brooklyn beckham is about to be a CPG founder

i'm nervous

QUICK HITS

• How once red-hot watch brands are battling a sales slump

• Instagram launches restrictive ‘Teen Accounts’ amid scrutiny

• ‘The Sims’ movie from Loki director Kate Herron lands at Amazon

• South Korea to build a Hollywood towWoo K-Pop and K-Drama fans

• Donald Trump has formally launched his family's crypto project, World Liberty Financial

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• Every Graza launch begs the question, could this too be better with a little Extra Virgin Oil? They partnered with Rind Snacks on sweet and salty Granola I’ll never get to try.

  

• Judd Apatow & Steven Spielberg are developing a movie called Cola Wars, about Pepsi’s David and Goliath struggle for the “hearts, minds, and taste buds of the world”. Hot.

• Anytime I see MrBeast in the news these days, I get so anxious, like I’m waiting to read that something really bad has happened. Actually, I am waiting to read that something really bad has happened because that whole situation is such a mess right now. Someone who’s close to his team told me this week that a pretty big MrBeast scandal is bubbling up and everything might go to shit soon. But till then, he, Logan Paul, and KSI have teamed up to create Lunchy, a Lunchables competitor. The grab-and-go “better-for-you lunch option” will include a Feastables bar and a Prime beverage in every box and will launch with three options: Turkey Stack ‘Ems, Pizza, and Fiesta Nachos. Logan Paul’s Prime Hydration is currently a defendant in a class-action suit accusing Prime of feeding kids "inordinately high" levels of caffeine. MrBeast is suing his ghost kitchen partner over “inedible” MrBeast Burgers. That’s all I’ll say on the issue.

• Update: MrBeast’s production company and Amazon are being sued for alleged harassment of contestants on his reality show. Literally saw this as I was about to hit send.

• Brooklyn Beckham and wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham, refuse to be Hollywood’s most unemployed nepo babies, so they’re launching a brand. (Well, Brooklyn is. Nicola is still recovering from the Lola movie fiasco, bless her. Who knew people would get so upset about a billionaire heiress making poverty porn?!) The brand is called Cloud23, and because I know Brooklyn fancies himself a chef, and the words "heat," "spice," and "flavor" came up, I think we’re about to get a new food brand. Hot sauce, maybe? Dips? Spices? David Beckham, in the comments, is soooo excited. And so am I.

• Bella Hadid method dressing around New York as the girlfriend of a Texan professional horseman because she’s the girlfriend of a Texan professional horseman will always be my Roman Empire.

  

• Other Western themed stuff on my feed include: Kacey Musgrave’s new collection with Reformation, the Unwell Tour theme, and Paige Lorenzo in Wyoming with Elwood.

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  A post shared by @spaceykacey

• Does anyone even do cardio at the gym anymore? Apparently not. Data from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association shows that kettlebells, free weights, and walking are the fastest-growing gym activities, while the stair climb machine, resistance machines, and elliptical are declining. So much to unpack here. Somewhere between the pandemic and the wellness boom, everyone and their mother decided that health meant strength. It was more important to be lean than to be thin. Who needs a BBL when you have discipline? Enter a new generation of fitness influencers, the proteinization of everything, and way too many TikToks about a great exercise routine being the ultimate depression cure. We're still in this era, but whatever changes the Ozempic rush will bring are fast on the horizon. Demand for unique, personalized fitness is gaining ground, and the most innovative gyms are finding ways to meet this need. Boutique fitness classes like Pure Barre and Orange Theory are finding success, and it’s always interesting to observe people’s over-identification with CrossFit or Pilates. (Where did all the yoga girls go?) But I’m most interested in the gyms creating tailored offerings for Longevity, or for GLP-1 users, like Equinox and Continuum Club are doing.

  Pandora Sykes
  left a comment on my last post saying the Ozempic era in fashion is so much worse than the 'heroin chic' one. What starts in fashion bleeds to culture, and any GLP-1 user will tell you muscle loss is a major side effect. Ergo, strength training isn’t going anywhere, just more specialized.

• Sam Nazarian went from reality TV star to owning a portfolio of nightclubs, restaurants, and boutique hotels. His latest project is The Estate, a new wellness-focused collection of hotels, residences, and preventive medicine centers co-founded with motivational speaker and author Tony Robbins. The Estate plans to open 15 hotels and residences and 10 longevity centers by 2030, with hotels and residences in St. Kitts, northern Italy, Switzerland, and the UK countryside slated for 2026. Membership starts at $35,000 a year. Nazarian told Bloomberg that he’s not building medical hotels; he’s building “luxury hotels with a functional preventive medical component to them”. The fact that he sees hospitality brands like Aman, Auberge, and One&Only as potential competitors is telling. This year, I’ve written about the rise of luxury wellness retreats, luxury wellness brands, new full body scan companies, and cryogenic freezing. Wellness and longevity means very different things depending on your tax bracket. The fact that in my twenty-five years, health and wellness has gone from "eat your vegetables, drink lots of water, exercise daily" to whatever is happening now, is always on my mind.

• This Francis Ford Coppola Megalopolis movie is becoming quite the PR mess. It better be so good.

• Is Nikki Haley about to be the Republican Ezra Klein? I don’t know. But I do know she’s having one hot election season. Earlier this month, she took a role as Vice Chair on Edelman’s Global Advisory consultancy focused on public and government affairs. Now, she’s joining SiriusXM in a deal to host a new weekly politics show analyzing the week’s most significant headlines– including the upcoming election, U.S and world politics, and even some music and entertainment. All I wanted was for someone to talk $,butnoonetalked$. I know it’s nowhere near apples to apples, but now I want to see those Nikki Haley vs Alex Cooper deals side by side!

• The Times reported that Air Mail is exploring a sale, again. Earlier this year, Standard Investment, a private fund founded by a billionaire roofing company, was in talks to acquire them for $50 million. The deal fell through, but in recent weeks, former Vanity Fair editor and AirMail founder Graydon Carter hired boutique investment bank Raine Group to explore a sale after receiving interest from potential buyers. Per the Times article, AirMail currently has 500,000 newsletter subscribers. Carter told Semafor last year that they had 300,000 paying subscribers. It’s hard to know where AirMail sits in the larger media landscape. AirMail content is elite, niche, and gossipy. It’s usually fun, but seldom relevant, which I guess is perfect for a publication that doesn’t aim to reach a lot of people, just the right ones.

  

• i-D Magazine hired the former VP of creative and content at Ssense as their new editor in chief. I love this. Thom Bettridge also previously held roles in 032c, Interview, and Highsnobiety. I know Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner didn’t buy i-D just to run it the way magazines have always been run. I’m so excited to see what they make of the brand. Already, they’re bringing back print on a biannual basis (as is every magazine, to be fair), and I have a feeling one of the reasons Thom got the gig was because of his experience at Ssense, working at the intersection of commerce and content. Same thing goes for Willa Bennet, who just left Highsnobiety to be EIC of Seventeen and Cosmopolitan. Publishers have been trying to marry content, commerce, and culture forever—and with varying success. 

• The best thing I’ve read this week is Lucas Shaw’s interview with Disney’s Entertainment Chair, Dana Walden. In July 2023, Disney+ and Hulu accounted for 5.6% of viewing. This July, that fell to 4.8%, as YouTube, Netflix, Peacock and Tubi all grew their shares over that period. If I had to diagnose Disney’s problem in a few words, I’d say: best IP, worst distribution. Between Disney+, ESPN, Hulu, and cable, it’s a mission to access Disney content—impossible to get it all in one place.

• Netflix is in talks with BuzzFeed to add Hot Ones to its livestream lineup, which will soon include NFL games and wrestling. Back in June, I wrote about how BuzzFeed was struggling to find a buyer for First We Feast, which owns Hot Ones. With an asking price of $70 million, they weren’t having much luck. Interested in whether acquisition is on the table, or just streaming rights.

• Amazon’s five days a week back to office mandate is just the beginning. Great for businesses, cities, the economy, bad for you.

• This clip of Dua Lipa talking to Anderson Cooper about the lack of personal lore in her music made me like her more. “Some people are so ruthless with their own private life, that they decide to put it all out in a song because they know that it’s gonna attract people’s attention. And for me it was always important to make music that people really loved not because I’m putting someone on blast or not because I'm doing it for the clickbait at maybe someone else’s expense…” First of all, a certain someone comes to mind. Second of all, I’m happy culture is moving away from rewarding people for excessive displays of vulnerability online. The idea that to succeed in a public space, you have to bare your life and inner self so completely has bred a lot of weird and unhealthy behaviors. I love to see people exist in stealth.

• Never have my group chats come across a more polarizing figure than Florence Pugh. I like her British Vogue cover shoot, but I wonder if there’s a point to leaving in a septum piercing for what is supposed to be a period look. I can’t wait to see her crying face in We Live In Time.

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  A post shared by @britishvogue

• Miley Cyrus is being sued for allegedly copying elements of Bruno Mars’ song in her Grammy-winning single, Flowers. I think it’s significant that I immediately knew exactly what Bruno Mars song it was when I saw this headline. The lawsuit, filed by Tempo Music Investments, also names Sony Music Publishing, Apple, Target, Walmart, and several other companies as defendants for distributing the song. Tempo is seeking damages “in an amount to be determined at trial,” or the maximum of $150,000 per infringement, which could turn out to be a pretty insane amount given how many times Flowers has been streamed. Would love to know why it took them this long to file.

• 28% of people 65 and older live by themselves, according to the 2023 Current Population Survey, compared to just one in ten in the 1950s. We already know the reasons for this—longer life spans, rising rates of divorce, smaller families, and looser family ties. But get this—after age 75, 43% of women live alone, compared with 24% of men, because men die earlier and women are less likely to get remarried after being widowed or divorced. America is going through a “gray revolution,” and so is much of the “developed” world. I’ve been thinking a lot about how this shift will change society’s consumption patterns. There are many levels to this—federal spending and wealth transfers included—but today I’m especially curious about the implications for what kinds of companies and products people should be building. I don’t think we’re seeing nearly enough innovation in the geriatric space, and I’m not sure if this is due to our culture's unending love affair with youth or a persistent misunderstanding of wealth distribution, but I know it's a miss.

• Jonathan Haidt, who really wants you to take away your kid’s smartphone, partnered with The Harris Poll to survey 1,006 Gen Z adults about their social media use and its effects. What they found is what I expected they’d find:

  • Over 60% spend at least four hours a day on social media, with 23% saying spending seven or more hours each day 

  • 60% said it has a negative impact (vs. 32% who say it has a positive impact)

  • 52% said social media has benefited their lives, and 29% said it has hurt them personally. 

  • Almost half wish TikTok and X didn’t exist, but YouTube and Netflix showed strong sentiment.

• Violet Grey returns back to sender—freed from the clutches of Coupang, by way of Farfetch. I haven’t written much about the whole Farfetch bankruptcy saga, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been following. Back in 2022, luxury beauty retailer Violet Grey was acquired by Farfetch for $50 million, as part of their beauty expansion. At the time, Violet Grey was generating around $20 million in sales, having previously raised over $30 million from investors, including Shiseido. Two years later, Farfetch had flown too close to the sun, and South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang purchased them in a deal that included a $500 million bridge loan that helped Farfetch avoid bankruptcy but essentially wiped out all of its equity holders. (There’s an ongoing court case about this!) Two days ago, a post on Violet Grey’s Instagram announced that the company has been “returned to sender.” BoF reported that Cassandra Grey was able to buy back her company with help from investor Sherif Gurgis, who will now be her partner.

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  A post shared by @violetgrey

• BlackRock and Microsoft plan to launch a $30 billion fund to invest in AI infrastructure. Their new partnership, through BlackRock’s recently acquired Global Infrastructure Partners, will focus on building data centers and energy projects to address rising AI demands. Microsoft and Abu Dhabi backed MGX will be general partners in the fund, and Nvidia will advise on factory design and integration. “Mobilizing private capital to build A.I. infrastructure like data centers and power will unlock a multi-trillion-dollar long-term investment opportunity,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. They’re not the only ones making plays in this space. Earlier this year, Silver Lake led a $9.2 billion equity round for Vantage Data Centers, and General Atlantic bought the London-based infrastructure investor Actis.

• Tesla shelled out $500,000 for Elon Musk’s security in the first two months of 2024. In contrast, Apple spent $820,000 last year to protect Tim Cook, and Amazon pays $1.6 million a year for Jeff Bezos’ security. I found The Times’ report on Elon Musk’s ballooning security detail pretty sad. Jack Dorsey used to walk around SF without any bodyguard, and this guy can’t even go to the bathroom at X alone. “‘The probability that a homicidal maniac will try to kill you is proportionate to how many homicidal maniacs hear your name,” he said. “So they hear my name a lot—I’m like, ‘OK, I’m on the list,’ you know.’” I do not pity him—he really could just shut up and be rich. But it makes me curious about how Elon views his self-appointed role in society, which is obviously coming at such a personal cost to his freedom.