Rundown: UPS acquires Happy Returns, Unilever offloads Dollar Shave Club & Sears attempts a comeback

10/28/23 • 26 min

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On this week's Modern Retail Rundown, the team discusses UPS's acquisition of reverse logistics startup Happy Returns from PayPal. Then, we go into Unilever offloading Dollar Shave Club, which it bought for $1 billion in 2016. Finally, It looks like Sears may be trying to revive its store count by reopening a location that closed last year.

Previous Episode

CPG veteran Justin Gold on how he's advancing Rudi's Bakery's product pipeline

Forty-seven-year-old Rudi’s Bakery is on a quest to reinvent itself -- and it's bringing in a CPG veteran to lead this charge.

The Denver-based company is known best for its gluten-free breads. And while it is well-known in this space -- with national distribution in major grocers like Whole Foods and Kroger -- Rudi's is now expanding into new categories like frozen items like breakfast sandwiches and other bread-focused foods. At the helm of its product innovation is Justin Gold, the founder and former CEO of Justin's Nut Butter, who is now Rudi's chief innovation and strategy officer.

Gold joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about why he joined Rudi's, as well as what he sees in store for the brand.

Next Episode

How bedding brand Coyuchi has updated its marketing playbook

Home goods brand Coyuchi has been around for 30 years and has seen the industry transform.

Its core focus is on providing organic cotton products. It's perhaps most well known for its bedsheets, but has expanded into other areas like loungewear and napkins. But the focus has always been to grow keeping its promise of organic products that speak to its target consumer in mind -- which it considers its competitive advantage against the ever-growing DTC home goods space.

CEO Eileen Mockus joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about Coyuchi's growth and strategy. The company first launched before DTC was a buzzword -- and as such grew via wholesale. "It was a lot of small retailers," she said. But over the years, the company invested more and more online -- and its e-commerce presence is now its largest sales channel.

"It's a big shift," Mockus said.

Mockus said that one of the ways Coyuchi was able to grow its online presence so much was by establishing its brand via these retail partners. Through that, the company was able to let customers know about its focus on sustainability.

The marketing behind its organic focus has also shifted. Sustainability-focused marketing a decade ago, she said, was "almost a scare tactic." That is, telling a customer about all the perils of using non-organic products. But now, the brand has realized it's better to use this focus as a way to explain why the product is enhanced. "We were really able to shift the conversation," she said.

But Coyuchi isn't the only brand having such a conversation. Search for DTC bedding on Google, and you'll be presented with dozens of different options. But Mockus said that Coyuchi being an early arrival -- as well as its focus away from the target millennial demographic most DTC brands go after -- has helped it stand out.

"It has definitely been a crowded space in the bedding market," she said. "We have always had a view to who our customer was."