On this week's Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses news from Target, which announced new partnerships with sportswear brand Champion and eyewear startup Warby Parker. Elsewhere, Starbucks’ latest turnaround move is to pare down its menu by 30% and get rid of complicated drinks. Lastly, we take a look at why one in five Americans are "doom spending" as worry over the economy and trade wars loom.

When smoothie brand Bumpin’ Blends made its mass retail debut, it landed in the frozen food aisles of more than 3,100 Walmart, Target and Sprouts stores within a few weeks. 

“We went from doing five figures a month to doing six figures a month and seven figures a quarter,” said co-founder and CEO Lisa Mastela. “It was very huge immediately, which was very cool, but also a huge learning curve.” 

Mastela joined this week’s Modern Retail Podcast to chat about the changes Bumpin’ Blends has made to its packaging, messaging and ad strategies to gain a foothold in the competitive frozen CPG category. She also shared how the company has been able to grow by carefully watching ad spending and by being selective about what it puts in curating mass retail. In addition, she discussed the serendipitous meeting with a Mattel executive that landed her a licensing deal.

Bumpin’ Blends sells frozen smoothie cubes that can be popped into a blender with milk for easy, quick prep. But it took some trial to error to figure out how to communicate that value proposition. The company’s first retail partner was Costco, with the product sold in large bags of cubes that had a photo of a smoothie bowl on the front. Mastela recalls hearing from Costco shoppers that they thought the bags held some sort of free coffee.

“There's nothing on the bag that says coffee. There's no picture of coffee. So we tweaked some of the photography on the bag to really push that, like, this is not coffee,” she said. “We switched it to a front-facing cup with a smoothie with a straw.”

This week's Modern Retail Rundown kicks off with big news from Nike and Skims. The two companies are creating a new women's activewear brand called NikeSkims. Next, the staff delves into why energy drinks maker Celsius is acquiring competitor Alani Nu. And Crocs is the latest retailer to address how its 2025 outlook could be impacted by President Donald Trump's tariff policy.

Detroit-based luxury design brand Shinola sells everything from jewelry to bikes to journals. In 2019, it even opened a hotel in downtown Detroit. But the is currently laser-focused on refining the answer to the question, “What’s the first thing you think of when you think of Shinola?” And it wants that to be watches. 

“We lost that [focus on watches] for a little while,” said Kevin Wertz, CMO at Bedrock, the platform company that owns Shinola. Bedrock also owns the outerwear brand Filson. 

Shinola, founded in 2011, quickly gained a following because it was bringing manufacturing jobs back to Detroit. In 2012, the brand opened a 12,000-square-foot watch factory in the city. Over the next few years, it used its expertise in design and craftsmanship to expand into new categories. 

But in 2016, Shinola ran into a hurdle when the FTC ruled that the company could not use the tagline “Built in Detroit.” Even though Shinola has a watch factory in the U.S., its watches — like all watch brands — largely rely on imported parts. Now, Shinola’s watches say “Built in Detroit with Swiss and imported parts.”  

"We’re going back to the idea that we are designing and assembling watches in downtown Detroit,” Wertz said. 

Despite this, Shinola has found that the best way to tell its story is to do more showing, rather than telling. Wertz said the content that has performed the best for Shinola is raw photos and videos from its factories showing how its watches are made. "People say, 'I don't know what watches being made actually looks like,’” he said, regarding the interest.

Wertz joined the Modern Retail podcast this week to talk about how Shinola is refining its brand story. 

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff kicks off the episode by discussing Olipop's new $50 million funding round, valuing the brand at $1.85 billion. In other better-for-you soda news, a look at Poppi’s Super Bowl controversial marketing campaign, which caused a backlash after the brand sent creators Poppi vending machines. Finally, retail layoffs spiked in January due to store closures and other cost-cutting measures.

It’s been a great year for brands that sell shoes and other gear to runners. 

Brooks Running, which is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, disclosed earlier this month that it ended 2024 with record global revenue, up 9% year-over-year. The company did not disclose exact revenue numbers.

“We’re now in our 25th year of growth. Over that 25 years, we've grown approximately 15% compounded,” said Dan Sheridan, CEO of Brooks. “I think it's an outcome of this incredible, sharp focus we have on the category of run that has mass appeal to anybody that really moves.”

Sheridan joined this week’s Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about Brooks’s 2024 performance and how the brand is setting itself up for growth in the years to come.

There have been different types of running booms over the years, Sheridan said. “In the early 2000s, the running boom was centered on a broader approach and invited walkers and people that just wanted to be active.” Right now, Sheridan said, Brooks is benefitting from the post-pandemic running boom, which is being led by Gen Z. 

This generation, Sheridan said, is getting into running earlier. They are also trying to balance the mental, physical and social aspects of their life differently. 

“Run clubs are the new dating app. It's where you're finding your mate. And people are choosing run clubs over going to the bar. And we see that in Gen Z. They're they're drinking less; alcohol sales are down. … So we think this next generation is a running boom for our industry.” 

International sales, too, are fueling Brooks’s growth. Sales in China, in particular, grew 228% year-over-year. 

On this episode of the Modern Retail Rundown, the staff looks at the impact of rising ingredient costs. For instance, this week Waffle House announced it's implementing a $0.50 surcharge per egg as costs rise due to bird the bird flu. Meanwhile, Chipotle executives told investors that looming tariffs on Mexican imports will not hurt the fast casual chain's supply of avocados. as it only sources half its avocados from Mexico. Lastly, Gap announced a new series called GapVintage that will feature curated Gap selections from the 1980s through the 2000s.

Most founders are loath to compare their businesses to other companies. Not the veterinary care startup Modern Animal.

"We were definitely inspired by One Medical early on," said Steven Eidelman, founder and CEO of Modern Animal. "I think Tom Lee, the founder, was really a trailblazer for: How do we bring technology into health care?"

The idea behind both companies was to add a technological element to health care to make the customer experience more seamless. Eidelman described the core problem with veterinary clinics thus: "As a pet owner, you and I both know the experience we have going into a veterinary clinic. And it's a little bit underwhelming -- to put it nicely, the experience is not really customer-forward."

Eidelman joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about his company's recent growth and future plans.

Modern Animal, which first launched in 2020, tries to make the experience better by building its own clinics, hiring its own veterinary and technical staff, and using technology to make the entire process smoother. For an annual fee, members can get unlimited access to exam visits as well as Modern Animal's telehealth platform. It's currently available in major California and Texas cities, and will be opening new locations in both Colorado and Arizona later this year.

"We offer primary preventative care," Eidelman said. "We offer urgent care, and we offer our care digitally. We do dentistry, we do surgery. What we don't do is we don't do after hours," Eidelman said.

While the business is health care, Eidelman believes the key to success is thinking about it from a retail perspective. At the end of the day, the core underlying business model that we are building has not really ever been built in the veterinary industry," he said. "And that is: we are building a retail footprint, a sort of box-driven business."

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff checks in on the latest tariff and import tax policy changes that are impacting U.S.-based brands. Meanwhile, layoffs across the industry continue as companies like Amazon, Shopify and Kohl's cut costs this month. Finally, Chili's parent company, Brinker International, reported positive sales as the casual restaurant chain underwent a turnaround strategy.

During the weekend when TikTok was briefly offline, Whatnot -- a platform that lets online brands and merchants sell products via livestreams on its app and website -- saw its user numbers surge.

"It was our biggest weekend for new sellers -- both in terms of news sign-ups and also sellers who went live for the first time," said Armand Wilson, vp of categories and expansion at Whatnot. "Over that Saturday, Sunday, Monday, we saw a huge spike -- and we continued to see those numbers since then."

It points to the uncertainty permeating the social media landscape right now. While TikTok is back up and running, it's unclear what its future is in the U.S. And more brands are testing out other startup social commerce platforms.

On this week's Modern Retail Podcast, Wilson spoke about the rise of Whatnot as well as what he's witnessed during the last six months when TikTok's future became unclear. "Particularly [at] the tail end of last year, we are hitting this kind of inflection point," he said.

Still, Wilson was clear that even though TikTok, a major competitor, has been constantly in the news, he and his team tried to remain focused. "We really, truly tried to not spend a ton of time thinking about competition," he said.

At the same time, the constant changes likely had an impact on overall adoption of social commerce, which still remains nascent in the U.S. "We've definitely seen a big growth in live shopping as a whole," he said. "And I'm sure some of that can be attributed to some of our competitors pushing and getting more vocal."