The Modern Retail Podcast

Prose is a hair care company in growth mode, but it's also laser-focused on remaining a responsible brand. One of the people behind this push is Helen Nwosu, the company's vp of social impact.On this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, Nwosu spoke about how she juggles the needs of a scaling brand while maintaining Prose's core values -- which include being transparent about its sustainability efforts, providing a safe and equitable workplace and making its products accessible to more people around the world."My role is really tied to the fact that my founders... all wanted to have social impact and business as a source for good clearly embedded in the business from the get-go," Nwosu said.That doesn't mean that Prose, which was founded in 2017, isn't riding a rocket ship, business-wise. The company, which sells custom hair products, has seen revenue grow 3x for three years in a row. It brought in $80 million of revenue in 2021.According to Nwosu, who has spent her career working at the intersection of social impact and business at companies like Louis Vuitton, the way to keep a company honest is to work beyond a marketing lens. For example, Prose has been a certified B-corp since 2019 -- which means that company has to prove certain elements of social and environmental performance. What's more, Prose is also a public benefit corporation."What's interesting is that it makes our public benefit a mandate to our board," said Nwosu. That is, Prose doesn't have to just write nice-sounding marketing copy about why it's acting both sustainably and ethically, but it was to report on all of its initiatives to its board and external organizations. "It's part of our legal charter," she said. "It's not just something that we put on our website."With that, some days she's working on front-facing activation and other days she's poring over technical documents."It's really technical," Nwosu said, "I do like that aspect of the job because that's where the magic is."Another part, she said, is making sure the entire company is in lockstep with its values -- including how the products are made. For example, all of Prose's manufacturing happens in Brooklyn. "In this day and age, where most manufacturing companies -- specifically for consumer good -- are moving outside of big urban areas, we're allowed to provide really great jobs," Nwosu said.Right now, Nwosu is working on many projects -- including trying to cater to wider swathes of customers as well as keep Prose's many sustainability efforts up to date. For example, the company has sharing resources with other beauty B-corporations, allowing them to "really talk about transportation, logistics and ingredient sourcing." Those, she said, "are probably the three biggest challenges for a company of our size." So far, Prose says, it has reduced its carbon intensity by 67%."At the end of the day, three times growth means we're making more product [and thus] we're using more of the planet's resources," Nwosu said. "So that has to be something that I mold the company to do mindfully -- let's build each product that we build better. So that's where my focus is really."

Maev is a startup that believes dogs should be eating as well as humans.The company first hit the market in 2020 and has been steadily growing ever since. For its first year in business, it was faced with the problem of selling out of products. This led it to bulk up its manufacturing and raise a $9 million round of funding. Now, Maev founder and CEO Katie Spies says the company sees sales growth of about 15% month-over-month. She joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the company's growth and the overall premium pet food market.Spies doesn't have a background in pet nutrition, but she did work as a dog walker to learn the ins and outs of what pet owners need."I spent a year as a dog product dog walker," Spies said. "And I was getting to know a lot of consumers and figuring out what their headaches were."This time on the street with dozens of dogs helped Spies coalesce on a business plan for Maev; the company would sell human-grade dog food online. After two years of beta testing and figuring out the proper product line and formulas, Maev hit the market in late 2020.It was a good time to launch a dog food brand. During the first year of the pandemic, one in four Americans got a dog, Spies said. "Pet ownership skyrocketed, and more and more people started purchasing pet products and grocery products online," she said. So Maev didn't so much have a problem finding customers. Instead, the problem was in making sure it could keep its supply chain going and get products to customers."The trouble was really just keeping inventory on the shelves in our facility and running a facility to continue producing product, despite Covid happening in the world," Spies said.This meant that Maev had to go from working in a test kitchen in New York to expanding to a contract manufacturer who could handle its demand.Now, Spies says the plan is to grow even more. While Maev is still only available online, Spies has her eyes on some new retail channels. "We started with just our own e-commerce site," Spies said, but "moving into [online] marketplaces is next on our list."

Jacob Zuppke’s tagline for his company is “cats keep pooping.”It's a blunt way to help people understand what his company does: Zuppke is the CEO of Whisker, the company behind the Litter Robot, an electronic-self cleaning litter box that retails for as much as $649. And, the tagline has born out; and the parent company is trying to expand beyond just litter boxes, with an automatic pet feeder and its own cat litter.The pandemic didn't slow Whisker's sales, and that's thanks to the Covid pet adoption boom. "We were already growing at a really exciting rate pre-Covid," said Zuppke on the Modern Retail Podcast. "I think that was just a little bit more gas on the fire."Whisker has been around for over two decades, but Zuppke joined the company in 2015 to help focus its digital strategy. Then, the company's sales were about 66% direct-to-consumer and 33% Amazon. Now, the company sells more via DTC -- but is actively expanding other channels, including a new retail partnership at 40 Hollywood Feed pet supply stores."We are building a physical footprint to tell the story of what the Litter Robot is capable of doing," said Zuppke.But even with this retail expansion, much of Zuppke's focus is on growing digital sales and getting more people to know the Whisker and Litter Robot name. One lever Whisker has leaned especially heavy on is TV. "I think we as people that have learned to consume TV in a certain way, when we see something on TV, we tend to have a sense of trust for whatever reason," he said.With that, TV has become a very useful channel for brand storytelling. That being said, not all TV is the same; "We continue to find that linear performance better than connected," Zuppke said.For now, the focus is on growing the brand. For Zuppke, that's become a more challenging goal since there are now two brands: Litter Robot and its parent Whisker. While the former is the most popular product, Zuppke very much sees growth for other brands to bloom under Whisker. "We built our iPhone before we built our Apple," he said.

Digiday Media is proud to present The Return, a podcast about what the return to the office can look like as corporate America adapts to the new, not quite post-pandemic normal. The Return follows the staff at one Atlanta-based advertising agency through Covid outbreaks, as well as the highs and lows of transitioning to hybrid work after two years of pandemic lockdown and working remotely. While the future of work is still under construction, employees across the country are forging their own paths to determine what that future looks like amidst parenthood, corporate mandates, long commutes and an ever-looming pandemic. The Return is hosted by Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter at Digiday, and produced by Digiday audio producer Sara Patterson.Listen to The Return on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Pistachio milk startup Táche has big plans to take on Oatly and its ilk. Founder and CEO Roxana Saidi joined the Modern Retail Podcast and explained how.Táche has been on the market for a little less than two years, but it has already begun making a real dent. The company has sold over 1 million units and has expanded its retail and coffee shop footprint nationally. According to Saidi, things are just getting started.The first hurdle, according to Saidi, was making sure she could build a viable business. She knew that she had a good idea with pistachio milk, as it was made in a more sustainable process than other milk alternatives like almond milk. "In 2015, [California was] experiencing our worst drought on record," she said. "At the same time, 99% of almonds that are consumed in this country are grown in California, where the almond trees require and soak up more water for the state than the inhabitants of California."Conversely, pistachios, she said, "require 75% less water than almond trees." And thanks to her family's connections to pistachio farms in the Middle East, she was able to have a direct source to the main ingredient.But even with all this, pistachio milk was expensive to produce, especially for a startup making a small initial order. Saidi realized she had to make something many people could afford. "I knew that if Táche was going to be priced at $10 or above, it actually wasn't a product I was going to pursue," Saidi said. "That was my threshold."Ultimately, Saidi was able to get it down to $7.99, which meant the idea had legs. The next step was figuring out production. It's easy to have an idea, but you actually need people to buy it. So for four years, Saidi made inroads with food professionals in the hopes that she would gin up enough demand to land an initial purchase. As Saidi described it, she saw the success of cult alt-milk favorites like Oatly and realized she too could create buzz by getting hip coffeeshop pick-up.Pre-2020, Saidi was able to get many cafés interested. But then the pandemic hit and everything changed. This pushed Táche's launch to November 2020. And with many cafés still shut at the time, the Táche team had to reconsider ways to get more people to try the product."So we had to get really creative through various channels to drive trial -- marketing opportunities, donating a little bit of product to shops, anything and everything," she said."Now that most stores are back open, Táche is seeing much of its growth in the food service space. Saidi said that the plan for this year is to continue to focus on that; currently, the company gets about 50% of its sales online direct-to-consumer and 50% through its retail and café partners. But next year is when Saidi is going to focus more on bigger retail expansion -- Táche has plans to launch with some national players in the fourth quarter of this year.Once that really gets going, Saidi has big plans for scale. "I think food service will be our primary revenue driver this year," she said. "Next year, it probably will actually turn into retail. And then retail will continue to be the primary revenue driver from there."All this being said, the alt milk space is not what it was five years ago. "There's no denying that alt milk fatigue has become a thing because of how many options [there are]," she said. "But I think what has worked really well for us is two primary differentiating factors: one is on the health side, and one is on the sustainability side."

King David Tacos began as a Brooklyn-based taco cart and has expanded to dozens of locations, and has big expansion ambitions beyond New York City.According to founder and CEO Liz Solomon Dwyer, this is thanks to its persistent branding and ability to grow a rapt customer base. She joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the company's growth and ambitions.King David began in 2016 after Solomon Dwyer quit her job in advertising and made the bold move to go into the food business. She grew up in Texas and believed there to be a big hole in the breakfast taco market in New York.As she described, her father told her that she should open a taco stand in Times Square. "I thought that was an absurd idea," she said. Her father's response was that "it's just weird that they're not there. And it seems like so perfect for the New York morning."The idea stuck with her. It first began as a catering company, and then started an outdoor cart. Today, King David Tacos is available in over 60 retail locations, its own brick-and-mortar restaurant and even in the hot bar section of select Whole Foods locations.The most important aspect to get right, according to Solomon Dwyer, was the branding. Tex Mex food, she realized, had never quite made it in New York City -- and that's likely because of the way the restaurants messaged themselves."I feel like part of the reason that breakfast tacos had struggled to take hold here was because everything was all Texas-theme, Southern-themed," she said "It's theme-y theme-y, gimmick gimmick." And for her, she wanted King David's to be more authentic. It helped, of course, that she had advertising experience in her back pocket.With this playbook, business is quickly picking up -- though Solomon Dwyer is still figuring out ways to evolve the overall model. For example, the tacos are now available in Whole Foods's hot bar, and she is trying to figure out a way to make her products stand out in a usually un-branded section of the store. "It's been a challenge," she said.But she does have one important piece of advice for people trying to learn the ropes; the most important way to build a business like hers is to become a cult. "The way you sell a lot of tacos is you become a destination," she said.

Maude is trying to redefine the sexual wellness space.The brand -- which sells condoms, lubricants and vibrators, in addition to other products -- has been growing its presence and business over the years. It first began as a direct-to-consumer brand, but is now sold in stores like Sephora. According to founder and CEO Éva Goicochea, the company is only getting started.Maude began as a predominately DTC business in 2018. But Goicochea said she focused early on getting the word out -- and making sure people understood the brand properly. This included getting press pieces out before launch, as well as reaching out to hotels to carry the products. "We found like-minded partners when it comes to hotels and made a giant list on Airtable and started reaching out to them," Goicochea said.What does like-minded mean? "We partnered with hotels that had that design-bent," she said. For those hotels, they likely already had say, condoms, but they hadn't yet found companies that branded sexual wellness products like Maude. For those hotels, said Goicochea, "[the products] needs to be high quality because there's this trust barrier."With this strategy, Maude has continued to grow. The brand is now available in 33 countries and is continuing to grow its product line. Much of its success, said Goicochea, is based in brand identity. "We had this thesis," she said, "that [intimacy products] should be approached in this really unified de-stigmatized way."This, said Goicochea, is resonating with customers. And now the focus is on growth -- albeit, profitable growth. With that, Maude is looking to expand its domain.The focus this year, she said, is on product launches and expanding into new markets. She added, "it's retail next year."

Temporary tattoos are no longer relegated to children's birthday parties -- they're becoming a bigger and more widely accepted part of the body part industry.Much of that is thanks to Inkbox, a Canada-based company that was acquired by Bic last January for $65 million. Inkbox's co-founder and CEO Tyler Handley joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the brand's growth and sales -- as well as the overall temporary tattoo industry.Inbox uses an active ingredient its founders discovered in a fruit in Panama that leaves what looks like a tattoo mark on users' skin for one to two weeks. But the company's products don't work like traditional temporary tattoo offerings that put simple designs on pieces of paper. Instead, Inkbox partners with both celebrities like BTS and famous tattoo artists to sell customers' designs -- as well as grow out its own marketplace of designs where the creators can take a cut of the sales.According to Handley, the majority of Inkbox sales come from its artist marketplace. "We have this artist marketplace with over 10,000 designs from over 700 artists from around the world who make collectively several million dollars a year selling tattoos on our platform, which we're always really proud to say," Handley said.It took some time to get to this point -- the company is now seven years old -- and much of Inkbox's success was thanks to inroads it has made with the tattoo community. For example, early on the company opened its own permanent tattoo shop as a way to get to know more artists in the industry."We wanted to at least immerse ourselves in the authentic world of permanent tattoos -- to build more genuine connections with artists," Handley said.It seems the strategy worked out given the growing marketplace and the Bic acquisition. And now that Inkbox is part of a much bigger company, Handley has big plans for expansion. This includes retail partnerships and more deals with bigger celebrities. "We're at a stage now where we can't just be direct-to-consumer," he said. Currently, Inkbox is sold in stores like Urban Outfitters, but Handley has plans to expand further.But even with this growth has come some hurdles. For example, Instagram used to be Inkbox's primary acquisition channel. But recent privacy and algorithmic changes have made it much more expensive and less effective."It was really disheartening to see the greed of Meta affect our ability to get our content in front of consumers," said Handley. "Essentially you have to pay to get in front of anyone there now."With that, now Inkbox is focused more squarely on channels like TikTok. "It's really authentic in terms of its entertainment and engagement. And it's a totally different way you have to approach it," he said.With all of this, even more expansion is on the horizon. "[We're focused on] getting our lifetime value and basket size up by releasing new products -- we launched subscriptions three weeks ago," said Handley. "And soon we're launching some other products that adorn other areas of your body -- let's put it that way."

Italic is trying to become a luxury brand in its own right.The company has been around since 2018 and has gone through many iterations. At the same time, the underlying model has remained consistent: Italic forges partnerships with the manufacturers of well-known brands like Staub and Samsonite and sells unbranded products directly from the facilities at a fraction of the price. While the company has seen growth over the last few years, it's changed some of its business mechanics. Most recently, for example, it decided to halt its membership-only model.This change, said founder and CEO Jeremy Cai, has positioned Italic for more success. Cai joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the company's latest approach."Our strength really is in the business side," Cai said. "We've built a pretty strong supply chain orchestration platform... We basically had to build our own version of Shopify, our own version of a returns platform, our own fulfillment network and so on and so forth."But by building such a strong back-end comes the problem of how to define a company like Italic. In some ways, it's a marketplace that directly matches manufacturers with customers. That's, in fact, how Italic first marketed itself. Now, Cai has realized that customers simply don't see it this way. "For all intents and purposes, we are a brand," he said. "Because they don't really see or need to see what goes on underneath the hood."Going away from its membership-only model isn't the only big change Italic has made of late. A few years ago, Cai had big plans to expand to multiple categories -- he saw Italic as partnering with numerous manufacturers that manufactured many diverse products. Now, he's realized that curation is more important."We can't simply expand rapidly for the sake of expanding supply," Cai said. If the products don't sell through, that leaves the manufacturers Italic is working with in a lurch. "We do have a tremendous amount of responsibility in terms of our agreements with our manufacturing partners," he said.That has made Italic think smaller and with a more curation-focused lens. "We started the year thinking we were going to launch 1,000 products," said Cai. "We'll probably launch 100."Another big change for Italic is its focus on organic growth and less reliance on digital platforms like Facebook. So far, things seem to be working. "We cut our growth spend by 5x from March to April this year, and our revenue grew -- and it's continuing," Cai said. "So it's kind of like, what were we spending money on in the first place?"With that is the larger goal of making Italic a prestige brand that isn't wholly reliant on one-off customer acquisition techniques. It's a focus that nearly every DTC brand faces right now.Over the next year, Cai said, he's dead set on "figuring out a path of growth into the future where we can continue to sizably grow the business without needing to solely rely on paid [advertising]."

The last few years have been a rollercoaster for travel companies. But Australian luggage brand July says business is now beginning to boom."Things have changed, lockdowns have come to an end now -- 2021 was a progressive lift on that. And this year, in 2022, things are flying again," said co-founder and chief strategy officer Athan Didaskalou.Didaskalou joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and talked about the brand's growth and expansion plans.July was first devised in 2018 with the intention of being a luxury luggage company that could take on both Samsonite and Rimowa. "[Rimowa's] acquisition from LVMH reinvigorated design and travel," Didaskalou said. "I'd be lying to say I wasn't a fan."Still, he believed that his company could take on the bigger name players in the industry. "We thought we could do it better," Didaskalou said, by making lighter bags with unique design features like curvier edges and personalized monograms.The first year of business, things went well. But then every luggage brand's worst fear materialized: the world shut down. "2019 was the official retail launch, and 2020 we were almost shutting the business down. It was really that drastic because we didn't have the runway of a few years under the belt in order to be able to survive a zero revenue year."One of the ways July survived the pandemic was by launching new non-travel products like drink bottles and backpacks. The other part was by going into new territories that eased travel restrictions earlier than Australia -- namely, the U.S. For Didaskalou, launching in stateside was an entrepreneurial dream. "I don't think there's any Australian business that doesn't fantasize from day one about launching in the U.S.," he said. "The people are there, the scale is there, the appetite is there for newness."Now, according to Didaskalou, business is humming and more products and markets are in the pipeline. But even though the company has its Australian roots, the United States remains the primary focus."It's all about the U.S.," Didaskalou said. "We see the demand, we have made an impact. And we can't wait to just start making and delivering more products that get people excited."