The Modern Retail Podcast

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.

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.