FTB—For the Boys. It’s not just a rallying cry; it’s also a strategy to rope in a potentially dedicated set of customers.

Mizzen+Main is a digitally native menswear brand that has matured in the TikTok era and is using all the online tools at its disposal. The company, founded in 2012, has a social media strategy of not explicitly promoting its products but rather creating content that appeals to its target demographic: men.

• Specifically, dudes with white-collar jobs in their late 20s and early 30s who don’t want to wear Peter Millar because “that’s [their] dad’s brand,” or don’t want to wear Chubbies because they’re past their college days, Bethany Muths, the company’s chief marketing officer, explained to Retail Brew.
• Mizzen+Main’s recent social media success has also coincided with a retail expansion that led to three more physical spaces opening last year, bringing its total to 10.
• In 2022, Muths said the e-commerce team beat its revenue goals by 50% and then roughly 20% the next year.

“It’s great that we can bring a new customer into the brand, and it’s great that they purchase from us once, but I think the key is, ‘How do you get them to continue doing repeat purchases, continue to engage with the brand, open our emails, [and] correspond back and forth with us?’” she said.

Keep reading here.—KM

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As techies flooded into Las Vegas on Monday for the Consumer Electronics Show, market research firm Circana offered a sobering reminder that the tech industry is still in a slump.

According to data shared with attendees, total dollars spent on tech products in the US declined 10% in 2023, and just 12% of tech categories experienced dollar and unit growth.

“It’s been a tough year,” Paul Gagnon, vice president and industry advisor at Circana, told an audience of journalists, tech workers, and enthusiasts. “I don’t have to share with the industry that sales have been down.”

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Circana took a glass-half-full approach, highlighting those tech products that did perform well and exploring what they could mean for the industry.

“The big heavyweight categories have seen some decline, but there are pockets of growth within this,” Gagnon said.

Keep reading here.—AV

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Before landing her current gig as CEO of photography product retailer Shutterfly last year, Sally Pofcher held executive roles at Gap, Paper Source, and most recently, children’s brand Hanna Andersson.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? My job as CEO is to make the consumer experience easier, better, fun, and more interesting. When you deconstruct that, it’s everything from sourcing raw materials overseas, to making products in factories, to shipping to consumers’ homes. It’s delivering a site experience that’s easy, compelling, frustration free—and resolving that for the customer if it’s not. It’s bringing the right people into the organization with the right talent and mindset, and then nurturing an environment where those people show up invigorated, invested, and proud to do their best work. And ultimately, it’s assuming all risks involved (financial, privacy and security, health and welfare) and delivering all that economically in a way that drives growth and properly rewards both the people doing the work and the shareholders who’ve invested in the company.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? With my years in consulting, operations, and executive leadership, my profile leans toward operator with a financial background. And that’s true! But what you may not see is my deep passion for design, aesthetics, and storytelling. I find equal parts joy in operational efficiencies as in font, art direction, and product curation.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? At Shutterfly, we have gems that are incredible, like Make My Book, where customers can send a set of photos to our team who makes the photo book in 24 hours for free.

Keep reading here.—EC