The Modern Retail Podcast

For this week's Modern Retail Podcast, co-hosts Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels were joined by Katie Thomas from the Kearney Consumer Institute to discuss how shoppers' financial stress is showing up in their shopping habits.

KCI recently released its latest Consumer Stress Index, which monitors 24,000 consumers across 12 countries. It looks not only at consumers' financial picture but also at their stress related to geopolitics and government, innovation and technology, food and the environment, and health and education.

What's different this year is that it's not just one factor causing consumers to feel stressed. It's the compounding effect of inflation, geopolitical instability and overall uncertainties.

"Put these two analyses together — historic stress levels and a population that feels starved of joy — and you get a consumer landscape that continues to defy the standard recessionary playbook," the report said.

On this week's episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, co-hosts Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels are joined by Modern Retail's platforms reporter Allison Smith to dig into why TikTok Shop is becoming a more legitimate sales channel in the eyes of bigger brands.

Less than three years old, TikTok Shop now makes up roughly 20% of all social commerce sales, according to data from eMarketer. The rest of the category is dominated by Meta. Last year, the company drove $500 million in sales during the four-day stretch from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.In response, more established legacy brands and mid-sized companies are popping up on TikTok Shop. Smith reported this March that sales from big-name brands — those with at least $30 million in annual revenue — increased 97% year-over-year on TikTok Shop.The conversation discusses:

How affiliates and discounts are powering acquisition.

What it's like operating on TikTok Shop as a big corporation versus a smaller startup.

What it takes to succeed on TikTok Shop.

It seems like every company wants to bill itself as a “lifestyle brand” these days. If a company can truly integrate itself into a customer’s lifestyle – versus just selling them a single product – they can build a more powerful connection over time. But, what does that actually mean in practice?In this episode of the Modern Retail Podcast – recording live at the Modern Retail Marketing Summit in Huntington Beach, California – Mandy Fry, co-owner and president of Southern California-based apparel brand Z Supply, talks about how she built Z Supply into a full-fledged lifestyle brand.For Fry, building Z Supply into a lifestyle brand meant first and foremost taking the company into different categories. Fry joined Z Supply in 2019, roughly six years after the brand launched. At the time, Z Supply only carried t-shirts. Fry decided to first launch loungewear. At the time, “it was a really trendy category,” Fry said. And given that many customers said they liked the soft feel of Z Supply’s t-shirts, loungewear was the next logical step.The loungewear launch came at a very fortuitous time: February 2020. The success of loungewear gave Z Supply to enter new categories like jackets, resortwear and even sunglasses.But building Z Supply into a lifestyle brand required a mindset shift. As Fry put it, building a lifestyle brand is all about meeting your core customer “at every moment of the day.”“I wanted to wake up with her in our loungewear. I wanted to go to school drop-off with her. I wanted to workout with her, I wanted to go to work with her, I wanted to go to drinks, I wanted to travel [with her].The episode also gets into:

What new category launches didn’t work

How Z Supply had to shift its marketing strategy to position itself as a lifestyle brand.

Z Supply’s retail distribution strategy (the brand sells through roughly 3,000 boutiques) and why Z Supply has largely said no to big retailers so far.

Electronic shelf labels are nothing new.

Lately, though, the topic has been making headlines as companies like Kroger and Walmart announce they'll be rolling out more of the technology across their stores. The small screens replace the paper stickers that store employees would have to replace by hand anytime there is a price change or stock change.

But this is raising concerns among grocery store workers and consumer advocates about the potential for unfair price increases. In turn, the United Food and Commercial Workers union is making a legislative push across states and in Congress to regulate what companies can and can't do regarding in-store pricing.

On this episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, special projects editor Melissa Daniels interviews lobbyists on both sides of the issue: Jason Straczewski, group vice president of government relations and political affairs at the National Retail Federation, and Ademola Oyefeso, UFCW International Vice President and Director of Legislative and Political Action.

The interviews get into why electronic shelf labels can benefit retailers because of the efficiency they provide, including increased accuracy, saved staff time and faster in-store operations. But the UFCW has argued that the technology could cost workers their jobs. Beyond that, UFCW has also raised concerns about the unilateral ability for companies to change prices, which could open the door to "surveillance pricing," or when companies change prices based on the data they have around who is shopping. There are also concerns about "algorithmic pricing," or using automation to adjust prices in real-time.

In the episode, we'll also hear about:

The legislative push UFCW is making in states and where that stands.

What existing laws already say about price gouging and consumer protection.

How this fight opens the door to concerns around companies using AI to determine pricing.

Last week, Allbirds sold for $39 million to American Exchange Group, a vast drop from the peak $4 billion valuation Allbirds had when it went public in 2021. But it’s not just Allbirds that’s dealing with decline in sales. The DTC brand is just one example of a shoe brand that stumbled in an ever-competitive market.

The Allbirds fire sale also comes at a time when many sneaker brands are on a comedown after years of growth, thanks to ongoing demand. With that news, this week’s episode takes a look at the larger state of sneakers. Companies like On and Hoka, deemed darlings just a couple of years ago, are experiencing a slowdown in sales. Meanwhile, specialty running brands like Brooks and Asics are having a moment thanks to their positioning, offering technical designs. All the while, legacy player Nike is slowly but surely regaining its top spot as revenue recovers.

To discuss these challenges many sneaker brands face, host Gabi Barkho is joined by senior reporter Julia Waldow. The duo speak about:

How footwear brands lose their way as trends come and go.

 Fierce competition from the challenger brands means incumbents like New Balance and Nike are clawing their way back to regaining market share.

 The increase in unforeseen challenges in the category, like tariffs and the rising cost of synthetic rubber.