It's like Covid but the atmosphere is contagious
I'm outta here
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In today’s issue:
The brand making $600M with only one product
Side hustle idea: pet detective?
An interactive purse charm described as “shy”
I’m launching something soon…
Notes from a messy desk
Hi friend,
Los Angeles is a strange place right now. In my corner of the city, the air is clear, the skies blue, and the Air Quality Index would make you think all is well. But it turns out that there are toxic particles in the air that aren’t typically measured by the AQI. My friends are sick with burning eyes, some even wearing goggles. Wearing a mask outside like some post-apocalyptic version of COVID — except instead of humans being contagious, it’s the entire atmosphere. No one knows how long it’ll last, but what I do know is that it pushed me to leave for a bit — not just to escape but to recalibrate.
My London lease starts in mid-February, and until then I’ve been killing time in Los Angeles preparing for the move. What already felt like an excruciating waiting game (I’ve been planning this move since May!) now feels like a marathon, and while I’m only a month out from the move, my patience is up.
Last week I defected to Hawaii, a place I lived for a good part of Covid, in fact. We hiked, swam, surfed — it was gorgeous. I also learned that I’m pretty good at riding an e-foil. While part of my reason for going was to chase habitable air, my primary intent was to say a bit of a goodbye to some very close friends. These are people whom I love and don’t get to see often — and with the big move looming, I realized this might be my last chance to spend time with them for a while.
I’ve vowed to stay out of Los Angeles as much as possible before this move, and as I write this am en route to Salt Lake City to see my best friend, Monika, and the humble Airbnb she and her partner recently bought and fixed up.
These trips remind me how important it is to make time for the people who’ve shaped my life. Friendships, especially the ones outside your immediate orbit, take effort. And with everything about to change, I feel this urgency to connect with the people I love while I can.
If you’ve been putting off seeing someone who matters to you, take this as your sign to go. Life moves fast, and sometimes the skies (or the calendar) don’t clear up.
Wheels up,
Sophia
Collabs on my radar
Laneige and Boy Smells dropped a vanilla-forward bundle with a moisturizer, lip care, and candle. Zara launched an outdoor capsule collection with Japanese brand And Wander. Look at this reversible cashmere cardigan from Lacoste and CLOT. The Mulberry and Rejina Pyo capsule is gorgeous. This trench coat is perfect for wet London days. Apartment Therapy collabed with Yamazaki on a buttery yellow organizer collection. Tiffany & Co. and Oscar Wang created a sculptural jewelry case for the Chinese New Year. The Puma Golf x Dani Dazey collection makes me want to go golfing in the desert. The Eloquii collection with Kate Spade is lovely and fun.
Links to make you smarter and more interesting
Los Angeles creators and brands are facing an existential question: when will it be okay to resume regularly scheduled content? Our feeds are filled with devastation – thousands of people have lost everything with another 10,000 displaced. Meanwhile, marketers are trying to figure it out when it's okay to post again without coming off tone deaf. Posting on social is the sales heartbeat for a lot of small (and big) brands and creators, and hitting pause inevitably hurts the health of their business.
There is no right answer, but I can speak for myself: As the fires broke out, I posted and deleted a sponsored Instagram post to instead share resources, GoFundMes, and educate my fellow Angelenos on dealing with the toxic air that will persist for months if not years.
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A fashion editor debates whether it’s ever acceptable to buy a dupe. Stylist and editor Indya Brown told Market Appointment that it’s okay when consumers are looking for more affordable alternatives to luxury goods, but it’s not cool to buy a dupe that’s ripping off a small or independent designer. “They’re usually already struggling and sometimes we as consumers don’t realize the time, pain and energy it takes to create something entirely original. I like to respect that.”
Baton, a marketplace for small business sellers and buyers, just raised $10M. Chat Joglekar and Dylan Gans (and team) are solving a huge pain point by helping SMBs find verified buyers – and have handled $40M in transactions to date. There’s a growing “entrepreneurship through acquisition” trend where MBAs are buying unsexy businesses. Former Wall Street investor Codie Sanchez just wrote a book on it.
Squint and you might miss Walmart's first major rebrand since 2008, which although subtle, reminds me of the OG Delia’s logo.
Gen Z wants to hang out at the mall. Scottsdale Fashion Square in Arizona saw a 144% bump in foot traffic after opening a Nobu and luxury brands for men. Thanks to investments in luxury shops, cool aesthetics, and hangout spots, the mall is a cool place for young people to gather again. "Social media helps us refine our taste, but the mall lets us experiment with who we are IRL," Claire Lee, cofounder of Selleb, told Business Insider. "Beyond providing a backdrop for content, it's where we can almost test-drive the personas we post about online."
Instagram conveniently unveiled a CapCut alternative. CapCut, a popular video editing app among creators, went down over the weekend. CapCut is owned by TikTok. At the same time, Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared the company’s upcoming app Edits, which has a suite of creative editing tools. Mosseri also said it’ll include insights on “why your videos are succeeding or struggling.”
AG1 is expected to make $600 million this fiscal year with just one product. The brand has sold its healthy drink mix exclusively online for over a decade. CEO Kat Cole credits quality as king. “There is nothing I could say to a customer that would get them to be loyal if the quality weren’t there,” she said. “You could spend all the money you want. You could do rewards, loyalty, incentives, recognition programs—at some point, that well runs dry if they don’t feel what they’re buying is worth it.”
TikTok creators say “the vibe is not the same” on Meta. Creators are considering new platforms to grow and monetize outside of TikTok, and they are extremely not into Instagram as a satisfying alternative: they think the algorithm sucks at getting their content in front of the right audiences, it’s harder to make money, and they believe it’s harder to capture the same energy and virality.
“Your videos are less likely to make it to the quote-unquote wrong side of TikTok because the algorithm is so specific…Whereas [on] Instagram, it gets pushed out to everyone,” creator Elysia Berman, who has 170k+ followers on TikTok, said. “A lot of times, you can have people that are commenting really hateful things just because they can.”
But brands are still bullish on Meta. That’s because it’s still a powerful discovery platform: Consumer reach firm GWI found that 46% of users who log on to find info on products and brands turn to Instagram and 39% turn to Facebook. TikTok still has them beat with 47%, but the appeal of Meta’s platforms is undeniable if you’re looking to sell your goods or raise brand awareness.
“My strategy for navigating a dead internet with compromised principles is the same as it was a decade ago when I started using social media to market and drive sales for my first business: deliver consistent, authentic content focused around building a genuine community,” says Luke Fracher, owner of resale boutique Luke’s.
Founder Whitney Herd is back as Bumble CEO. Dating app fatigue is real, and Bumble has seen sluggish sales.
TikTok creators thought the app was going dark forever, so they dished their darkest grifts. I don’t know if it’s because they thought the reveals would be ephemeral or if it was an opportunity to come clean that they capitalize on “authenticity”, but this trend was as juicy for us as it was humbling for them.
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Side hustle idea: pet detective? The Guardian goes inside the fascinating world of the UK’s pet detectives. There’s a jump in pet theft and missing pets in the UK, and Colin Butcher and his 10-year-old cocker spaniel use old school detective work to track them down. He said he gets around 15 to 30 emails or calls a week. “I could work every single day of the week and every weekend there’s so much demand right across the board.” Good thing I have AirTags on the poodles.
Gifting your brand’s “it” bag to too many influencers might de-influence consumers from actually buying it. The New Garde writer Alyssa Vingan polled her 11k Instagram followers on whether seeing the same bag gifted by a brand three or more times makes them want to buy it more, less, wait to buy it resale, or they don’t care. 62% said seeing the bag promoted too much by influencers would want to make them buy it less.
There’s nothing more maximalist than a creepy purse charm that follows you with its gaze. The New York Times and Harper’s Bazaar recently declared bag charms a hot trend as a maximalist accessory that shows off your personal style. Mirumi is a furry robot bag charm with an internal distance sensor that clocks and engages with its surroundings. The charm cosplaying as conscious, which debuted at CES, can rotate its head to follow a moving person, hold their gaze, shake its head, and nod. It’s also been described as “shy.”
Spit on a stick to see if you’re burnt out. Swiss health-tech startup Nutrix won the CES Innovation Award this year for its mouthpiece device that measures the cortisol levels in your saliva. The company is banking on the $300 billion lost annually by businesses to workers’ absenteeism, lowered productivity, and healthcare expenses.
Venture capitalists are really into accounting firms right now. A number of investors are betting on more traditional services like accounting because there’s a lot of areas where workflows can be automated, boosting profit and growth. “The idea is not to cut people with AI, the idea is to enable them to do two to three times the work,” General Catalyst managing director Marc Bhargava told the Wall Street Journal.
Guess I’m ahead of the trend given I invested in Fincent a couple of years ago.
More from my rich universe of endeavors
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Not that this ever matters - I’m a complete stranger witnessing your life like riding my bike passed summer homes I’ll never live in. I don’t know if I should feel happy or relieved for you that you’re able to leave the toxic atmosphere of this scarred city, where the majority of us that remain will carry these particulates in our systems for the rest of the lives - and not because we want to but because we can’t leave. The laissez-faire display of your privilege stunned me in unexpected ways. No one ever promised me *fair* but these horrific events continue to affirm that community is verb for a precious few, and this is not that space.
I don’t know what happened to make you so bitter about LA but this is like the tenth time you’ve talked about how much it sucks. I’m guessing a majority of your readers live here and have been shopping/watching you for years, including me. Don’t bite the hand that literally feeds you. We can get all this “behind-the-scenes” info in a 100 other newsletters.