is everyone a secret republican or something?

you can tell me

Ochuko Akpovbovbo

Nov 06, 2024

649

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As a non American who does not live in America, the below note is where my head’s at right now. I also think everyone needs to spend some time studying those exit polls and accepting the reality that our echo chambers are far louder than we imagined. I’m in the office today, and most of my team is in too—around 30 people from 12 different countries. Everyone’s looking to the one American guy from Ohio to explain the actions of his nation. Poor guy’s having a tough time.
I told you I have a thing for red (as a brand concept). I think Topical’s new tinted lip balm would look great on me.
Haut Drops is a new TikTok e-tailer aiming to be the “Supreme” of beauty. Founded by industry veteran Leslie Ann Hall, Haut Drops combines entertainment, “drop” culture, and beauty through trend-focused releases on TikTok Shop. To start, they’ve on-boarded four brands—Glow Recipe, Topicals, Caliray, and Moroccanoil—and will deliver monthly limited-edition drops inspired by TikTok beauty trends (think slugging, cherry cola makeup, cortisol face) and broader cultural events like Fashion Week, the Met Gala, and the viral “Bama Rush” season. The first drop, priced at $88, includes a mini-sized bestseller from each debut brand, all in a limited-edition mini yellow backpack. So this sounds like ipsy and birchbox repacked for the TikTok generation and I assume they’ll likely run into the same problem those businesses had. Also, why anyone would spend $88 for just four mini-sized products is a mystery to me. I’m genuinely mystified by this math.
I hadn’t thought about Olivia Wilde in a while, but then I heard she had quietly joined the celebrity-turned-venture capitalist ranks, so now she’s interesting again. Proximity Ventures, co-founded by Olivia and former Roc Nation VC Neil Sirni, focuses on consumer and enterprise investments and has backed four companies so far, including Pendulum Therapeutics, a diagnostics and therapeutics company targeting patient care through human microbiomes. Considering how much I think about it (not a lot, but enough), I haven’t written much about the celebrity-to-investor pipeline. Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures raised $243 million for an AI-focused fund last year. He says it took him five days. Ryan Reynolds may not be funny, but he is smart, and only God knows what's really happening with Kim Kardashian's private equity firm.
And then Live Nation is launching Side Hustles, a series giving a behind-the-scenes look at how celebrities run their brands. You know, I really love this idea—except 1) it's only available on VEEPS, Live Nation’s streaming platform I didn’t know existed, and 2) not to be weird, but these are not the celebrities or the brands I want to see. Still, it’s a great concept, so I’d love someone to do this, do it better, and put it on YouTube. Actually, what would be genius is if a celebrity founder interviewed other celebrity founders as a TikTok or Reels show for their brand. Since everyone wants to be an entertainment company now.
Alex Cooper wants to help hopeful college women embarrass themselves online. I’ll probably tune in. Yesterday, the Call Her Daddy podcast host shared a link to a Google form for college students who “love to make content” and are ready to declare their major in “Unwell”. I’m not exactly sure what she’s going for here, but people are usually the most unhinged and uninhibited during their college years, which of course makes for great content. Alex can’t be doing the most anymore, look at the company she keeps now.

Armie Hammer, who no doubt considers himself the biggest casualty of Hollywood’s brief and bygone love affair with cancel culture, has launched a podcast to share how he’s putting his life back together. I wish he wouldn’t, but I wasn’t consulted on the matter.

How much holiday season brand stuff I’ll cover this year is yet to be determined, but I already have a few notes…

Firstly, I love everything Skims has going on for holiday season, and whatever Victoria’s Secret is doing (or not doing) is all the proof I need that there is no massive comeback in sight.
But both brands could soon face competition from L’eggs, the drugstore-famous pantyhose brand making a comeback with a new line of shapewear tights crafted from recycled yarns and Parade’s Cami Téllez as Executive Creative Director. Their timing is perfect for a few reasons—patterned and colored tights are becoming closet staples, and the tights-as-pants trend, inaccessible as it is, has people curious. There’s a clear demand for an exciting, relevant player in this space. According to market research firm Circana, hosiery sales hit $1 billion in the U.S. in 2023, and they’re up 18% this year to date. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, sales are up 76%. Launching during the holiday season is also smart; fun tights are perfect for gifts and party outfits. Excited to see this rollout!
leggsofficial
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Are we getting a Nara Smith Erewhon smoothie for Christmas? I really wish Erewhon released the sales figures for these celeb smoothies. I’m sure it’ll be a fun indicator of something. Also, Substack has to do something about bringing Nara Smith back into the fold. I mean, she has thousands of paid subscribers and hasn’t been active since March.
Heyday Canning and Graza hosting Friendsgiving events reminded me that brands are becoming these entities around which the next generation of communities are being formed. Some of you have parasocial relationships with brands, which of course is a sign of nothing good, but I’m not here to judge.
Andrea Hernandez called Flamingo Estate the Tiffany of groceries, and I have to concur. Read this newsletter for two weeks in a row, and you’ll probably have at least one instance of me pointing out the mild tragedy that is the rise of groceries as luxury, even as the average American household is spending $445 more a month to purchase the same groceries as a year ago, and we’re seeing reports of people using BNPL to feed their families. Meanwhile, great branding and some claim to wellness is creating a different category of food that begs to be displayed on countertops and featured in TikToks. I was an Econ major; I know all about Veblen goods—which is why I won’t be surprised to see more people giving groceries as gifts this year. Ghia is going live with their Holiday Host Box soon, and Flamingo Estate already has two gift sets available, plus a $78 16 oz bottle of “Personalized Heritage Extra Virgin Olive Oil.” Erewhon grocery bags are also being sold on eBay. 'Tis the season, people!
And lastly, I really dig this Ghia holiday campaign video.
drinkghia
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✨🎄End of my holiday commentary ✨🎄

I find it amusing that we’re all suddenly quite anxious about Substack’s growth features and network effects working a bit too well. It recently occurred to me that Substack has reached that point of maturity where its users become suspicious of its intent. As they should, I guess—capitalism being what it is. But I think the idea that Substack’s Follow feature is some sinister ploy to make writers more dependent on the platform is a precarious hill to die on. It assumes that people would Subscribe instead of Follow if the Follow option didn’t exist, which simply isn’t true. It’s more likely that they would take no action at all. At this point, it might be helpful for writers to adopt two different Substack strategies: one for Notes, Follows, and Social Media, and another for Newsletters, Subscribers, and Writing. And if, like me, you don’t care to cultivate the former, simply don’t. That’s a strategy too. I have a very negligible number of followers who don’t subscribe, and I can only attribute that to simply not feeding that beast. Yes, Substack has added more social features, but they have yet to invent a gun to your head.
Substack does want you to download the app, though. Just a few days ago, I got an email from the team offering me a free month of After School content (which I already pay for)—but only if I downloaded the app, which I already had. Say what you will, but from a marketing standpoint, it’s a clever move. According to Appfigures, daily downloads for the Substack app on iOS surged from 7,752 on October 31 to 17,382 on November 3. Over the past month, the app has consistently seen daily downloads ranging from 6,600 to 8,900.
Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, and Sherwood Media has a really great piece on the platform's evolution. Possibly the most interesting thing about Reddit’s growth is the fact that it's only just reaching peak popularity almost two decades after launch. This simply doesn’t happen. Just consider the quick boom and busts that have been Clubhouse and BeReal, or Facebook’s stagnating growth after 20 years on the scene. Reddit’s daily users reached 97.2 million in the last quarter, a 47% increase from the same time last year. Clearly, all those structural changes are paying off, and those pre-IPO user protests meant shit.
When The Ritz-Carlton partnered with Late Checkout for a capsule collection, I wrote that it looked very Sporty & Rich. Now Sporty & Rich is partnering with The Carlyle hotel on a vintage-inspired line, and I’m feeling quite prescient. A lot of hotel merch is very ugly; so I respect partnerships like these. There’s a humility to it.
Puck’s Rachel Strugatz reported that Goop recently had another round of layoffs, just two months after cutting around 40 employees, about 18% of its workforce. This time, up to 10 employees were let go, including V.P. Michelle Nakra, design director Samantha Wu, and longtime executive beauty director Jean Godfrey-June. Only last month, founder Gwyneth Paltrow told WWD the brand was back in “growth mode,” focusing on three pillars: fashion, beauty, and food. Goop’s G. Label fashion line grew 51% year-to-date last year; beauty grew 40%. I’m most interested in Goop Kitchen, which somehow (in this economy) closed a $15 million round in August. I can’t say I understand the concept, but I hear the food is great.
The Netflix offices in France and the Netherlands were raided yesterday as part of a preliminary investigation into tax fraud laundering. The French investigation, led by the Parquet National Financier (PNF)—a special financial crime prosecution unit known for high-stakes white-collar cases often involving major international companies—was opened in November 2022 for “laundering of aggravated tax fraud” and “concealed work in an organized gang,” which all sounds very serious to me. In 2022, Netflix paid $59 million to settle a tax dispute in Italy, and that same year, McDonald’s agreed to pay $1.36 billion (€1.25 billion) to French authorities to avoid criminal prosecution for tax fraud between 2009 and 2020. My point is that Europe will take your money. Lord knows we need it.
Daily reminder: no one hates Gen Z more than Business Insider.
because why is this the takeaway from yesterday?!