When Alexandra Daignault first founded Sarjesa, a Canada-based maker of tea and latte powders, she produced and packaged all her products at home. Eventually, she rented space in a commercial kitchen, but as the business continued to grow, she was faced with a choice: find a third-party manufacturer or figure out how to produce on a larger scale herself.

Daignault ultimately chose to produce her own product—also known as self-manufacturing—so in 2020, Sarjesa opened a 4,000-square-foot factory. It now has five largely automated production lines and is operated by fewer than 10 employees.

The decision has paid dividends for Sarjesa, which largely avoided the supply-chain snags of recent years—though Daignault recognizes that self-manufacturing is not for everyone.

“I don’t think most people self-manufacture, and I don’t think they should,” she said. “It’s really hard to set something like this up, and I think that there are probably easier ways to do it.”

This is partly why Sarjesa is now manufacturing powders and teas for 20 other companies as well. Daignault said she wants other food startups to side-step the quandary she faced early on by making affordable, flexible manufacturing more accessible.

Keep reading here.—AV

Fa-la-la-la-look at that! It’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday, just around the corner. As every marketer knows, there’s no better time to supercharge your strategies than right here, right now.

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The earliest examples we have of storytelling are rock art drawings in Africa dating back 30,000 years, but brand storytelling—where products are promoted for their origin stories and the mission of their companies—is a decidedly more modern notion.

In 2011, brand storytelling was “very much a fringe concept” and the number of marketers listing storytelling as a skill on their LinkedIn profiles was “minuscule,” according to LinkedIn data cited by Jason Miller on the platform’s Ads Blog.

But by 2017, just six years later, 570,000 marketers on LinkedIn listed “storytelling” as a skill. And the trend has continued:

• In August, the number of marketers who added “storytelling” as a skill to LinkedIn profiles increased 22% YoY, according to LinkedIn data provided to Retail Brew.

How did brand storytelling go from obscurity to a retail marketing necessity? What brands are storytelling masters? And how do you sprinkle some of that narrative fairy dust over your brand?

Well, that’s a story in itself.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Did you hear that? That was the starting gun of the holiday hiring season.

In a few short days, Amazon announced plans to hire 250,000 workers, Target said it plans to hire 100,000 employees, and Macy’s said it would hire more than 38,000. The string of hiring announcements—Amazon’s in particular—appears to have already upended one prediction that holiday hiring would be the slowest since 2008.

Job market researcher Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated that employers would add just 410,000 new jobs this year, the fewest since 2008. The report pointed out that US companies announced just 178,500 seasonal positions as of September 19—compared to 258,201 jobs in the same period a year prior and 301,700 in 2020.

Changing the math: However, that was before Amazon announced plans for its biggest seasonal hiring wave since Challenger started tracking the data in 2012.

Keep reading here.—AV

Today’s top retail reads.

Rite sizes: Rite Aid is reportedly negotiating a debt restructuring plan that could lead to the liquidation of 400–500 stores. (the Wall Street Journal)

Amazon’s big AI investment: The e-commerce giant said it’s investing $4 billion in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic in a bid to keep pace with cloud computing rivals such as Google and Microsoft. (the New York Times)

Membership-based medicine: Costco has struck a deal with online health marketplace Sesame that will give store members access to medical care. (Bloomberg)

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Retail marketing hits and misses from the past week.

Oogie Boogie Bacardi: The liquor brand Bacardi is going all in on the spooky season, with an ad campaign and commercial that looks like an outtake from the “Thriller” music video. The company also released a horror-themed Spotify playlist and is planning to release a Halloween-inspired AR lens on Snapchat. (Bacardi on YouTube)

Ad blockers: TikTokers are taking retailers such as Kroger and Walgreens to task for placing digital advertising displays on refrigerated food doors—a practice they say is making it harder to find items. (@cinema_singularity on TikTok)

#tubegirleffect: Sabrina Bahsoon (aka “Tube Girl”) became an overnight TikTok sensation after filming herself busting a move on the London Underground during her commute. Now her subway dance routines are going viral, and brands are trying to associate themselves with Bahsoon’s message of confident commuting. One such brand is Mac Cosmetics, which Bahsoon is now plugging. (Sabrina Bahsoon on TikTok)