The Modern Retail Podcast

This week's Modern Retail Rundown starts with an overview of Shopify’s renewed focus on being an e-commerce solution provider, as the company sells off its logistics business. Next, we check in on the state of 15-minute delivery apps, in light of Getir's latest European acquisition. Lastly, a discussion of why Peloton is betting on digital fitness as a long-term revenue stream.

Ebay may be decades old, but the company is still trying to iterate as if it were a startup."We're still a work in progress, there's still a lot more that we need to change," said Eddie Garcia, eBay's chief product officer. He joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about his priorities, and the way the marketplace landscape has evolved.Garcia is an eBay boomerang. He first started working for the company in 2003 and then left in 2014 to work at other companies like Sam's Club and Facebook. He returned a year ago to lead product, and says the focus has been on growing the platform while also maintaining a sense of community."There still is that fundamental essence of the community experience, and that small business, or that individual connecting with another," Garcia said.Making that work across categories is also difficult. Ebay is a marketplace many people know -- but the company is trying to tailor specific areas for certain types of products. It's a difficult tightrope, Garcia said, making a platform that's both recognizable but able to offer certain features to certain types of sellers."It's a balance," he said. "You don't want to dramatically change the experience because that can become disorienting to the shopper."There are a lot of updates on the roadmap, he said, but the focus is specifically on user experience."We got to do more," said Garcia. "We're really proud of our progress at taking friction out of the experience for sellers and buyers, helping make search better -- creating a greater sense of trust on the platform."

This week on the Modern Retail Rundown begins with a quick update on Bed Bath & Beyond's closures. Then an overview of Amazon’s latest earnings, which include $9.5 billion in ad revenue. Next up is a look at the state of fast casual dining, and why chains like Chipotle and Subway are thriving despite inflation. Finally, we discuss Target's longtime investment in curbside fulfillment, with the latest iteration giving shoppers the ability to return items curbside.

A-Frame Brands is focused on building brands for underserved communities but with big names behind them. And national retail is a big part of its strategy.According to co-founder and CEO Ari Bloom, there's a lot that goes into making a celebrity brand work. But he thinks he's tapped the formula. So far, A-Frame has launched brands with powerhouse names like Dwayne Wade, Gabrielle Union, Naomi Osaka and John Legend -- and all of these consumer-facing products have launched in major stores like Walmart, Target and CVS. And while it helps to have a celebrity name to catch a big box store's eyes, Bloom thinks it's increasingly difficult to launch online only.Bloom joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about how he's approaching building out the A-Frame portfolio, and the thesis behind all of the brands.The first pillar of A-Frame is finding obvious holes in the market. The first brand launched was Proudly, a baby care product backed by Dwayne Wade and Gabrielle Union, that focuses on children of color."How is it that you can Google search and find out that over half the kids in this country have a black, brown or Asian parent since 2014, and not see more brands and market dedicated to what is the majority of kids?" he said. "That's insane. So we started with that brand, knowing that there would be other opportunities."After that, A-Frame launched John Legend's skincare brand Loved01 and the Naomi Osaka-affiliated suncare company Kinlo.The tying bind for all these brands, beyond their well-known co-founders, is that they've all sought out big retail partnerships from the get-go. Bloom sees this as a necessity for any new company trying to really grow. Starting with only a website is a behemoth task, that he's just not interested in trying out. "The fact that you're just kind of going to open a door and hope people show up. That's really hard, especially today," he said.Another thing that Bloom is very clear about is that A-Frame isn't using the A-list talent as mere figureheads. "We feel it's very important that the partner is a partner," he said. "So we go 50/50 with them." That means, the celebrity gets equity -- but they don't get anything else up front.As Bloom sees it, this is a way to find true partners -- and celebrities that are actually interested in launching real brands. "It does kind of weed out a lot of folks," he said.

This week on the Modern Retail Rundown, we go into Ikea’s $2.2 billion plan to grow in the U.S., complete with a new store concept and overall footprint expansion. Next, we dive into why David’s Bridal is filing for its second Chapter 11 protection in five years -- despite operating during a booming wedding industry. In other bankruptcy news: an update on a possible filing by Bed Bath & Beyond, following store closures and staff layoffs.

Personal care brand Curie looks like a traditional DTC brand at first glance, but has grown thanks to a variety of unorthodox channels.For one, the company has been featured over a dozen times on QVC, and that has helped it reach a brand new and eager audience. What's more, Curie founder and CEO Sarah Moret pitched her brand on Shark Tank -- which gave her both a boost thanks to a deal with Barbara Corcoran, as well as viral sales."We've grown 10x since we aired on Shark Tank," Moret said.She was a speaker at last week's Modern Retail Commerce Summit, held in New Orleans. The conversation was recorded, and is this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast. During the session, Moret spoke about growing a predominately DTC business to include other retailers, as well as the trials and tribulations of being an online personal care company.In its early days, Curie was sold only online. Now, it's sold at Anthropologie, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, and has a big-box partnership soon to launch this summer. But one of the biggest sales boosts that got Curie on the map -- beyond Shark Tank -- was QVC."We aired on QVC for the first time in 2021. I've now been on air 15, 20 times -- and that's really changed my business," Moret said.But selling on QVC isn't as easy as looking at a camera and saying "buy this now!" Indeed, Moret had to relearn how to pitch her product and make it something truly enticing for the audience. "What QVC taught me is nobody really cares about the features of your product," she said. "They care about what it's going to do for them."She's used that knowledge to further grow the Curie brand. With that, the focus for Moret is on expanding the company beyond its digital roots. Much of that ties back to marketing. For years, Curie sold predominately via Facebook ads. But now, Moret realizes she needs to focus more on top-of-funnel as a way to get more people to recognize the brand."We're bootstrapped, we're profitable, we are very, very ROI driven in all of our decision-making," she said. "So this is a big shift for us about thinking: all right, we don't want to just rely on these PPC ads."

On this week's Modern Retail Rundown, we discuss Walmart's lackluster performance in urban centers, following the retail giant's major Chicago exit. Next, a preview from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy shows that the Whole Foods ownership hasn't panned out well when it comes to Amazon's big grocery ambitions. Lastly, we discuss the latest updates from connected fitness startup Tonal, including a C-suite reshuffle and founder Aly Orady's departure.

Women's workwear brand Argent is back in growth mode.The company first launched in 2016, and saw a precipitous rise over its first few years -- especially thanks to well-known fans of the brand like Hilary Clinton. But the pandemic changed everything -- with people no longer going to work in offices and overall demand plummeting.During that time, said Argent founder and CEO Sali Christeson, "it really became about survival and hunkering down and going lean and figuring out what our strategy was going to be." And while the company saw a loss in both 2020 and 2021, things are once again on the up and up. "We've never seen numbers the way that we're seeing now," said Christeson.She joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about Argent's future plans, as well the overall state of workwear.Though Argent began as a digital brand, over the years it launched a few showrooms. And while many of those closed during the pandemic, Christeson said that in-store retail is a focus for this year. "I love stores," she said. "They've always been part of our story." With that, the brand has reopened its Soho store, and hopes to open more over the next year.But owned stores aren't the only area of growth for Argent. The brand recently began a wholesale partnership with Nordstrom. As Christeson described it, wholesale presents new opportunities when done right. "You have to recognize how much comes from whole partnerships, if you time it right," she said. "If it's a mutual fit, it's a win-win."And marketing is also a big push -- especially in some often-overlooked areas like catalogs. "Performance-driven catalogs… outperform digital," she said. "Catalogs crush for us."For now, the focus is on growing and keeping pace. "There's so much opportunity," she said. "We're trying to stay really focused on retail, wholesale team growth and then all the marketing to supplement it."

L’Oréal's $2.5 billion Aesop acquisition, American Eagle's supply chain shakeups, and Chipotle suing Sweetgreen over a burrito bowl

Men's apparel brand True Classic was able to become a $250 million company -- and it thanks Facebook for its success."I knew I was going to put all my eggs in the Facebook basket," said co-founder and CEO Ryan Bartlett. Lucky for him, the company launched before the changes to iOS 14, and his thesis worked. The company says it's profitable, has sold over $250 million worth of goods since its launch in 2019 and now has five stores open around the U.S.Bartlett joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about True Classic's growth strategy -- as well as what it takes to rely on social media in the current climate.Bartlett admits that the performance marketing space has gotten much more difficult over the years, but he still believes Facebook is a great channel for growth. The company spends as much as $100,000 on Meta platforms each day, which represents around 70% of its total marketing budget."We have definitely diversified away from Facebook, because we realized that if anything ever goes wrong with Facebook, we can just tank the business," Bartlett said. "So we've been very strategic about spending more on Google, spending more on non-branded search on Amazon, spending more on podcasts and OTT -- but really testing into it. We really are sticklers on data and analytics and understanding attribution at the highest levels."Even though paid social is so important to True Classic's business model, Bartlett also thinks the product is just as important. The company makes predominately casualwear, like crewneck t-shirts."I wanted to create something very narrow and a very specific SKU, which was just the t-shirt -- just the crewneck t-shirt," Bartlett said. "I wanted to make the best possible version of that I possibly could, I wanted to prove it out. And once I did, we eventually started rolling out into every single category that you see on the website now, which is activewear, denim, underwear, socks, absolutely everything."Now that True Classic has found a formula that's worked, the focus is on growing it as big as possible. For example, last year the company launched internationally -- "it was like 30% of the business overnight," Bartlett said. "So that was a monster for us. And we it was literally just flicked the light switch on and go." In the beginning, the company launched in dozens of countries including most of Europe and Australia -- but still shipped from the U.S. Now, True Classic is trying to tweak its international strategy even more by seeking out fulfillment centers overseas and producing content in native languages. Additionally, the brand is also expanding into womenswear.For now, expanding beyond the U.S. and into the women's category are what's taking up a lot of Bartlett's time. "Between those two initiatives, I really got my hands full," he said.