The Modern Retail Podcast Digiday

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses Amazon's next move to compete with cheap marketplaces like Temu and Shein. The Information reported this week that the e-commerce giant is planning to launch a program for sellers to ship cheap goods directly from China. This week, the Fancy Food Show also took place in New York City, and we review some of the buzziest trends from the event. Finally, Walgreens announced plans to close its underperforming stores and focusing on profit-driving locations.

Babylist is making moves to be more than just a registry for soon-to-be parents.
The company has been building a media business over the last four years, becoming its fastest-growing revenue stream.
"The original business model was affiliate," said Lee Anne Grant, Babylist's chief growth officer. "So it was working with a ton of different retailers and getting paid a commission. And then, fast forward 13 years later, we are now this platform with a bunch of different offerings like health, e-commerce, content -- anything a family needs."
Grant joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about how the company has grown over the last decade. This includes growing its media business and expanding into health and wellness.
Grant joined Babylist four years ago. She began as a consultant, given the task of building the company's media business. Now, she's its chief growth officer -- overseeing new business opportunities like media and health care -- to help Babylist expand beyond its registry roots. This includes a retail concept the company opened in LA last year as well as a content business catered to its customers.
As she sees it, a company like Babylist has the potential to be a media giant. Its customers read its newsletter and seek it out for educational content. Which is to say: new parents are looking for any help they can get, and that's great news for advertisers. Alongside that power, Grant also makes sure that Babylist maintains trust with its customers."
We have pretty strict editorial guide guidelines, both for our organic editorial as well as our paid," she said. "We actually say no a good amount."
Grant sees a bunch of potential as Babylist continues to grow. "We're very much an audience company," she said. "We're not as big as Amazon, but the amount of money that new parents, expecting parents [as well as] grandma spends -- it's a big enough opportunity to keep me excited to stay here."

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff discusses what May's slowdown of U.S. retail sales could mean for consumer spending -- and, in turn, the economy. Meanwhile, Amazon aggregator Thrasio lays out its comeback plan after filing for bankruptcy. Lastly, the team talks about updates at the subscription vitamin brand Care/of, which was acquired by Bayer in 2020.

Venture studio Squared Circles has lofty plans to launch the next big health, wellness and food products.
The project first began a little over three years ago when Lukas Derksen, who hailed from the creative firm Sid Lee, began angel investing in brands alongside entrepreneurs Alexander Gilkes and Osman Khan. One of its early investments was in the hair wellness brand Nutrafol. They decided to formalize the program into an incubation studio.
Over the years, however, Squared Circles decided to take a more hands-on approach -- instead of acting as an incubator and investor for external brands, the studio is now focused on launching and scaling its own businesses. With that, the company just raised a $40 million Series A led by L Catterton.
"The pitch to the partners that we're building with in the future is: OK, how do we actually build these things all the way to launch -- and even Series A -- without actually giving up necessarily any more of the cap table people?" said co-founder Derksen. He joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about Squared Circle's growth so far.
Currently, Squared Circles has incubated two brands -- cooking oil startup Algae Cooking and skin care company Magic Molecule. It has plans to launch other brands too in spaces like "nutritious food products tailored to the GLP-1 generation" and "delivering functional medicine to children in tasty alternatives," according to its website.
According to Derksen, all of these ideas come from data. "We start very much from a consumer insight place -- and that's something that we strive for every single time," he said.
The focus now is to continue launching new products and getting them ready to market as quickly as possible. Though VC funding isn't as plentiful as it was a few years ago, Derksen said there is still an appetite for certain areas.
"The two categories that have been outspending on disproportionately are health and wellness and food and beverage," he said.

On this week’s Modern Retail Rundown, the staff starts off discussing Shein's strategy to quietly raise its prices ahead of its anticipated IPO. Meanwhile, TikTok Shop is beginning to compete with Google and other platforms by testing a new image search. Finally, a new report by The Vitamin Shoppe shows a spike in sales of nutritional supplements like protein and meal replacements thanks to the rising popularity of medications like Ozempic and Wegovy.

Most people don't think about the brand behind their disposable plates, but Repurpose is trying to change that.
The company, which is now sold in major retailers like Kroger and Costco, makes eco-friendly disposable products like plates, cups napkins, trash bags and toilet paper. While its prices are competitive, they still are at a slight premium to foam and plastic players.
"It just felt like, why couldn't this be its own little category and brand that represented a whole kind of better-for-you disposable product?" said Repurpose co-founder and CEO Lauren Gropper.
Gropper joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the 14-year-old company's growth.
While Repurpose is in most major retailers today, it took a lot of work to convince buyers. "Any of the buyers that had any experience with it in the past [were] like, 'This doesn't work -- we've tried it, so don't even bother,' said Gropper.
But after multiple news headlines around plastic disposable products hurting wildlife, more retailers began to seek out better alternatives. "We went from being in the knocking-down-every-door business to the incoming-call business," she said.
Repurpose's growth has helped it figure out a sustainable business model. The idea from the get-go was to make products that could be competitive with the likes of Dixie. While the company had very slim margins at first, volume has helped Repurpose cut down on costs.
"In the early days, we just went in with a lower margin knowing we're going to make this up as time goes on," Gropper said.