Part IV: A lot has happened since the report that led with this image of soccer icon Megan Rapinoe, her corporate involvement, and her role in helping bring VS back to relevance. For years, there was no easier target than Victoria’s Secret. Now, Adore Me is a Victoria’s Secret subsidiary. This should have been accomplished much sooner.
This one hit close to home. My younger brother received his confirmation email at 9:02 AM from Meta’s Leadership Team. The role is everything he’d ever hoped for and more. And like many Americans, his income is the basis of his survival, especially during a time that inflation stands at a 40 year high. This moment in time is difficult for the many of us. It’s especially so as the fundamentals of our economy continue to fail beneath us: rampant inflation, high mortgage rates, expensive housing, crypto’s crash, and to the crumbling of FAANG’s sure-footedness.
There has been a slow dismantling of the energy behind the American direct-to-consumer movement. So what does direct-to-consumer mean now? It may come to mean “direct from factory.” More and more, we will begin to see the term move away from the modern startup brands that previously defined an era of retail. Instead, we will begin thinking through a more literal direction as Chinese eCommerce companies invest heavily into operations in the United States. These companies are able to send goods directly from factories to customers cutting out the middlemen – and in doing so, they keep prices extremely low.
