+ A Taste of Florida on the Thanksgiving Table (The New York Times): “Key lime pie is eaten in Florida all year long and served every day at bakeries, restaurants and shops solely dedicated to the dessert. Even though Florida’s season for the citrus runs from June to September, bakeries are gearing up to make thousands of pies for Thanksgiving and the December holidays, especially for customers with visitors from out of town. The home cooks who prefer to make the pie at home have already stocked up on Key lime juice.”
+ Inside the Growing Hair Loss Market (The Business of Fashion): “The telehealth company, which democratised erectile dysfunction and hair loss medication for men when it launched as Hims in 2017, reported 1.9 million subscribers across both platforms in the second quarter this year, a 43 percent increase over 2023. The Hers business encompasses ‘some of the fastest-growing categories under the hood’ … Fifty percent of women will experience hair loss at some point in their life, due to stress, hormonal imbalances, ageing, nutrition, genetics or a combination of all of these mitigating factors … catering to such a substantial market — about 30 million women in the US alone … is just good business. But with scalp care products as well as hair thinning and loss products representing some of the fastest-growing segments of the $456.8 million US prestige hair product market, with thinning and loss products up 34 percent in 2024 versus last year … it looks a lot more like a big business.”
+ No One Asked for Coca-Cola Oreos (Eater): “… brands across the board have been increasingly collaborating on products to reach different markets … There’s Peeps Pepsi and Dr Pepper Peeps. Van Leeuwen teamed up with Kraft Mac and Cheese and Hidden Valley Ranch to make ice cream. IHOP and Lay’s teamed up for Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruity chips. There’s Reese’s and also Hershey’s Chips Ahoy! Hormel and Cinnamon Toast Crunch made bacon. And every PepsiCo product, from Funyuns to Smartfood to Ruffles, has a Flamin’ Hot variety. These ‘shock flavors’ serve one purpose — to get the customer to buy ‘one more’ … these products are intended to boost both brands … crucially, these collaborations also exist because it’s easier than ever to create them … What appears in the aisles like two brands coming together for a limited time is often a matter of shuffling resources around in one company. It’s very easy to make a Flamin’ Hot Funyun when you own both Cheetos and Funyuns — as well as Lay’s, Ruffles, Sun Chips, Smartfood, Tostitos, and Doritos. Perhaps the glut of collaborations is a natural side effect of the ‘line goes up forever’ expectation of modern business. It is not enough to provide a good product to the people who want it and sustain business on that. There always has to be something new, be it an acquisition or a collaboration, that makes the company bigger … as the trend continues, and the obvious pairings have already been done, the collaborations that are left are sure to become weirder and weirder.”
+ Substack Is Trying to Turn Its Writers into Streamers (The Verge): “Substack has increasingly been expanding from its roots as a newsletter platform, including adding Twitter-like Notes posts, the ability to publish video podcasts, and even letting people follow other users without subscribing to them. As of last month, you don’t even need to set up a publication to share content. With live video, creators will be able to interact with their fans in real time without having to rely on another platform like Twitch.”
+ AI Has Helped Shein Become Fast Fashion’s Biggest Polluter (WIRED): “… climate advocates and researchers say the company’s lightning-fast manufacturing practices and online-only business model are inherently emissions-heavy — and that the use of AI software to catalyze these operations could be cranking up its emissions. Those concerns were amplified by Shein’s third annual sustainability report, released late last month, which showed the company nearly doubled its carbon dioxide emissions between 2022 and 2023 … Although estimates vary, a new Shein design may take as little as 10 days to become a garment, and up to 10,000 items are added to the site each day. The company reportedly offers as many as 600,000 items for sale at any given time with an average price tag of roughly $10 … Shein emitted 16.7 million total metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2023 — more than what four coal power plants spew out in a year. The company has also come under fire for textile waste, high levels of microplastic pollution, and exploitative labor practices … polyester — a synthetic textile known for shedding microplastics into the environment — makes up 76 percent of its total fabrics, and only 6 percent of that polyester is recycled … Shein’s emissions are especially high because of its reliance on air shipping … 38 percent of Shein’s climate footprint comes from transportation between its facilities and to customers, and another 61 percent come from other parts of its supply chain … the majority of its garments are produced in China and are mailed out by air in individually addressed packages to customers. In July, the company sent about 900,000 of these to the US every day.”
+ A $700 Kitchen Tool That’s Meant to Be Seen, Not Used (The Atlantic): “… KitchenAid’s Artisan Design Series Evergreen 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer … comes not with the brand’s standard stainless-steel bowl, but with a walnut one. The machine looks like something you might find in a glassy, aseptic mid-century-modern condo, maybe somewhere Nordic … This finicky, egg-hostile machine retails for $699 before tax, more than double the price of the least expensive KitchenAid stand mixer—even though it essentially does what all of KitchenAid’s other stand mixers do: provide a sturdy, stationary base and a powerful motor for mixing dough and batter, hands-free. Paying hundreds of dollars more for a tool that’s also more annoying may seem counterintuitive for those who cook primarily to stay alive. But of course, the Evergreen isn’t for those people. With this newest release, KitchenAid is acknowledging something that’s been true about its flagship product for years: The stand mixer doesn’t necessarily need to be easy to use, because it’s not only meant to be used. It’s also meant to be displayed … the KitchenAid mixer isn’t just a tool—it’s a statement, a talisman, a flex. Start looking for it in the background of celebrity home tours and cooking shows and you won’t be able to stop noticing it.”
+ How an Unknown Chinese Phonemaker Took Over Africa (Bloomberg): “… the Chinese manufacturer Shenzhen Transsion Holdings Co. … has marketed its Tecno phones on the continent since 2006. Two years later, after the iPhone came out, the company decided to focus exclusively on sub-Saharan customers, first with so-called feature phones—low-cost devices with fewer capabilities and inevitably thinner margins … Transsion stunned industry observers by leaping to No. 4 on research firm IDC’s global rankings of smartphone market share in the first quarter of 2024, with 85% year-over-year growth in shipment volume … Catering to African consumer habits has been a key focus for Transsion. Over the years it’s developed handsets with multiple slots for SIM cards, because Africans frequently switched telecommunications providers for better service. The company equipped devices with camera sensors that improved photo captures of darker skin tones, as well as robust audio modules for locals who also use their phones as music speakers … Transsion split its offerings across a trio of brands then available only in Africa—which, somehow, made the Chinese products seem vaguely homegrown. Itel offered entry-level devices, and Tecno and Infinix had more upscale smartphones, available for a few hundred dollars … Transsion now commands roughly half the African smartphone market and an even bigger share of feature phones. It’s also found success expanding into parts of Asia and the Middle East; the company now draws most of its revenue from regions outside Africa, highlighting the global potential of the Transsion model.”
+ Tupperware (the Brand) May Fail. Tupperware (the Word) Will Survive. (The New York Times): “… many consumers will continue to refer to their resealable food containers as Tupperware, even if those containers are not Tupperware. (Most of them aren’t.) And that may have been a part of Tupperware’s problem … genericization … when a brand name becomes so well known that it supplants the product itself … Tupperware’s roots, all the way back to the mid-1940s, when Earl Silas Tupper got ahold of some polyethylene pellets, a wartime plastic that the chemical company DuPont did not believe could be molded, and invented an airtight container that could preserve food more effectively than anything else on the market. The genius of the company, though, was in how those containers were marketed — by a woman named Brownie Wise, who launched the concept of the Tupperware party, where products were peddled by housewives and single moms and other women who simply wanted to work outside the home in the postwar era … Soon after Mr. Tupper died in 1983, the patent on his burping seal expired, and a host of companies emerged to copy his idea … Successful companies have strategies to protect their trademarks and fend off the creep of genericization … Many … avoid using the brand name as a noun, choosing instead to use it as an adjective in their marketing materials: Kleenex facial tissues, Q-tips cotton swabs, Velcro brand fasteners.”
+ I Really Can’t Tell If You’re Serious (The Atlantic): “In the past, engagement-baiters could win on social media only if you clicked on their post, or shared their post, or responded to their silly prompt. But those efforts weren’t hard to thwart … different rules apply to modern social video platforms, where the algorithms are especially aggressive at stuffing viral content into people’s feeds. Traditional engagement metrics—likes and shares and comments—are still important, but creators on these platforms are seeking views above all else … Racking up a lot of views is crucial for achieving greater visibility, as well as moneymaking opportunities—and confusing people is a pretty innovative way to do it. Let’s say you come across an auto-playing TikTok, YouTube Short, or Instagram Reel that you find a bit unsettling. By the time you’ve watched it to the end a couple times, or spent however long it takes to make your judgment on what the video really means and whether it’s sincere, you’ve already given the creators what they wanted … Instead of shocking or enraging you, they merely need to be weird enough to give you pause … Whatever their approach, the confusion-baiters are receiving a lot of attention … What they’ll get up to next remains unclear.”
+ Crying in H Mart: A Memoir, a 2021 New York Times bestseller, is now $1.99 on Kindle. The author, Michelle Zauner (of Japanese Breakfast fame), writes plainly but poignantly about losing her mother to cancer; she also explores the loneliness and confusion of being mixed race in America, and the sense of unmooring she felt when her mother died–her late mother had been the singer’s primary connection to her Korean heritage.
Even though Zauner is famous, Crying in H Mart is not a celebrity memoir: there are no salacious sound bites or shocking reveals; it’s just a reflective means of catharsis for its author.
+ Restaurant Math Isn’t Working (Eater): “Lately, the calculus is becoming more complicated. Or maybe the answer just keeps shaking out in one direction. Everything feels so expensive. Every check is a shock. My friends and colleagues can’t stop talking about it, our personal and professional budgets strained to the breaking point. We are eating out less often. We are ordering less when we do. We recommend new places with caveats … As diners complain of expensive bills and stick with the familiar, restaurateurs feel their own squeeze. Margins are tighter than ever as restaurants try to balance higher costs of rent and ingredients, reservation site fees and insurance premiums, and paying fair wages, all while trying to keep prices at a level customers will actually pay.“
+ Why Some Fashion Brands Are Embracing DIY E-Commerce (The Business of Fashion): “… some digitally native start-ups that leaned heavily on software providers to jumpstart their businesses are reducing their reliance on these services. The reason driving this still-burgeoning change is simple: With more competition, offering a unique online shopping experience helps to win customer loyalty. That’s easier to accomplish when a company has more control over how parts of its site are built, allowing them to collect their own data and make changes quickly. For DTC brands, the need to make their e-commerce feel more distinct reaches a greater pressure once they have reached a milestone of $100 million in annual sales … But Shopify and similar services are dominant in e-commerce because building a website is expensive and difficult to get right … What brands need to do is figure out what features are worth prioritising to build on their own, which are better outsourced, and how their budgets can accommodate each.”
+ The Commercial-Property Market Is Coming Back to Life (Bloomberg): “With prices down 19% from a peak in 2022, the commercial-property market is starting to come to life. In part, that’s because lenders and owners want to cut their losses and make new investments now that the Federal Reserve’s first rate cut in four years is bringing some clarity on where valuations stand … Many deals will likely be driven by some form of distress. While many lenders were willing to extend loans as the market waited for more clarity, their patience is waning. Borrowers who financed everything from offices to apartments at peak values are facing the prospect of major losses as loans mature.”
+ The Truths and Distortions of Ruby Franke (The Cut): “In 2015, when 8 Passengers launched, the content that had reigned on mommy blogs in the aughts and then moved to Instagram in the early 2010s was making a hard turn toward video; from 2016 to 2017, viewership of family channels on YouTube increased by 90 percent. Thanks to Ruby’s sisters, she and Kevin already had a road map for success. The platform rewards both minutes watched and upload frequency, and they began posting new videos almost daily: ten-plus-minute-long diaries of the organized chaos of a big family. YouTube was a place for Ruby to connect with a world outside her domestic bubble, where she could showcase the often-unseen work of drop-offs and pickups, cooking and cleaning, and get clicks in return. Ruby’s parents started their own YouTube channel, and she filmed with them and her sisters, cross-pollinating content. 8 Passengers leaned into the categories that tend to perform well on family vlogs: home tours, shopping hauls, morning routines, family announcements. In a little more than a year, the channel hit 100,000 subscribers, and by August 2016, more than 400,000 people were following along. Kevin and Ruby began earning money from YouTube ads as well as brand partnerships.”
+ Recently purchased: The Drop Ashlyn Ribbed Sweater Maxi Dress, Ann Taylor Tie Neck Puff Sleeve Shirt, Reformation Lauryn Gingham Cotton Top, CHUNFO Knee High Thermal Boot Sock, Torriden DIVE-IN Facial Sheet Mask, J.Crew Brushed Cashmere Shrunken Sweater, Banana Republic Oversized Double-Faced Scarf Coat, and Polo Bear Hooded Long Sleeve Graphic T-Shirt.
