Holiday Sales Poised to Jump, eSports Raises $50M, RVs Booming, Male Wellness Marketing, StitchFix UX
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Retail Holiday Sales Poised to Jump on U.S. Job-Market Boom
What Slowdown? Holiday Sales Seen Jumping as Job Market Booms. Holiday retail sales will increase by 4.5% to 5% to more than $1.1 trillion this year as a strong U.S. job market offsets concerns about an economic slowdown and the trade war with China.
PlayVS picks up $50 million Series C to build out high school esports – TechCrunch
PlayVS, the platform that allows high school students to compete on varsity esports teams through their school, has today announced the close of a $50 million Series C led by existing investor NEA. Battery Ventures, Dick Costolo and Adam Bain of 01 Advisors, Sapphire Sport, Michael Zeisser, Dennis …
PlayVS launched in April of 2018 under founder and CEO Delane Parnell, who believes that the opportunity of esports is fundamentally broken without high school leagues.
These states include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington D.C.
When vanlife breaks down.
The comeback is as much due to millennials as it is to a retiring generation of baby boomers: Of 78.8 million households that hit the great outdoors at least once in 2018, the kids routinely blamed for their poor adulting skills and love of fancy toast made up 41 percent of campers.
“Ultimately, you take a house and put it on a chassis and drive it around—it’s extremely challenging to make a product that doesn’t need to be tweaked,” says Wheeler, who notes that Airstream runs 28 separate inspections as RVs move down the assembly line.
How the wellness industry markets to men – Glossy
Men's wellness ads commonly use humor and visual euphemisms to make subjects like hair loss less uncomfortable, compared to macho-images from a decade ago that prized shirtless hunks and most-interesting-man personalities. Now, these brands say, men can just be themselves.
Their ads commonly use humor and visual euphemisms to make subjects like hair loss less uncomfortable, compared to macho images from a decade ago that prized shirtless hunks and most-interesting-man personalities.
Being interested in wellness no longer became an issue of preventing illness and protecting health , but a lifestyle predicated on the idea of personal optimization, physical performance (and appearance) and mental acuity through the use of creams, lotions and ingestible supplements.
‘A bank for the new economy’: How Clearbanc is powering the DTC ecosystem | Modern Retail
As Facebook and Google ads, the bread-and-butter of many direct-to-consumer brands’ customer acquisition efforts, become more expensive, there’s also been a rise in companies eager to give money to…
But the fact that Clearbanc focuses solely on e-commerce companies shows both how quickly the DTC and subscription e-commerce economy has grown, and how hungry these brands are for cash.
This was a small, invite-only program where Clearbanc paid the fees for this experimental spend so companies like Bokksu can test and ideally unlock new channels risk-free.”
The Strava challenge Tracksmith fans need to know about
Especially if you’re running the Berlin Marathon…
The independent Amerian running brand have teamed up with Strava, giving you the chance to get 20% off their entire collection from 30th September to 27th October.
Tracksmith describe the challenge as “the long run is a weekly ritual that encourages us to reflect on where we are today and where we want to be in the future.
Odell Beckham Jr. turns his on-field watch wearing into a sponsorship deal with Daniel Wellington
OBJ says, "There is always a method to the madness"
Beckham hints that the deal is not random, talking to reporters on the subject saying, "There is always a method to the madness."
No word yet on what watch, if any, he will wear in the Browns Week 3 game against Los Angeles Rams, but there is a decent chance it will be a Daniel Wellington original.
Physical Stores Are Back, Again
Brands are struggling to strike a balance between the real and digital worlds.
When the internet made it possible to own and operate a store online, it looked like the end of the physical brick-and-mortar retail space.
An entire industry has sprung up to help manage the conversion from online to "IRL" - in real life.
“Growth Hacking” isn’t the goal: how StitchFix approaches onboarding
“Going through your onboarding flow feels like a medical form. I’m giving so much information, what am I getting in return?” —…
We envision a world where our onboarding is delightful, highly personalized, trustworthy, and efficient — while still maintaining minimum quantity of inputs needed to result in a successful first fix.
This means taking both quant and qual approaches to understanding customer segments that do and don’t convert well across some of these dimensions: Price sensitivity, demographic, channel, size, wardrobe goals/Jobs, age, device type etc.
Singapore Airlines, one of the most ritzy airlines in the world, is partnering with a high-tech urban farm to make sure it serves the best meal on every flight. Take a look inside the futuristic operation.
Singapore Airlines partnered with AeroFarms, an urban farm in Newark that uses "aeroponic" farming to grow crops for farm-to-plane dining.
Amazon Launched a Brand With Lady Gaga to Show Off
Amazon, together with singer Lady Gaga, launched a beauty line Haus Laboratories. The first major beauty brand sold exclusively on Amazon. Pushed by the Amazon marketing efforts on Prime Day, the brand became the number one best-seller in the Makeup category by the end of the event. By launching a brand with Lady Gaga, Amazon is showing what it can do for other brands too.
Nonetheless, as September 17th approached, it began to rise in ranks again as shoppers previously unwilling to wait months for delivery were happy to get it sooner.
Amazon has pushed Haus Laboratories more aggressively than Belei, but the Lady Gaga brand also has a unique product, hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, as well as a celebrity behind it.