Hillyard, W's launch has been a smashing success. Now, it has plans to go into more stores beyond Walmart. For now, that's probably online platforms like Amazon and GoPuff, but more physical stores are likely on the horizon as well.

But, for now, the brand is dependent on the figurehead behind it. Hillyard said W plans to expand beyond Paul's shadow. But for now, he believes that Paul -- despite his headline-worthy shenanigans -- is the right person to launch a brand like W.

"There's always a risk there," he said. "But I think the thing about Jake is he's one of the smartest business minds I've ever worked with."

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff breaks down the struggling sales of coffee giants Starbucks and Keurig. Next, Etsy posts early positive signs of holiday sales. Finally, sandwich chain Subway is facing legal action over the alleged false advertising of its sandwich, which some customers say contains much less meat in reality.

There are a lot of mixed signals about how holiday sales will perform this year, but DTC jewelry brand Awe Inspired is bullish.

Awe Inspired sells jewelry like necklaces and bracelets, but they all feature pendants or charms meant to showcase empowerment, such as a Greek goddess or an astrological sign. The company's sales are up 45% this year, and it has become a celebrity favorite with people like Taylor Swift and Julia Fox showing off their Awe Inspired products. "We have some forces propelling us forward, so I'm planning to have a great holiday," co-founder and CEO Max Johnson said on the Modern Retail Podcast.

Johnson spoke about the company's growth over the years, its marketing strategy as well as what he's focused on for this holidays this year.

Awe Inspired first launched in 2018 while Johnson was working as a product manager at a telehealth platform. But it wasn't until 2020 that the company really began to see traction. The brand often partners with organizations promoting causes; it saw big spikes in popularity with jewelry like a Harriet Tubman pendant alongside the NAACP and a Florence Nightingale charm with the National Federation of Nurses that was introduced during the pandemic.

With these launches came organic virality. In the case of the nurse pendant, for example, "the cast of Grey's Anatomy wore it," said Johnson.

Now, Awe Inspired is trying to expand to offer more types of jewelry that reach new types of customers. "We're building a charm business," Johnson said.

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff breaks down the latest M&A play, Keurig Dr Pepper’s acquisition of the 8-year-old energy drink startup Ghost. This week, Tupperware's assets were bought out by its lender following the company's bankruptcy filing. And, starting November 1 through February.

Death & Co is an internationally known cocktail bar. It first began in New York but has expanded to other cities like Los Angeles and Washington, DC. But the company has big ambitions to grow even more.

That's what led to the creation of Gin & Luck, the umbrella company of the bar that launched in 2018. According to David Kaplan, who started Death & Co in 2006 and is now CEO of Gin & Luck, the idea is "to create a unified hospitality landscape where we could have all of these entrepreneurial pursuits -- all of our Death & Co growth -- under one company."

That includes more Death & Co locations opening up over the next year, as well as a cocktail bar brand called Close Company. It also means retail opportunities like an online marketplace, a book business and an e-learning platform.

Kaplan joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about how he's approaching transforming a popular bar into a global business.

While there are many different parts of the business, the bars are still core. "Our primary economic engines -- and the focus points of our business -- really are our brick and mortars," he said.

Still, the other areas are integral to Gin & Luck's growth. "Everything else that we do -- our marketplace, even our social, the books, the ready-to-drink cocktails, we're working on a new education platform -- all of those things, for the most part, we view as a true standalone business," he said. "So it can't just be a loss leader for us."