We asked our reporters, who play so well with others, to choose a favorite story from 2024 by a Retail Brew colleague.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour may have clocked more than $2 billion in ticket sales, but her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, became a money spinner for a relatively small DTC brand called Popflex this past summer, as Erin Cabrey reported.

Following Swift’s appearance in a YouTube video wearing a Popflex purple skort, the item quickly sold out. In May, Popflex reported a 700% jump in sales, and received over 10,000 pre-orders for the singer’s purple outfit. For Popflex founder and CEO Cassey Ho, a Swiftie no less, the moment was both cathartic, but also chaotic, as dupes of the item started to gain popularity on TikTok.

Ho’s ultimate support came from Swift’s fans.

As more dupes go up, Ho said she’s beginning to see more Swifities support her: “That is strength in numbers. I don’t have that, like, Taylor Swift has that.” Ultimately, Ho said that while the new eyes on the brand won’t change her approach to the business or her designs, she hopes the invisible string between her and Swift’s experiences will have an impact on duping.

This is a story that covers a laundry list of things this retail reporter would love to write about. In one banger of a piece, Erin covers it all—Swiftie things, activewear, virality, dupes, and more importantly, respect for the art—and does so with ease and fluidity.

Swift’s Eras Tour may have ended with the singer tearing up, but this story left this reporter with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Read the original story: Taylor Swift wore this brand’s $60 activewear skort. Here’s what happened next.—VC

In May, Erin also made the trek from NYC to a factory in Danbury, Connecticut, for a firsthand look at how LesserEvil produces its organic popcorn:

When you enter LesserEvil’s 33,000-square-foot snack factory in Danbury, Connecticut, the smell of freshly popped popcorn hits you immediately. That scent is quickly followed by the sight of the snack everywhere: flowing through machines, filling bins, and being scooped up by hands (gloved, of course) to steal a taste.

…The organic snack brand’s growth has been a slow burn, but the major aspect of the business that helped it achieve $100 million in sales and 35,000 points of distribution—actually, “the only way I could figure out how to keep it alive,” CEO Charles Coristine said—has been self-manufacturing.

Coristine guided Retail Brew through a tour of its factory to show us the journey from kernel to bag and share the unique processes that set its snacks apart.

Read the whole story here.—EC

It’s not all about us. Here are the 10 non-Retail Brew stories readers clicked the most from our newsletters this year:

• Amazon Introduces Low-Cost Grocery Delivery Subscription for Prime Members and Customers Using EBT (Amazon)
• Conn’s, a 134-year-old home goods retailer, is closing 70 stores (CNN Business)
• Why do tables only get one drink menu? (Marketplace)
• Mind Brain Emotion: From Harvard labs to lucrative Amazon side hustle (CNBC)
• Two major US chain restaurants could combine and share dining spaces (CBS News)
• Building Inclusive Spaces: Starbucks Announces New Accessibility Guidelines for its US Store Portfolio (Starbucks)
• Walmart to cut jobs at headquarters, relocate others (Yahoo Finance)
• You Don’t Need to ‘Decant’ Your Groceries (Eater)
• Wayfair’s CEO Wants Staff to Work Harder. Your Boss Probably Agrees. (the Wall Street Journal)
• Inside Oreo’s limited-edition product strategy (Modern Retail)