+ Wendy’s Introduces New Saucy Nuggets (FOODBEAST): “These chicken nuggets are freshly tossed and sauced to create seven flavors (Buffalo, Spicy Buffalo, Garlic Parm, Spicy Garlic Parm, Spicy Ghost Pepper, Honey BBQ and Spicy Honey BBQ) and are served with a side of Ranch or Blue Cheese dipping sauce … Wendy’s Saucy Nuggs officially hit restaurants nationwide starting … Monday, June 10. But … June 3, customers can be the first to get their hands on them by placing a digital order through the Wendy’s app or website for pick-up or delivery at participating locations.”
+ $2.65 Billion Saks-Neiman Marcus Acquisition Will Create a Luxury Retail Giant (The New York Times): “The deal, which had been rumored since Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy protection during the pandemic, comes just over four years after Saks bought the license for the Barneys name following the bankruptcy of that group. It also follows a wave of luxury e-tail failures, including those of FarFetch and Matches.com. Saks is owned by HBC, a retail conglomerate that bought the American chain in 2013 — the year after HBC also acquired Lord & Taylor … The acquisition of Neiman Marcus makes Saks Global, as the new group will be called, the dominant player in its market, with a combined 75 stores (including two Bergdorf Goodman locations), as well as 100 off-price outlets. The new group’s only real rivals in the United States will be Macy’s, which also includes Bloomingdale’s, and Nordstrom. It will be run by Marc Metrick, the current chief executive of Saks and Saks.com … The Federal Trade Commission has been paying close attention to consolidation among fashion retailers. In April, it moved to block the planned acquisition of Capri (the group that owns Michael Kors, Versace and Jimmy Choo) by Tapestry (which owns Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman). The agency argued that the planned consolidation would affect competition among the different brands. That case is expected to go to court in September.”
+ Online Shopping Has Become a Giant Fake Product Machine (Bloomberg): “For most products, it doesn’t take much in the way of sudden online hype to drain available inventory, at which point the opportunists show up. In the past, this has usually meant flippers—people who gobble up products at retail prices, then sell their stockpile on resale platforms … at a significant markup. Although that still occurred with the snail slime, something more novel for a relatively inexpensive product did, too. Counterfeiters took note, flooding Amazon, TikTok Shop and other platforms with replicas of the serum, priced for as little as $9. In some situations, this ultralow price would be a tell that you’re looking at a knockoff. But on large marketplace platforms, prices fluctuate according to opaque algorithmic logic … Was it a fake, or was it just a good deal? Counterfeiting has long been an issue with luxury goods, whose high prices, fat margins and huge markets make the risk of producing a knockoff worth it. For lower-ticket products, the math, historically, just hasn’t added up. Now Amazon, TikTok Shop and other marketplaces offer a wealth of data to third-party manufacturers and sellers, essentially signaling to them the best time to seize on a product’s nascent virality. The TikTok girlies aren’t simply telling the general public what to buy; they’re also telling the consumer-products manufacturing sector what to make and sellers what to list.”
+ Uniqlo Owner Lifts Forecast Again as Weak Yen Powers Sales From Tourists (The Business of Fashion): “The Japanese operator of fashion giant Uniqlo … raised its forecast for what would be its third consecutive year of record profits, buoyed by strong sales at home and some overseas markets. The domestic market was a bright spot for Fast Retailing, aided by a surge in duty-free sales from tourists taking advantage of the yen’s slide to a 38-year low. It lifted its full-year operating profit forecast to 475 billion yen ($2.94 billion) for the year ending in August from 450 billion yen, citing strong performance since the second half.”
+ The Broad Appeal of the Elsa Dress (The New York Times): “Some parents noted that the dress their children have worn to emulate Elsa was worn by the character when she sings ‘Let It Go,’ the award-winning song from “Frozen.” As Elsa is singing, her outfit changes from a restrictive, dark gown into the airy, icy-blue dress that has become her signature look. The ‘Let It Go’ scene is also when Elsa embraces her power to shoot ice from her hands, much like Spider-Man shoots webs. Many parents said that this power was what primarily drew their children to the character … While Elsa sings in the dress, she appears to gain a sense of invincibility, and some parents described Elsa costumes as having a similar effect on their children.”
+ All Nordstrom cardholders can now access the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale! The sale will open to all shoppers on 07/15/2024. My order:
+ The Carry-On-Baggage Bubble Is About to Pop (The Atlantic): “… the aisle pandemonium can’t be chalked up to passengers’ misbehavior or to honest confusion at the gate … all this hassle is a natural outcome of the airlines’ cabin-stowage arbitrage. It would indicate inconvenience by design.”
+ These Kids Want to Go to School. The Main Obstacle? Paperwork (Associated Press): “Thousands of students went missing from American classrooms during the pandemic. For some who have tried to return, a serious problem has presented itself. A corrosive combination of onerous re-enrollment requirements, arcane paperwork and the everyday obstacles of poverty — a nonworking phone, a missing backpack, the loss of a car — is in many cases preventing those children from going back … In Atlanta … parents must present at least eight documents to enroll their children — twice as many as parents in New York City or Los Angeles. One of the documents — a complicated certificate evaluating a child’s dental health, vision, hearing and nutrition — is required by the state. Most of the others are Atlanta’s doing, including students’ Social Security cards and an affidavit declaring residency that has to be notarized.”
+ JoJo Siwa Promised Them Pop Stardom. They Say They Were ‘Thrown in the Trash’ (Rolling Stone): “… multiple sources close to the production, allege that the Siwas subjected the children to grueling rehearsals, sometimes foregoing school breaks, with meager compensation … Jessalyn was overtly cruel to their young charges, calling them names and, in one instance, shaming them for having a disability … JoJo, meanwhile, could also be nasty and domineering … a sharp contrast from her upbeat on-screen persona. At one point, they allege, she screamed insults at the girls during a performance; they also allege that she played a role in helping to build a cutthroat environment long after the cameras were gone, playing favorites and pitting members against each other … The allegations against the Siwas highlight growing concern within the entertainment industry regarding the lack of protections extended to minors in Hollywood, particularly within the social media space, which is subject to very little oversight or regulation. In light of such concerns, numerous states, including California, are considering passing legislation that would require adult guardians to set aside a percentage of minors’ social media revenue to put in a trust.”
+ Where Does Nike Go From Here? (The Business of Fashion): “Nike … rehired Tom Peddie, a 30-year veteran of the company who retired in 2020, as its vice president of marketplace, a move designed to support the continued recalibration of its distribution strategy. It was one of the clearest signs yet that the brand was rapidly unwinding a strategy that saw it cut relationships with major retailers in a bid to focus on direct-to-consumer channels. Solving distribution may be the easiest of Nike’s problems to solve. As executives have begun to acknowledge, the only way out of this is to release more products people want to buy, whether it’s on the SNKRS app, in their stores or at a third party retailer. Nike has already warned that it expects sales to drop 10 percent in the current quarter, and by mid-single-digit percentages in the year ending May 2025, after rising just 1 percent in its most recent fiscal year. If that forecast bears out, it will be the company’s worst performance in 25 years. Nike’s stock is down over 30 percent this year.”
+ Hedge-fund manager turned political activist Bill Browder’s 2015 memoir Red Notice came out a year after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea. The book’s subject matter–authoritarianism and corruption in Russia–remains pertinent in 2024, but I feel Browder is an imperfect vessel for the cause. Which isn’t to say the first half of the book, which details how Browder got his start investing in Russian companies, isn’t interesting; in fact, it is extremely interesting, just a bit narrow in scope. My main issue with Red Notice is that, like the Andrew Ross Sorkin pull quote on the cover, it’s three different books jockeying for primacy: it’s Browder’s rags-to-riches-to-activism memoir; it’s also an account of what it was like to do business in Russia between the fall of the Soviet Union and the consolidation of Putin’s power in the mid-aughts; lastly, it’s a political corruption thriller with deeply sympathetic, nuanced characters who are relegated to the background in Red Notice because, ultimately, it’s Browder’s story. I wish Browder had collaborated with an experienced journalist to write that third book, because Sergei Magnitsky’s story is an important one, but feels diluted in Red Notice; I know Browder doesn’t intend for Magnitsky to be just a story component, but in memoirs, every tragedy is just a propulsive force for its author.
+ Lena Dunham’s Change of Pace (The New Yorker): “I try not to spend my time ascribing the challenges of my career to gender or sexuality. But we were talking about the fact that there was always a sense that women who wrote in a way that was in any way personal were somehow vomiting out, whether it was Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf or Octavia Butler. They were performing an exorcism, and men who did it were performing an act of genius. And, so, that’s why Proust is Proust, and Jenny Diski is Jenny Diski. People maybe meet Larry David and expect him to be a little bit saucy, but they have the concept that what he is doing is a form of performance. Whereas, with women who make television shows that feel personal, they forget that it’s something that’s had to be created, that’s had to be structured.”
+ The Kidnapping I Can’t Escape (The New York Times): “That’s how the traumatized life goes, I guess. You work your whole life to overcome the terrible thing that happened to you, only to get to the end of it and find that the overcoming it was your life. You find the other people who share the unfixable tear in their perception of themselves and their circumstances, of how safe they are in the world, of the precariousness of knowing that it could happen again at any time, and you feel a little better. And then, at the end, the vine you rest beneath is that you get to stop working so hard to pretend you might put it behind you. I’m glad I learned that now. Because I’m telling you, the sheer amount of energy it takes to pretend that I’m over anything is killing me.”
+ We’re So Back (Slate): “Breakups are a foundational part of life. They happen all the time. A couple might be unable to find equitable ground on a variety of existential questions—parenthood, faith, lifestyle—and call it quits. Or two people can slowly grow distant from each other, without either party being the sole author of the discontent, until they mercifully concede that the love has flickered out. Sometimes, a relationship can detonate in spectacles of pure id—ravenous infidelity, screaming arguments, sobbing in bar bathrooms, 200 texts per hour—eventually leaving both ends of the partnership feeling raw, extreme, and ideally, free. The point here is that relationships often come to an end for a good reason, but coaches like Lichtenwalner believe that with the correct approach, anyone who’s been recently dumped can devise a way to mend even the grisliest wounds … It is difficult to know how many get-your-ex-back coaches are working on the internet. There are a handful of big names in the sector, all of whom command sizable followings on social media and loom over the smaller players … The majority of get-your-ex-back mentors tend to be men, though there are some women in the field, and the coaches themselves claim to work with clients of all genders.”
+ A Wife’s Revenge from Beyond the Grave (The Free Press): “… it’s hard to deny that, since the dawn of social media, ‘suffering and trauma’ have become a valuable resource: the best way to get attention, which is what makes money on the internet.”
+ Recently purchased: OPEN YY Pink Strap Ballerina Flats, Marc Fisher Matter Ankle Boot, J.Crew Cotton-Blend Gauze Sweater-Tee in Metallic Stripe, Free People Tahiti Cargo Pants, Mila Mae Abstract Floral Maxi Dress, Sanctuary Relaxed Reissue Cargo Pants, Reformation Catalina Button Front Minidress, Marc Fisher Loree Sandal, and J.Crew Scalloped-Trim Shift Dress in Linen.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
