how much money did Alix Earle make off Prime Day?
$$$ bank $$$
i’m in PST now so NL will be coming a bit later than usual for the next two weeks :/
QUICK HITS
Remember how I told you guys that Hallmark was partnering with the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL for a new movie that's basically a bootleg version of the Taylor Swift / Travis Kelce love story? Well, the latest development is that Donna Kelce has joined the cast. She will reportedly play the manager of a Kansas City BBQ restaurant in the movie. I like this lady. Earlier this year, she partnered with Calm on a bedtime story for Mother’s Day. Anyway, you can catch the new movie on Hallmark’s new streaming platform, Hallmark+. Yes, that exists now.
Amber Rose’s speech at the Republican National Convention was not on my 2024 bingo card. But Elon Musk committing around $45 million a month to a new pro-Trump super PAC maybe should have been.
Before Matilda Djerf, we had Elsa Hosk. Elsa Hosk, who this week debuted her Erewhon Blueberry Cobbler Scandi Summer smoothie, and was tapped by Skims for their Milky Sheer collection. Loved that she used the Erewhon smoothie announcement post (this is a thing now) to plug her clothing brand, which I feel like not enough people talk about! Contemplating getting this set.
Here’s a riddle to start this newsletter: what makes the market happy but makes a company unhappy? Well, if you're Tinder’s parent company, the answer is an activist investor threatening to push for a sale because your paying customer base has steadily shrunk for six straight quarters. This is what Starboard Value, which has a stake of over 6.6% in Match, intends to do, if the company fails to turn its operations around. Share prices rose 5.7% at the news, after they’d fallen 12% this year so far. Match, for its part, said it was “relentlessly focused on executing our key initiatives, which include driving growth at Tinder, continuing Hinge’s impressive expansion, maintaining appropriate financial discipline, and returning capital to our shareholders.” I’m telling you that if they could, they’d put an end to all things Running Clubs and Pickleball. Bad for business.
Women are done aestheticizing girlhood, so now they’re aestheticizing boyhood. “The year of the girl saw women adopt Barbie-core clothing and décor, girlish hair bows, and doll-inspired beauty products. As boyhood enters the zeitgeist, though, it isn’t men who are retreading the developmental terrain of their youth… It’s women. Traditional “boyhood” is being synthesized through traditional “girlhood”; the core characteristic of which, as the girlhood discourse insisted, is aesthetic performance.” Think It girls posing with guns, wearing boxer shorts, sperm facials, boy blush… Another great essay from
.Teen boys, meanwhile, are finally working on themselves but they're calling it Auramaxxing, and they’re making it weird. Taking care of your skin and taping your mouth while you sleep will gain you aura points, but tripping while you walk or leaving your bag unzipped will make you lose points. David Bowie, apparently, had infinite aura.
Poppi is hiring an Influencer Marketing Manager to lead their expansion into Gaming, Twitch, and ESports. Very interested to see how they sell gut health to the Red Bull/Prime crowd. Someone in the comments said the salary is too low.
The founder of Everlane, Michael Preysman, launched a yassified sports beverage brand to tap into Gen Z’s obsession with “wellness, longevity, and health”. Magna calls itself the “the world’s first magnesium powered daily hydration formula,” and caters to sports enthusiasts who aren’t professional athletes but maintain everyday exercise routines. Sounds like a CPG Outdoor voices. Magnesium is the most searched for nutrient or mineral on Google, so there’s certainly a market for this. In an interview with Fast Company, Preysman said “This next generation is focusing on their own health. If you’ve seen the Erewhon-ification of everything, it’s like health has become a status symbol, and health has become a part of people’s every day in a major way.” Slay I guess.
While we’re on the topic, WSJ published a great article about how young women with eating disorders are replacing meals with energy drinks. This could be today’s required reading because there’s a lot to unpack here. To anyone who’s been paying attention, it’s clear that the conversation around thinness and body image has taken a weird turn in at least the last year. The issue (and it is an issue) has become almost memefied in a way it hasn't been for a long time. I think a lot of it has to do with the growing popularity of GLP-1 drugs and the endless speculation and reporting by people like me on the social and economic impact they have. I’ll be the first to say I haven’t quite figured out the best way to do what I do while acknowledging that all this discourse about people's bodies and weight loss is probably pretty damaging on an individual level. Like how to say, "hey, this is a huge thing that affects many other huge things so I want to talk about it," but, wow, the long term net impact on society will probably suck. Still an open topic in my head. The article also points out that while the likes of Red Bull and Monster sponsor motocross racers and skateboarders, female-focused brands like Celcius and Alani Nu focus on “wellness and good vibes.” Makes me want to SCREAM!
Gabbriette is the real winner of BRAT summer. We might be getting a cookbook from her soon.
The number of young children in NYC is down by almost a fifth since the pandemic, with the under-5 population falling by 18% in New York, 15% in Cook County (which includes Chicago), and 14% in Los Angeles County since April 2020. Rising childcare and housing costs are driving many middle-income families out of big cities to suburbs and smaller cities. People are also just not having kids.
NAD+ supplements are hitting the mainstream, and the story of how this happened is one you already know: it's 2022 and Hailey Bieber and Kendall Jenner are shown using NAD+ IV drips during an episode of KUWTK. It’s 2023 and Jennifer Aniston reveals she uses NAD+ IV in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Searches for NAD (and NAD+, and NAD supplements, and NAD IV Drips) spike since then, and NAD+ goes from biohacking fad to mainstream wellness. There’s no proof this stuff actually does anything by the way. “Experts predict that NAD+ will continue to rise in popularity in line with a focus on healthy ageing and longevity.” The beauty meets wellness industry makes me sick.
ScentLab, known for its customizable candles, just launched customizable perfume mists. “We’re debuting with SIX blendable mists, inspired by our signature candle collection. Each mist can be used solo or combined to create a custom perfume. At the lab, we call these POTIONS—each comes with two blendable mists that you mix n’ match inside a refillable, glass potion bottle to create the scent of your wildest dreams.” The rollout was pretty interesting. They started teasing the perfume launch after completely wiping their Instagram page last week . Although I can’t quite recall what the vibe was before, it's evident they’re targeting a Gen Z/Gen Alpha audience, similar to what Noyz and Daisy Marc Jacobs are doing. I find the concept of customizable scents fun, particularly the “potion kits” packaging with blendable mists and a refillable “potion bottle.” I’ve noticed a trend with beauty and skincare brands emphasizing how long product development took them (A YEAR AND A HALF) and sharing the behind the scenes insights of packaging and formulation decisions. I guess it's a trust thing? Brands using quizzes for product discovery is super smart. Nothing like zero-party data.
Starface got North West and Kim K to make a video for their Star Balm launch, which bears striking resemblance to Maybelline’s Baby Lips Moisturizing Lip Balm.
Everyone and their mom is coming for the Nike and Adidas bag this year. Business of Fashion wrote about how many up and coming athletes are favoring deals with smaller sports brands that allow them to play more of a role creatively and commercially, over the more established Nike or Adidas. The article also pointed out that Nike, in particular, has pared back endorsements to focus on only the most marketable names, offering less popular athletes considerably smaller payments or even product-only deals. Either way, this has left a gap for the likes of Hoka, On, and China’s Anta to swoop in and sign more athlete partners.
A lot of interesting meta discourse about Fashion Substack this week, so here’s a reminder that if any of it makes you feel some type of way, you do not need to follow and you do not need to engage. You can actually remain completely blind to all that stuff. Fashion Substack is maybe my least favorite side of this platform—not because of any deep ideological reason (I know people need to get the bag)—but because I don’t enjoy content that is largely recommendations based. I’m also just not a fashion girlie. I might get to a stage in my life where this changes and I enjoy engaging with fashion in this way again, but right now, I find it all very overwhelming and tiresome. So I’ve simply made it not my problem. The business of fashion? Hot. The culture of trends? Also hot. A bunch of links to buy an aesthetic? Not so much. You know I always say that agency is sexy. This is me reminding you to use it.
US shoppers spent $7.2 billion on the first day of Prime Day this year. I wonder how much Alix Earle made.
Finance jobs are more competitive than ever, so college students are sitting for the CFA before they even graduate. The three-exam qualification, often regarded as the industry's most rigorous and prestigious certification, is a prerequisite for certain roles in banking or private equity. Only 46% of those who took the first level in May passed the test. Interestingly, the increase in college students starting the CFA process comes as fewer people overall are taking the exams.
In case you were wondering, Jack Schlossberg will be getting paid just as poorly as every other Vogue contributor. According to Lauren Sherman, “Schlossberg’s contract, as of this writing, requires him to create up to four monthly Instagram videos of his reactions to “key news” moments in the election cycle, and as many written articles as he wants to accompany them. He will also be asked to contribute to a Vogue app that’s launching in September— and create additional social content. He’ll be paid the typical freelancer rate, I’m told: $250 per article.” Sounds like equity to me.
Semafor reported that Skimm is in talks with The Daily Mail Group for a potential sale. Both companies declined to comment, but someone familiar with the talks told Semafor that “the Mail has been interested in the digital media company’s strong, largely female audience and its newsletter offerings.” I feel like Skimm has been trying to sell for yearssss. No idea what their numbers are doing these days, but I suspect they’re in a place where they’d want to take the first good offer that comes their way. Even if it's from The Daily Mail.
If you’ve ever wondered what kids are watching on Disney Channel these days, turns out, not much. They’re all on YouTube now. The Disney Channel circa 2014 was a top 10 network with nearly 2 million average daily primetime users. These days, it's sitting at No. 80 with a meager 132,000 daily average viewership. That’s bad. First of all, all that lost viewership isn’t being captured by Disney+ as they’d hoped, but by Netflix and especially YouTube. What’s worse is the fact that Disney quite literally needs to start them young. Without a steady stream of kids growing up on Disney content, the downstream effects for the other arms of its business—such as theme parks and merchandise— look pretty bleak.
these roundups are the sole reason my friends are getting interesting fun facts about random companies. they are very appreciative (i hope)!
Epic roundup 👏🏻 ‘You know I always say that agency is sexy. This is me reminding you to use it.’ Fave line!