Away Goes Soft, PopSugar Acquired, Wendy's Breakfast Wars, Teen Spending Falls, Tmall Luxury Transformation, Open Source Commercialization, Barry Diller's Underdog Assets
Covering commerce daily from Amazon to Zulily.
Away Rolls Out Soft-Side Luggage in a Quest to Gain More Market Share
Part of what’s alluring about the soft-side luggage—in addition to it representing a product that Away customers have asked for—is the ability to expand the luggage, which Kalvaria says gives consumers a chance to pack something extra or stay another night wherever they are.
To convey this “expandability” feature, Away’s rolling out a “One More Night” experiential activation in five hotels across New York, Austin, Los Angeles, Toronto and London.
Group Nine acquires PopSugar – TechCrunch
Group Nine — the digital media company formed by the merger of Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo and Seeker — just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire women’s lifestyle publisher PopSugar.
Group Nine — the digital media company formed by the merger of Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo and Seeker — just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire women’s lifestyle publisher PopSugar.
When we started Group Nine almost three years ago by combining Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo, and Seeker, we foresaw the impending consolidation of the industry and set out to create a model for the next-generation media company with significant scale, deeply loyal and engaged audiences, multiplatform expertise, and highly diversified revenue.
Wendy's breakfast rollout will be a brutal billion-dollar battle 'not for the faint of heart'
The last time Wendy's attempted to launch breakfast, McDonald's strangled the launch before it went national.
For Wendy's to break even, it will need to capture "at least $1 billion of breakfast sales from its quick service peers, whom we expect will fight back vigorously with discounts, innovation and advertising," BTIG's Peter Saleh wrote in a note to investors last week.
"Wendy's, in making another run at the breakfast daypart, is walking into arguably the most challenging market share battleground in the restaurant sector – but with critical lessons learned from past attempts and what we believe is a more resolute franchise group," Farmer wrote last week.
As market watchers and economists debate whether U.S. growth is slowing and a recession is near, teens are pulling back spending, according to a biannual survey from Piper Jaffray.
As market watchers and economists debate whether U.S. growth is slowing and a recession is near, teens are pulling back spending.
In a nod to both the athletic trends and desire for '90s fashion, Champion, owned by Hanesbrands , cracks the top 10 for the first time.
From hosting runway shows at the world’s top fashion weeks to launching a new joint venture with Net-a-Porter, China’s top B2C e-commerce platform Tmall is determined to brand itself as a bona fide online luxury shopping destination.
This comes after an influx of American accessible luxury labels to the platform starting in July, with Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Coach and Kate Spade all launching Tmall flagships.
Brands under the umbrella of Net-a-Porter’s parent company Richemont can also be found in the luxury e-tailer’s new Tmall store, including Cartier, Panerai, Jaeger LeCoultre, Chloé, Dunhill, Montblanc and IWC Schaffhausen.
Is Anyone Going to Get Rich off of Email Newsletters?
Venture capital has finally come for the least sexy communication style.
On Substack’s website, a history of the email newsletter runs through the stories of seven men—including the famous conservative political columnist Andrew Sullivan, the business analyst Ben Thompson, the gaming critic Jim Sterling, and the podcast-industry commentator Nick Quah—as well as one woman, Jessica Lessin, who founded the subscription-based tech publication The Information in 2013.
Carrie Frye, a founding editor of The Awl and author of a “writerly advice” TinyLetter called Black Cardigan, described the moment in retrospect to The New Yorker , recalling how “writers—particularly female writers—had said, O.K., I’m going to make an Internet on which my essays go out in pneumatic tubes to just who I want them to go to, and no one else.”
Open Source: From Community to Commercialization
We are in the midst of an open source renaissance. But how do you turn an open source project into a business? a16z's Peter Levine and Jennifer Li cover the complete go-to-market from community management to enterprise sales.
A wave of acquisitions, including of my own startup XenSource by Citrix (not to mention MySQL by Sun and then by Oracle), has also made open source a key component of large tech companies.
The next generation of business models may include ad-supported OSS, as when a large proprietary enterprise supports open source projects; data-driven revenue; and crypto tokens, which monetize blockchain.
Most tech billionaires are precocious revolutionaries. Then there’s Barry Diller. The former Hollywood mogul has ground his way to a $4.2 billion technology fortune, one unsexy spinoff at a time—and at 77 he is about to start afresh.
Resting on a curvy, arched sofa in his expansive office, the 77-year-old Diller has pleasantly meandered from chatting about the champagne-flute-shaped floating island he’s building in the Hudson River to throwing barbs at Donald Trump to digressing into the French Revolution to describing IAC/InterActiveCorp, his evolving $20 billion internet assemblage.
The pics in question documented a six-week summer yachting holiday in Europe on which Diller was accompanied by his fashion designer wife, Diane von Furstenberg, and a carousel of celebrity pals, from singer Katy Perry and actors Orlando Bloom and Bradley Cooper to Oprah and Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez.
Can the CEO of Postmates Deliver for Investors?
Judging by the response to recent stock offerings from consumer tech companies, Postmates will likely face a skeptical reception for its planned IPO. While the on-demand meal delivery service has earned a passionate following in places like Los Angeles, the company is unprofitable at a moment ...
While the on-demand meal delivery service has earned a passionate following in places like Los Angeles, the company is unprofitable at a moment when public investors have soured on money-losing tech ventures.
Yet Lehmann has also been a polished public pitchman for Postmates who has styled himself an innovator in his category, spearheading autonomous delivery robots and a subscription program later copied by competitors.
How this wearable tech startup scored a starring role in Joe Rogan’s Sober October challenge
Fans can follow how no booze affects the sleep, exercise, and recovery time of comedians and podcasters Rogan, Tom Segura, Bert Kreischer, and Ari Shaffir.
That was the one of the opening anecdotes on Joe Rogan’s annual Sober October podcast this week, serving as an announcement that for the third year in a row, the host and his comic pals would be living clean this month.
Yet as Sober October evolves into an annual event and excuse for the four comedian friends to interact and compete and bust each other’s chops, it is now an ideal platform for the brave brand that can credibly join the conversation between the performers and their ardent fans.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio says his 'most valuable' principle is meditation
Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, swears by transcendental meditation.
Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates , has become well-known for promoting so-called radical transparency, the notion that workplaces should be open about people’s mistakes and weaknesses.
It’s fitting that a hedge fund titan proclaimed his devotion to meditation at one of the country’s most notable tech conferences: Both Wall Street and Silicon Valley are obsessed with the practice.
What’s in a role: Jojo Feld, Senior Director of Buying at Food52
Content companies are well-positioned to move into commerce. Jojo Feld shares how Food52 builds its shop by listening to its community.
To do so, content businesses rely on their buyers to connect the dots — working with vendors and collecting customer feedback to make the vision for a shop a reality.
A strong Customer Care lead would be a good first hire once you’ve launched your ecommerce business because you want someone who understands the brand and can effectively communicate what the end-customer feedback is.