ASK THE EXPERTS

Fast Growing Pains

Several brands riding 2020’s consumer trend tailwinds have fewer than 10 full-time team members, but work with a cadre of freelance or contracted specialists.  

Small but mighty, but stretched thin 

Retail Brew spoke with eight brands that are 1) on upward growth trajectories and 2) operating with the leanest of headcounts. Every brand we interviewed has plans to increase hiring this year. 

It’s a necessity. “My intention has always been to grow a small, deliberate team,” Karen Young, founder of shave brand Oui the People, told Retail Brew. But “we saw about 2x growth between 2019 and 2020. Managing that as a small brand was pretty insane to figure out.”

“There's only so much you can do in a day sustainably, and we felt the strain pretty bad during the holidays,” said Andrew Goble, cofounder of one-year-old, two full-time-teamed loungewear brand Jambys. “So we're already at the point where we know adding members to the team will make an immediate impact.”

The missing LinkedIn 

Fast-growing brands face a choice more critical than picking a logo font: when and where to staff up their teams. Across the companies we spoke to, two common considerations emerged.

In-demand roles: The job functions that cropped up most in our conversations included content creation and customer experience. 

• “DTC growth has traditionally been fueled by paid ads, but slashed advertising budgets over the last year have forced brands to get creative,” Aja Singer, author of DTC branding newsletter For the Love, told us. So, she said, they’re turning to content.
• And at Huron (personal care) and PetPlate (prepped pet meals), customer experience hires are priorities, founders Max Mullenax and Renaldo Webb told Retail Brew. 

Potential returns: Personal care brand Black Wolf is transitioning from a seven-figure to eight-figure business, founder Sam Lewkowict told Retail Brew. So, if a new hire can “increase something’s performance by half a percent, that’s hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of value,” he said. 

In an exception to the rule, home and apparel brand Hill House Home founder Nell Diamond told us its hiring plan includes roles across all functions. 

Looking ahead…Overall brand expansions—like, say, partnering with a retailer—require extra hands on deck. Kulfi Beauty founder Priyanka Ganjoo is currently in Sephora’s Accelerate Program, and told us signing on with the retailer post-graduation could be “our next big milestone for hiring.” 

And at Oui the People, “Even though we have a great amount of interest from retailers, we're not going there until we have the capacity and the team to manage that in a more seamless way,” Young said.

For more: Our experts had extra insights about recruiting resources, building company culture, and ID’ing people priorities. You can read the full panel’s thoughts here.

LOGISTICS

Down with the Ship

Los Angeles’s biggest port is more jam packed than its pre-pandemic nightclubs on a Saturday night. Increased demand is bottlenecking ports, gumming up supply chains, and delaying product deliveries for retailers. 

Anchored down: The port gridlock has created logistical hurdles for several retail segments. 

• Peloton lost 12 days in expected supply time as a ship idled outside the Port of Los Angeles from late December to early January. 
• Steve Madden slashed its Q1 sales expectation by $30 million due to supply chain problems.
• Crocs CEO Andrew Rees told analysts during a recent earnings call that getting merchandise through trans-Pacific ports is “really challenging right now.”

Taking flight: Some retailers, like Anova Culinary, are looking to the skies to bypass the logjam. While air cargo is typically more expensive, rates have tapered off since the early days of the pandemic. 

Looking ahead…Experts told the NYT shoppers will likely spend their newly issued stimulus checks on clothing and appliances, which could further clog ports. But as reopenings continue, and consumers spend more on experiences and less on products, the delays could subside. 

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LAUNCHPAD

New Brands, Familiar Trends

Welcome to the third edition of Launchpad: our monthly section introducing startups attempting to break through saturated retail segments.    

In inclusivity: Two new platforms are attempting to elevate apparel brands from and for underrepresented groups. 

• Black Owned Everything launched its online marketplace featuring 35 Black-owned businesses across fashion, beauty, and lifestyle. 
• Mive’s fashion marketplace uses augmented reality body measurement tech to curate clothing for shoppers of all sizes from the six brands it currently carries.

In personal care: These two brands are capitalizing on emerging self-care trends. 

• The Smith family hopes its new skincare line, Hey Humans, is received more like The Pursuit of Happyness and less like After Earth. The 99% plastic-free brand sells a range of vegan, non-toxic, and cruelty-free products.
• When Life Gives You Lemons is making metaphorical lemonade using data-driven analytics to sell makeup to acne-prone customers. 

In cannabis: Seth Rogan’s DTC weed company, Houseplant, is launching in the US, starting in California. Varying laws across states complicate scaling across the country, but that gives Houseplant time to build its brand. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• GameStop selected board member and Chewy.com founder Ryan Cohen to lead its e-comm shift. 
• Amazon is adding more local delivery centers in NYC. 
• A California bill proposes mass retailers should remove gendered children’s sections in stores.
• Albertsons is testing an automated last-mile delivery cart.

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HOT TOPIC

At the mall, it’s where band tees are the only tees. In Retail Brew, it’s where we invite readers to weigh in on a trending retail topic. 

After Texas and Mississippi nixed mask mandates over the past week, many retailers quickly made clear their mask policies would remain in place (for now). 

• Target, Starbucks, CVS, and Kroger will still require customers to wear masks.
• Albertsons, on the other hand, dropped its mandate. But it’s still encouraging customers to wear face coverings, since not all employees have access to the vaccine. 

Question for you: Should retailers continue to enforce mask wearing even if a state lifts its mandate? Cast your vote here. 

Circling back to last week: We asked what’s the best new use for underperforming malls. A majority (51%) said e-comm fulfillment, while just shy of a third (29.9%) said residential living. 

SWAPPING SKUS

Repeat customers and department store execs can’t resist “newness.” Neither can we, when the right batch of brand debut reads comes along. 

• It had to be asked: How often should companies release new products, anyway?  (Beauty Independent)
• Tale as old as 2020: A founder was ready to open her new brand, but Covid-19 delayed her plans. This first-person account is one of the most honest we’ve seen about revising a brand debut. (Business Insider)

ICYMI

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• How Three Ships Orchestrated Its US Launch from Canada
• Burlington, Dollar Tree Double Down on Store Openings
• Why DTC Brands Are Piloting Diffusion Lines at Target