The Modern Retail Podcast

Most people say the subscription box era is over. Then there's ButcherBox.The Boston-based meat subscription company has been bootstrapped since it launched in 2015. The company is profitable. And it continues to grow -- it brought in more than $600 million of revenue in 2022.What made ButcherBox work for the first eight years was its scrappy mentality -- one that focused on profitable growth. Now, the company is reaching its adolescence and brought in a veteran marketer to lead the charge.Kiran Smith was named CMO last year, coming from companies like iRobot, Arnold Worldwide and Brookstone. Her mandate was to systematize the entire marketing schema for the company."What I found when I arrived about a year ago is that marketing was spread across six different teams, across multiple people within the business," Smith said on the Modern Retail Podcast.This wasn't a bad thing, but for a scaling company, it meant that some workflows had to change. "That's why I was hired," Smith said, "to help build us for that next stage of growth."Part of the focus was on figuring out the latent potential. "There's so much ahead of us, in terms of capabilities that we can build out as marketers," Smith said. But the biggest focus this year was on recreating the marketing organization. "I would say it took up most of the first year," she said. It involved figuring out how to make six different teams work under one leader, as well as creating a cohesive roadmap that fits the overall goals of the company.But even with this daunting task, Smith said that much of ButcherBox's marketing is already in place thanks to its rabid fan base. "That helps a lot — that we have our members' belief in us and in our products," she said.With that, Smith said this was the type of job she's always wanted -- a company that's growing but isn't hampered by the patterns and bureaucracies most billion-dollar companies face."I didn't find it daunting," she said. "I found it exciting."

On this week's Modern Retail Rundown, Arkhouse Management and asset manager Brigade Capital Management made a $5.8 billion bid to take Macy's private. In addition, Etsy announced a series of cost-cutting initiatives, including laying off 11% of staff and consolidating positions like its chief marketing officer. Meanwhile, luxury e-commerce platform Farfetch is reportedly looking for a lifeline as it struggles to survive under mounting debts.

The DTC pots and pans market is crowded, to say the least. But one early entrant continues to grow.HexClad was founded in 2016 with the then-bizarre idea that people would be willing to buy their cookware online rather than from major brick-and-mortar retailers like Williams-Sonoma. The bet paid off -- this year, HexClad is on track to exceed $350 million in revenue and has high-profile business partners like celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.But it took some time to get people to warm up to the idea of HexClad's business model, said CEO and co-founder Daniel Winer. "Everybody kind of laughed at us," he said on this week's Modern Retail Podcast.But after some trial and error and proving out the business, HexClad has been able to grow and expand beyond pots and pans to other parts of the kitchen like knives. The brand is most known for its hybrid nonstick and stainless steel pan. The idea, said Winer, was to make "a better mousetrap." And that ethos has continued as its grown."We keep with the same philosophy, which is: it will be of the highest quality," said Winer. "Whenever possible, it will be completely innovated."This is likely what caught the eye of Gordon Ramsay. But, according to Winer, Ramsay wasn't interested in being just a celebrity spokesperson. He's now a part-owner in the brand. "He wants to be part of the strategy," he said. "He wants to help design the products."With this growth comes questions about strategy. HexClad is sold mostly online with one retail account: Costco. "Costco is a unique animal because it should be uncool to shop there -- but it's not," Winer said. But HexClad has opted to use that as its one wholesale channel rather than expanding into other well-known homewares stores.The focus, then, is on growing the audience -- and global expansion is a big part of it. While the international business is still relatively small, Winer has high hopes."In a perfect world, we would love to get to the point that maybe in one to two years, that international would be between 25% and 30% of our overall business," he said.

On this week's Modern Retail Rundown, we start by pondering the use cases for 0% alcohol hard seltzer, then move into Amazon leaning into more affordable apparel as retailers face the reality of competing with Shein and Temu. Finally, following months of retailers blaming poor performances on theft, reports show NRF's retail crime claims to be overblown.

FirstBuild is the arm of GE Appliances where inventors actually get to invent things.It's a division of the behemoth corporation that aims to come up with new types of gadgets, test their viability and then bring them into the world. And it operates independently of its parent, GE Appliances, and uses community building and crowdfunding to get projects off the ground. Some of its most popular products include a nugget ice maker and countertop pizza oven.So, how such a division exist within such a large corporation? André Zdanow, FirstBuild's president, joined the Modern Retail Podcast and described its evolution.FirstBuild first began around 2014 as a way to work with upstart engineers and test out new types of products. But it has grown into a standalone organization, and each product has its own unique lifecycle. Some are built thanks to successful crowdfunding campaigns, others are instantly scooped by GE Appliances because they know it will be a hit. Some products are sold through an Amazon store, others on Amazon or via big-box retailers. As Zdanow described it, each FirstBuild product "depends on the product and the business that's gonna take it and the business model."But the major difference between Zdanow's group and GE Appliances as a whole is the process. The idea, he said, was to "get away from the bureaucracy of a large corporate; there are a lot of things that are great about the scale you get when you become our size, or near our size. And one of those things is not speed."Zdanow knows a thing or two about building products fast. Before joining GE Appliance, he worked at Quirky, a platform that aimed to help inventors get their ideas off the ground.Lessons from Quirky's early days likely informed how FirstBuild got off the ground, but Zdanow said the two are different -- especially in the types of community members it targets. And now that FirstBuild has been around for over a decade, it's been able to create an insulated nook of innovation.The company is always looking for new products to build and different problems to solve -- but the emphasis is always on trying something new. "We exist to fail," he said. "So like 93% of the ideas that we come up with will not ever be produced. It's almost a hedge fund model in that way."

On this Modern Retail Rundown, we have an overview of how retailers fared during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales period. Next is a look at Shein's reported IPO filing. Finally, rival Temu is continuing on an ad spend spree by reportedly planning another Super Bowl ad.

Apparel brand Madhappy has built a culture brand around happiness.It launched in 2017 with a small assortment of hoodies and hats. Madhappy's style was meant to reflect the city it was born in: Los Angeles. "It was like a couple of products, very locally focused, in LA," said co-founder and CEO Peiman Raf. "At a time where everyone was like retail's dead, we'll never open up retail stores, we did a pop-up two weeks after we launched and really grew the brand in much more of a grassroots way."Raf joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about Madhappy's slow and steady growth, its approach to partnerships as well as its newly opened store.Over the years, Madhappy has grown its assortment to include more apparel products like pants and shirts. It also has inked many partnerships, including a recent one with Uggs. The brand has launched over 20 pop-ups over the years, much of that thanks to a $1.8 million investment it received from LVMH in 2019.It also helped that early on, Madhappy had some high-profile brand reps. "We were super lucky that people wanted to represent the brand, both in terms of in our community, as well as like celebrities [like] LeBron James or Jay Z, you know, people that we grew up idolizing," Raf said. "And I think we've been lucky to continue to see that support as we've continued to grow."Despite all the partnerships and pop-ups, Raf said a big learning for the brand has been to stay focused. "Not overextending is something [that's] super important and something that we're continuing to work on," he said.Now, much of the focus is on the new 2,800-square-foot permanent location in LA. According to Raf, having physical stores around the world has helped grow the brand equity -- but Madhappy is also trying to make sure that the spaces aren't a money pit."So we've always taken a much more sort of long view, conservative view, and do things that not only build the brand but also generate enough revenue to make sense financially," he said.

This week on the Modern Retail Rundown: E-commerce aggregator Thrasio is reported to be preparing for a bankruptcy, per the Wall Street Journal. Amazon announced it’s going to start selling cars, with its first automaker partner being Hyundai. And this holiday season, retailers like Walmart and Target are setting expectations for slower sales.

Not all candles need to smell like a vague pastoral landscape intended to bring up abstract emotions -- some just smell like roasted nuts.That's the idea behind Literie, a candle company behind very specific scents. Its first batch of candles were intended to encapsulate New York City. They included one that smells like the hot roasted nut carts littering Manhattan's streetscape and another that tries to capture the aromas of bodega coffee."This brand is more about the names of the scents," said founder and CEO Erica Werber. "It's not a fragrance company where you're trying to develop these notes and become the signature scent of someone's home. It really is about what is this scent or what is this name bringing into my life?"Werber joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the company's growth. It first launched in 2021 with its five New York-centric scents, and has expanded into other areas like a New England candle that mimics the sea breeze and saltwater. Literie has also built a successful partnership engine, with high-profile collaborations with The Real Housewives of New York and the U.S. Open.Literie first began as a side project during the pandemic, but the products became popular very quickly. And as soon as her very specifically scented candles went viral, retailers came knocking. For example, Macy's reached out to Literie about purchasing a wholesale order.This moment, said Werber, was when she realized Literie was going to become a full-time job. When the order first came in, she said, "I really thought that I could have my manufacturer develop these, ship them to me and I would throw them in my car and drive them to Macy's." Of course, that's not how retail works. And so, Literie had to find a warehouse to fulfill the growing number of orders. "At that point, I was like if we're going to start investing just to do this Macy's order, then we have to really work to make this investment worth it."Two years in, Literie is continuing to grow and expanding its retail footprint. And it's also open to bringing on new brand partnerships. But, according to Werber, even though the brand is still a startup she does have some hard rules.For one, all partnerships must include the Literie name. "I don't need to put the time and effort into something that isn't going to get people to come back to my website or give us more name recognition," she said.

This week on the Modern Retail Rundown: Rapid delivery app Getir acquired New York-based Fresh Direct to expand its grocery delivery business. Meanwhile, TikTok has officially shut down its infamous Creator Fund, which is being replaced by the Creativity Program. And, Amazon reportedly struck a deal with Meta to integrate in-app shopping features on Facebook and Instagram.