Happy Friday. Q4 and the holidays are here for retail, and it promises to be as crazy as ever. When the dust settles, take The Brew’s Analytics Accelerator. It rolls out in January and will teach you how to make sense of the Q4 numbers and make you a key part of your business (even during hard times). Click here to lock in your seat.
In today’s edition:
—Maeve Allsup, Andrew Adam Newman, Max Knoblauch
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Bored Breakfast Club
The non-fungible token frenzy of 2021 may be behind us, but apparently nobody’s told the retail world. From Nike and Adidas, to Starbucks and Lacoste, brands are betting big on NFTs.
Many of today’s projects are going further than pricey digital images, as brands experiment with connecting products or experiences to their tokens in the hopes of reaching beyond crypto enthusiasts and art collectors to bring their most engaged consumers into the fold.
Achille Traore, CEO of loyalty platform White Label Loyalty, said NFTs are an excellent way to bridge the gap between a brand’s products and its online engagement with consumers. “That’s probably the best use case…so you can actually take a physical product and have an experience online as well,” he told Retail Brew.
And Traore believes retail’s love affair with NFTs is here to stay. “From a business perspective, it’s almost like a new revenue stream and a new way to get closer to customers,” he said.
Getting real with Web3: One such foray into the physical side of NFTs is the Bored Breakfast Club, a subscription project delivering Los Angeles-roasted coffee to token holders. A collaboration between digital design firm Kley and Yes Plz Coffee, Bored Breakfast Club is a collection of 5,000 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
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The digital images are available on NFT marketplace OpenSea, and each time an NFT is sold, Bored Breakfast Club receives royalties from the transaction. That income is used to fill a “community coffee wallet”—as Kley founder Brad Klemmer calls it—a pool of funds that pays for packaging, roasting, and shipping coffee to token holders. Each time the wallet fills up, a new batch of coffee is shipped out.
Klemmer said the project is essentially a proof of concept for loyalty and subscription models.
Keep reading here.—MA
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As Black Friday and Cyber Monday loom in the not-so-distant distance, you need insight into shoppers’ buying behaviors. Wunderkind’s 2022 Consumer Insights Report explores how recent, uh, events have affected the way consumers interact with brands. Hint: It’s complicated.
The 2022 Consumer Insights Report takes a deep dive into what consumers value heading into the biggest shopping days of the year. Here’s what matters most:
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Flexible payment plans such as buy now, pay later are popular with nearly half of US consumers, especially in times of economic uncertainty.
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Online shopping is still huge this holiday season, with 71% of consumers planning to shop Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals online.
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Brand values like sustainability, fair wages, and diversity are more important than ever in consumer buying decisions.
Be prepared for this season’s highs and lows. Get the report here.
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Joseph Devenney/Getty Images
A package protects, promotes, and sets a product apart. This new feature looks at how iconic packages took shape.
Honey bear
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Introduced: 1957
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Design concept: Luella and Ralph Gamber
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Material: Plastic
Honey, I’m home: It all began in 1946, when Ralph Gamber, an Armour meat salesman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, returned home with three beehives he bought for $27 at an auction. Not an ideal scenario, perhaps, for his wife, Luella, who was allergic to bee stings and bee pollen, but she still signed on with their plan to start a modest side business: Dutch Gold Honey.
By 1957, the honey business was ticking along, although not so well that Ralph didn’t keep working as a meat salesman. One evening they had another couple over to dinner, Rita and Woodrow Miller, also beekeepers, who were visiting from California. The conversation turned to the topic of whether there was a honey package that might get more—what else?—buzz.
“We just figured a bear likes honey, why not a bear of honey?” Ralph Gamber told the Associated Press in 1997. The ursine-honey association was particularly resonant because the legacy of A.A. Milne, who’d written four popular books featuring Winnie the Pooh, had been celebrated when he died the previous year, in 1956, at age 74.
The Gambers acknowledged that Winnie the Pooh was an inspiration, but as they began designs on the container, they didn’t want to replicate the character.
“We made it look as different as possible,” Ralph told AP. “We thought we’d be sued.” (Not that it would have been a defense in court, but the original honey bear, inexplicably, had six toes.)
Keep reading here.—AAN
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ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
“More than 2,000 unionized Starbucks employees staged a one-day strike on Red Cup Day yesterday. The walkout—which the union says was meant to get the company to bargain with workers in good faith—was nationwide, with more than 100 stores in 25 states participating,” writes Morning Brew’s Max Knoblauch:
Since last year, 264 Starbucks stores have voted in favor of unionizing under the Starbucks Workers Union, but the company has not agreed to a contract with any of them.
The “Red Cup Rebellion,” as striking workers referred to the walkout, was the first nationwide action taken by unionized Sbux workers to disrupt the company’s operations.
Read the whole story here on Morning Brew.
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Capitalize this! Did you know up to 82% of small businesses fail due to poor cash-flow management? Accessing growth-boosting capital can be tricky. Ampla is here to help. They provide capital that scales as you grow through a Growth Line of Credit with no hidden fees. Get capital in as little as 24 hours here.
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Today’s top retail reads.
Good deal: Consumer spending continues to rise despite inflation, but retailers will have to go beyond a good product to keep the customer happy. (the New York Times)
Tipping point: A new survey suggests consumers are tipping less than usual and others would like to do away with it altogether as costs rise. (Barron’s)
Fresh targets: Jonathan Akeroyd, the newly minted CEO at Burberry, plots a £5 billion growth strategy. (Vogue Business)
Ruff year? At Retail Brew’s The SKU, Bolt’s vice president of Customer Experience sat down with PuppySpot’s chief information officer to discuss e-commerce elevation and what retailers need on their radar for 2023. Read all about it here.* *This is sponsored advertising content.
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Alibaba said 15% of its delivery areas experienced disruptions as a result of Covid.
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Farfetch’s Q3 earnings were hurt by lockdowns in China and the closure of its Russian operations.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said layoffs will carry on in 2023.
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Gap’s Q3 earnings beat Wall Street estimates amid increased consumer demand for formal wear.
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Macy’s and Kohl’s Q3 sales declined as consumers postponed holiday shopping.
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Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown is taking a leave of absence, according to an internal staff email.
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Three of the stories below are real...and one is most definitely not. Can you spot the fake?
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Burger King in France sent its customers mean texts as part of a campaign to raise awareness against bullying.
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Oatly has launched a Thanksgiving emotional-support hotline for plant-based eaters.
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Coors Light has introduced a new nail polish that changes color if your beer is sufficiently cold.
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Beyond Meat is selling an all-in-one plant-based turkey that comes with mashed potatoes, mulled wine, and pumpkin pie all blended together.
Keep reading for the answer.
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Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.
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We wouldn’t really call a mishmash of turkey, pumpkin pie, and wine altogether a real Thanksgiving meal, would you?
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Written by
Maeve Allsup, Andrew Adam Newman, and Max Knoblauch
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