The Modern Retail Podcast

Studs co-founder and CEO Anna Harman recently got a second piercing in her ears. One place she looked at would have charged her $500. The other, which she went for, was a tattoo parlor."And while the piercing experience was great -- they pierce with a needle, it was healthy and safe -- the overall environment was really not suited to me. I felt really personally out of place there," Harman said on the Modern Retail Podcast.She reached out to Lisa Bubbers, who would go on to co-found Studs -- a store that pierces your ears and sells you jewelry as well -- with her last year. "I said to Lisa 'wow, it feels like there's a real opportunity here to reinvent this experience end-to-end,'" Harman recalled. "We really thought the opportunity was to combine healthy and safe needle piercing with really accessibly-priced, fun jewelry in an environment that the customer was excited to spend time in."Studs has a flagship store in Soho and is taking advantage of trends in the world of brick-and-mortar. "How do you physically expand in a way that's not incredibly capital intensive?" Harman said. "You will likely see Studs do things like shop-in-shops and kiosks."Harman joined the Modern Retail Podcast to discuss the dreaded piercing gun, and what she's learning from both the direct-to-consumer zeitgeist and her time at a hedge fund.

Coulter Lewis got the idea for Sunday when he saw the state of his local Home Depot's lawn care aisle."You can smell it before you get there," Lewis said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "It's pallets stacked high with bags of chemical fertilizer, covered in caution labels."That was in 2017, the year before he launched the company out of Boulder, Colorado. First, Sunday asks customers to ship it a bit of soil from their property. Then it analyzes that alongside pre-existing soil and weather data before sending a regimen of pesticide-free products for you to apply via pouches that attach to your hose.Customers pay on a subscription basis annually, receiving four boxes a year. Plot by plot, the company is hoping to eat big retailers' lunch; the outdoor lawn and garden sector brings in $13 billion in retail sales for Home Depot and Lowe's, Lewis said, and the grand total is more than thrice that)."We're really not about coastal millennials. That's not our focus at all," Lewis said. "We're appealing to a more mass market."

For the Body Shop, it's about selling where the customers are -- even if that means it's not necessarily on your own sites or in your stores."Stores for us are the bread and butter of the business, the biggest portion of the business, and will always be," U.S. general manager, Andrea Blieden said on the Modern Retail Podcast. At the same time, being on Amazon has been a big boon to the business, mostly because that's where a significant part of new customers are. "I just don't think that you're moving Amazon shoppers off Amazon that much," Blieden said. "If you want to capitalize on the fact that over 30% of Americans are using Amazon, you gotta go there."Blieden talked about the changes brought about by L'Oréal's sale of the company to Natura & Co. in 2017, The Body Shop's investment in Amazon and what it's like working at a company that speaks out on social issues.

Lo & Sons launched as a direct-to-consumer brand in 2010. That's practically prehistoric as far as the recent crop of DTC companies is concerned."We were kind of an accidental DTC company," co-founder of the brand, which makes high-end handbags, Derek Lo said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "We started before the term even existed."The idea to start a family business came from Derek Lo's mother, Helen Lo, who despite her frequent travels couldn't find a bag that was easy on her back. She started a blog about light-weight bags -- Derek's brother Jan helped set it up on Tumblr -- before convincing her sons to quit their jobs and give their own company a shot.The company became profitable in 2013, according to Lo, and it did so while eschewing the typical playbook of so many DTC brands that came after -- outside investment, millennial-focused subway ads and the inevitable expansion into brick-and-mortar stores.The company's independence has helped Lo & Sons survive, in Lo's estimation. "We want to be a brand like Patagonia that's going to be around for decades, that's making a positive impact on the world," Lo said.Lo talked about the company's origins, marketing strategy and product innovations -- like a separate compartment for shoes.

Iris Nova founder Zak Normandin is betting on a suite of "no or low" sugar drinks -- sparkling teas, seltzers and lemon juices -- and on a new way to sell them."Every brand has a phone number," Normandin explained on the Modern Retail Podcast. "When you want to place an order for a product you just pull out your phone, you text the brand directly."His lemonade brand, Dirty Lemon, has sold more than 2 million bottles since its founding in 2015, and per Forbes, 90% of those sales happened via text. And Iris Nova now is growing more, thanks to a cash injection of $15 million from Coca-Cola -- to whom, he said, he's open to selling to. "I think that that's probably the best path forward for us unless we can get to a place where, very quickly, where the company is profitable," Normandin said.Normandin called his research into the Asian market "inspiration" for the text message payment system. "I found that in Asia it was probably the most exciting, just the speed at which the market is moving is much different than here in the States," Normandin said.He talked about the fading clout of influencers, the tough path forward for direct-to-consumer companies and the value of text robots (even if none has passed the Turing test) on this week's episode.

Roman launched in 2017 with a specific mission: Treating erectile dysfunction online, with doctor consultations and medication delivered right to customers.The company has raised $176 million in funding. It's also changed its name to Ro and turned Roman into just one of the the brands it owns, expanding its telemedicine offerings to also tackle nicotine addiction (with a brand called Zero), perimenopausal conditions (Rory) and more."We really realized that we had built a platform that could treat and serve far greater needs than just that one condition area," said Will Flaherty, the company's vp of growth, on the Modern Retail Podcast.Flaherty talked about how Ro's differentiation lies in service over product, why TV is central to its strategy and more.

Rebecca Taylor dresses aim to land between the feminine and something more irreverent."Back in the day there was cool people and feminine people, but they didn't really cross over," the company's president, Janice Sullivan, said on this week's Modern Retail Podcast. "In Rebecca Taylor, it's where that meets," she added. "It's okay now to be a feminine feminist. It wasn't, maybe, years ago."A year after the departure of its founder, the designer sells dresses in six of its own U.S. stores, and rents them out on both its own website and Rent the Runway. It also just launched a new program that will take older Rebecca Taylor clothing in exchange for credits and discounts for new.Sullivan talked about the shopping experience, the rental business and why not to worry about cannibalizing your own market.

Before startup founders woo thousands of customers, they often try to convince investors to get onboard with their company's mission.As a principal investor at Lerer Hippeau, an early-stage venture capital fund based in New York, Caitlin Strandberg is on the other side of the table.The fund has invested widely, including in DTC brands like Allbirds, Casper, Everlane and Lola.Strandberg joined the Modern Retail Podcast to talk about how the VC game has changed since the rebirth of direct-to-consumer companies, what she considers a waste of venture dollars and why early growth (in percentage, not in raw numbers) is key to gauging a company's potential.

This week, it's a look ahead at what 2020 may have in store for retail.Modern Retail reporters Cale Weissman and Anna Hensel join host Shareen Pathak for a roundtable discussion about the beats and developments they know so well, from how Walmart and Target will seek to challenge Amazon to whether venture funding for direct-to-consumer startups will dry up.

Michael Wieder, the co-founder of Lalo, is betting on the baby stroller market."We know that you're putting your most precious belonging in our products," Wieder said on this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast. "They have to be safe, they have to look good, they have to be an extension of who you are. If you don't trust us, then why buy us?"Wieder and his co-founders Jane Daines and Greg Davidson saw the new-to-parenthood customer as one facing many first-time purchasing decisions without much information to go on."You get to a stage in your life where you're forced to make hundreds and hundreds of purchasing decisions for products you've never used before. That's unlike anything else you shop for," Wieder said.After launching their stroller, The Daily, earlier this year, Lalo added a second direct-to-consumer product to their line-up: a high chair.Wieder joined the podcast to talk about how to challenge incumbent brands, the DTC business model, and Lalo's next moves as far as new products go.