Happy decorative gourd season! Kidding, obvs. We’re squeezing at least another week out of our summer whites. Once they go into storage, the biggest buying season of the year gets super-real, super-fast.
Speaking of which, tonight’s the night — hop onto the waitlist for our LA DTC networking event at BLANKSPACES Santa Monica Downtown, and you just might snag a spot. We’re talking BFCM, and how to keep the momentum going long after the final Thanksgiving leftovers find their way into Moist Makers.
And on the topic of delightful mish-mashes, scroll down for this week’s notable CPG news.
A look behind the curtain at the beauty operator you may not know— the one behind the launch, growth and 9-figure exits of Phlur, Saltair, and Naturium…
Meanwhile, Tower 28 founder Amy Liu tells Gloss Angeles that she doesn't need a billion-dollar exit and would rather fix it than flip it.
Ochuko Akpovbovbo on Vogue wanting a cut of creator commerce. Is this just ShopMy with a masthead?
Canada's new counter-tariffs by product have perfume and tees in the 50% tier.
Why brands are moving budget to creators over 35, and what AI has to do with the shift.
Everyone wants to be a prestige retailer now— but what does that even mean in the age of TikTok Shop and Amazon?
Sephora hits TikTok Shop September 19 with exclusive drops. For beauty operators who already are active on TikTok Shop, we’d be curious to know… how are you thinking about the Sephora vs. DTC split?
Is the founder thing a gene? Samantha Rose’s daughter Juliet has recently gone into the pickle biz, so it’s looking like yes. (Anecdotally, Commerce is Chaos contributor Azora Zoe Paknad is a former founder and child of two serial co-founders, so we suppose the evidence continues to mount…)
Madalina Defta rolled out Kaizen Food Company’s first pasta in her kitchen with an empty wine bottle, spent three years finding a flour that worked, and built the whole thing to profitability without raising a dollar. She also caught her 3PL overcharging on box sizes and fixed it with a spreadsheet instead of a fight.
The name Kaizen is the Japanese idea of small improvements that compound, which is also how she and husband/co-founder Arash met: in GE’s corporate audit program, absorbing the kind of operational discipline that definitely does not scream “this is a pasta brand.”
