The Modern Retail Podcast

For Helena Price Hambrecht the abundance of alcohol at every after-work event meant that hangovers seemed inevitable."I knew that I had a problem. I knew that everyone else I knew had a problem where we were like 'god, are we supposed to do this forever and not die?" she said on this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast. "We're supposed to drink, drinking is part of life, but we all feel terrible. Why isn't there a better way to drink?'"She and her husband Woody Hambrecht founded Haus to try supplying that better way. The company's drinks are alcoholic, but only a bit more than the stuff you put in an Aperol Spritz -- the growing popularity of which proves the "demand for something lighter," Price Hambrecht said -- and other aperitifs. Millennials, the thinking goes, aren't drinking to get drunk. Haus' concoctions are also on the not-so-sweet (read: sugary) side, and are under the legal cutoff (24% ABV) for mailing bottles to customers.Price Hambrecht joined the inaugural episode of the Modern Retail Podcast to talk about founding Haus, focusing on PR at launch and what comes next for the direct-to-consumer industry.

Making Marketing is making some changes. Starting with our very next episode, we'll be the Modern Retail Podcast, bringing you conversations with people innovating in retail, including the oh-so-buzzy world of DTC.But before that, this episode rounds up a few highlights from Making Marketing's interviews in the past year:Kevin Lavelle, the founder of menswear brand Mizzen and Main"I’ve spoken with a couple VC firms. We had positive feedback, but one VC said she couldn’t see how we could [make] 10 times our revenue over the next 12-18 months, so they’re not interested. And it stuck with me. She was absolutely right."Rachel Drori, founder of the subscription frozen food company Daily Harvest"I have such issues with what I call the cycle of torching cash. What’s happening is that there’s so much VC money out there — anybody can raise — and then they can throw money at their problems."Joe Kudla, founder of athleisure brand Vuori"If you go straight to the VC community pre-revenue, they’re going to dictate terms often terms. You don’t want a VC running your business."Jed Berger, CMO at Foot Locker"I think that it’s an interesting time, and in many companies, there needs to be a redefinition of the role of the CMO, or marketing within the organization, or how it reports, or what its accountabilities are. The marketing industry is in for an evolution."

Equinox took the gym and turned it into a premium product. Now the company is looking to do the same with the fitness instruction videos you watch online -- think high-end camera work instead of vertical video shot on an iPhone, featuring some of their 6,000 instructors and full-fledged classes.Equinox Group is serious enough about it that they've put a new division of the company, Equinox Media, to the task."We're really running a half fitness club, half production studio every single day," Equinox Media CEO Jason LaRose said on this week's episode of Making Marketing.In this, LaRose said, they're responding to trends among existing customers -- who in surveys say they want to spend more time with the brand -- and Americans as a whole. "When you see a $4 trillion wellness economy, when you see gym or club memberships at an all-time high in this country while you also see digital content going through the roof, I think you're on to something where you really need to follow the consumer."In this week’s episode of Making Marketing, LaRose talked about starting a content-making company from scratch, how stores today are more about marketing than bringing in revenue and why media will be a customer acquisition tool.

Working at the NFL gave Rhone CEO Nate Checketts a pretty good lay of the land as far as men's activewear went. And what he saw was a big hole in the supply-side of the market. "Lululemon was really leading the charge" in marketing premium workout clothes to women, he said. "And then you had all of these brands that were there going after the same customer." But no one seemed to be doing that for men. "If you were to look at the men's side -- at, call it a 40% price premium to the Nike, Under Armour, Reebok, Adidas of the world -- it was crickets. It was nobody."So Checketts co-founded Rhone, a clothing company meant to give guys threads that they can wear at the gym, in social settings or often both.In this week’s episode of Making Marketing, Checketts talked about just how far back the DTC model goes, why it's easier than ever to go small (but harder than ever to go big) and the tough standards venture capitalists often judge brands by.

Amazon doesn't just dominate the market for paperbacks and e-books. Through its subsidiary Audible, they've got the audiobook market (worth $2.1 billion, according to Bloomberg) cornered, too.They're also not limiting themselves to putting existing books on tape. "We want to give our customers experience beyond traditional audiobooks," said Audible CMO John Harrobin. The company's range of audio products -- like Audible-exclusive books and listenable stories from The New York Times -- means that "competition is anything that you can do when your eyes are occupied but when your mind is free."Many of Audible's subscribed listeners consume 80% of their content in just one format, whether e-book, print or audio. "But several people are choosing to listen to certain types of content via audio," said Harrobin. "For example, many people that are e-book readers listen to non-fiction on audio, because they do it in their commutes. It's not that escape moment for them where they're relaxing and reading."On this week’s episode of Making Marketing, Harrobin talked about how the company serves as both a platform and a creator of original content, the reason brands are so bent on selling "purpose" and a serendipitously-named Kentucky Derby contender.

Even in states that have legalized marijuana, opening a business that sells it can be hard.Some of it, according to Kristi Knoblich Palmer, the co-founder of Kiva Confections, which makes edible THC products, is just down to people not wanting cannabis retail in their backyards.For a time, even Instagram was skeptical of letting Kiva's products -- mints, gummies, and chocolates -- show up on their platform. "Our account kept getting shut down," said Knoblich Palmer, even though they were "keeping it informative, all about education -- and then you'd look at other pages that weren't getting shut down and weren't getting flagged, and they were racy and inappropriate."Still, her company's answer was to keep graduating marijuana's image. "We really have to act professionally and go above and beyond to make ourselves look professional, to act professionally, and to help overturn that stigma," said Knoblich Palmer, who launched Kiva in 2010.That starts with the packaging, where 95% of Kiva's brand image happens. "Having a beautiful package was the front door for the consumer," said Knoblich Palmer. "It had to step up the edibles category as a whole and really let edibles finally sit in a different part of the mind for consumers." Beyond that, down-to-the-milligram precision in THC dosage ("everybody had those college experiences" of having a bit too much) goes a long way in building trust with consumers.On this week’s episode of Making Marketing, Knoblich Palmer talked about the responsibility she feels when marketing a product that some people still oppose, how the company started in her kitchen, and what her vision for the company in five years is.

Reddit bills itself as "the front page of the internet" with more than 300 million average monthly active users. But from a marketer's perspective, much of it represents an untapped audience"We're very lucky in that we have seen our top-line awareness continue to grow year over year, largely organically," said Roxy Young, vp of marketing at Reddit. Next comes bridging what she calls "the relevance gap" -- convincing people who know about Reddit to browse and join the website.On this week's episode of Making Marketing, Young talked about how the company aims to bring some gender balance to its user base, the technical features it's still catching up on after last year's website redesign, and her own favorite subreddits.

Gin Lane was the ad agency behind some of the most well-known digitally native brands that have sprung up in the past few years. And co-founder Emmett Shine helped create the look, feel, and digital interfaces of modern brands like Harry's, Recess, and Sweetgreen. But then he wanted more. This summer, Gin Lane shut up shop. In its next iteration -- under the new name of Pattern -- Shine wants to now create what he calls the next generation of brands: It's not just about transactions, but building a relationship with customers. And -- though he doesn't want to "sound too New Age, wellness-y" -- helping them cope with the alienation common to modern life. "We all live in cities, we don't as much go to church, we don't have as many organized, civic things that we do." Shine said on this week's episode of the Making Marketing podcast, adding that in this age, brands are poised, and have a responsibility, to have a purpose in their customers' lives.The company's first product is a line of high-quality cookware called Equal Parts, which customers can get extra use out of through content via the company's coaching program to help people cook. "It's something that is just inherently positive," he said. "It makes you feel good to cook for yourself or for someone else."

MetLife is as opposite to a start-up as any company you can imagine. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't think like one, says the company's U.S. CMO, Hugh Dineen. "How does a 150 year old company stay in the game? It's the same thing in terms of how you think about marketing. Our customer is dynamic, and so must we be."Hugh Dineen joined Shareen Pathak on this week’s episode of Making Marketing to discuss the digital side of best in class marketers, why advertising is overblown, and how enlisting mid-sized influencers ("not the Kardashians") is the way to go.

When's the last time a shoe company made you feel all warm inside? Atoms is looking to do that. Its two founders moved from Pakistan to the United States to craft shoes with a personal touch, not solely in their customization -- they come in quarter sizes, and you can get slightly different measurements for each foot since "most people have shoe size difference between their left and right foot," co-founder Waqas Ali says -- but in the hand-written notes and other inviting customer engagement methods.Sidra Qasim and Waqas Ali joined Shareen Pathak on this week’s episode of Making Marketing to discuss how the couple plans to keep that personal touch as their company grows (it scored $8.1 million in Series A funding earlier this year).