Vivian Weng

Aloha Friday! 🤙🏼 Here are some interesting stories from the world of retail for Friday, November 7: 👜 Tapestry raised its full-year outlook and reported quarterly earnings that beat expectations on the strength of its Coach brand - but the shares slumped, suggesting investors were looking for more. 🚴🏻 Peloton Interactive has posted its second profitable quarter in a row as it released strong guidance for the crucial holiday shopping season, banking on its relaunched product assortment to drive growth. 👟 Under Armour forecast full-year revenue and profit below Wall Street estimates on Thursday as the sportswear maker faces declining demand and higher tariff-related costs. 🛋️ Wayfair will open a smaller-format prototype for its namesake brand in late 2026. Located in Columbus, Ohio, the location will be approximately 70,000 sq ft. That’s about half the size of the brand's large-format stores. 🎯 Target, which has long relied on stores for online order fulfillment, is tweaking that model to try to improve shoppers’ experiences by freeing up employees to keep items in stock and help customers. 🏬 Saks Off 5th will begin closing nine stores starting in January, parent Saks Global said Thursday. Days ago the company said Saks Off 5th President Kim Miller will take a newly created role at Saks Global. 👕 Ralph Lauren on Thursday raised its annual revenue forecast after beating quarterly estimates on resilient demand for its high-priced Polo shirts and cotton cable-knit sweaters across regions. 🎄 US holiday sales are expected to surpass $1 trillion for the first time, the National Retail Federation said on Thursday, though growth is forecast to slow as economic pressures weigh on consumer sentiment. 💄 E.l.f. Beauty saw its shares fall sharply after it forecast annual sales and profit below Wall Street estimates. The company now expects more than $50m in annual costs from higher US tariffs. 🧑🏻‍⚖️ US Supreme Court justices have appeared skeptical of President Donald Trump’s broad use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs. 🚚 DoorDash has published its third-quarter results, revealing that total orders increased by 21% to 776m and that revenue rose 27% to $3.45bn, surpassing analysts' expectations. 🍕 Papa Johns' shares dropped after comparable sales unexpectedly shrunk and the pizza chain slashed its outlook, as diners - particularly low-income ones - skimped on dining out. 💳 Buy now, pay later (BNPL) loans have overtaken store credit cards in popularity, according to LendingTree’s 2025 Store Credit Card Report. 👷🏼 Holiday hiring by retailers is expected to fall to its lowest level in at least 15 years, the National Retail Federation has said. #retail #retailnews #economy #DailyRetailNews

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Nike's aggressive push toward "channel purity" (prioritizing high-margin DTC over wholesale) is backfiring. They're now rebuilding wholesale partnerships to move inventory, even at lower margins. The post argues that DTC success requires product pull and cultural relevance first—not just owning the channel. Without demand velocity (e.g., exciting products, buzz), DTC becomes an expensive illusion. Marketplaces eating DTC's lunch: The post subtly nods to this—wholesale revival means leaning on partners for distribution. Meanwhile, emerging platforms (Temu, Shein, TikTok Shop) are grabbing discovery and low-price traffic, forcing brands into hybrid plays. Amazon still dominates (~40% U.S. share), but the "channel purity" era is dead. Smart brands will use marketplaces for reach, DTC for loyalty/margins. Demand > Distribution: The sharpest takeaway. Too many DTC brands optimized for owned channels (apps, sites) assuming traffic would follow. Reality: No buzz = no motion. In 2026, expect more brands pivoting to omnichannel, influencer/social velocity, and even marketplace concessions to keep inventory turning.

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Every day you delay a structured marketplace strategy, another brand quietly takes your shelf space in the digital aisle. No announcements. No noise. Just lost visibility, lost relevance, and lost momentum. I’ve seen this happen up close. Strong brands with great products assuming marketplaces will “figure themselves out.” They don’t. Marketplaces reward STRUCTURE. Not intent. Not legacy. Not effort. At @iinc, we work with leadership teams to bring discipline to the chaos. Clear category positioning. Winning keyword architecture. Pricing logic that protects margin without killing velocity. Content that earns trust in seconds, not scrolls. This isn’t about being present on marketplaces. It’s about being impossible to ignore. The digital shelf is finite. And it’s being filled every single day. The real question for CXOs and founders is simple. Are you building a system to win that shelf… Or leaving it open for someone else to take? @iinc @sundariyer #Sundariyer #iinc #callme #DMSundariyer #MarketplaceStrategy #DigitalShelf #BrandLeadership #EcommerceGrowth #FounderMindset #CXOStrategy

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When it comes to newness, we often start with the wrong question. It's not: Should 23% of the assortment be new? Or 50%? It's: What are you defining as newness — and does your customer actually want it from you? Because newness is not one thing. It can mean a new color. A new fit. A new fabrication. A new category. A new collaboration. A new aesthetic direction. And those are very different bets. That's where brands get themselves in trouble. They chase newness as a volume metric instead of a relevance test. Take lululemon. And I say this as a loyal customer, not an outsider. I'm literally wearing lululemon while writing this. That's why I notice when newness feels aligned — and when it doesn't. A former senior lululemon executive put it perfectly: "You could feel it, going into a store and it wasn't like, 'I gotta have this' anymore." That feeling has a name. Drift. It's what happens when newness stops being a customer conversation and starts being a planning exercise. Formula 1. Disney. MLB. NFL. Lululemon Tennis Club. Very different plays — but they raise the same question: Who is this really for? Because Lululemon Tennis Club may reference the codes of tennis, but it doesn't necessarily serve the customer who actually wants to play tennis in lululemon. That's the difference between aesthetic newness and product truth. And when brands blur that line, customers feel it. Especially in performance apparel and footwear, where credibility matters. Nike, Adidas, Hoka, On, and Brooks have spent decades building technical authority. That's not solved by newness. That's earned trust. Newness should do one of two things: → Reinforce why your brand exists → Make your core customer feel even more seen If it doesn't do that, it's not newness. It's distraction. The real question is not how much of your assortment is new. It's whether your newness strengthens customer belief — or weakens it. https://lnkd.in/eeBsB_mS #specialtyretail #merchandising #productstrategy #retailleadership #brandstrategy

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