I opened the freezer and for the first time, sealed cups of Daily Harvest outnumbered all other products. The prepared foods brand owned our freezer. A growing number of Americans will soon say the same. This report explains.
Think back to your youth. When you visited your local malls in in the 1990s or early 2000s, they resembled marketplaces of vendors and major retailers. It was a living and breathing brochure of SKUs. Back then, storefronts didn’t require special features, personality, or experiential qualities. Consumers were there to discover, to shop, and to transact. Today, the malls that are still ascendant are something different than what we remember. The malls that failed to evolve are crumbling beneath the weight of changing consumer preferences, personal technologies, and faltering specialty retailers.
Mary Zophres received the box on a Thursday in 1998. By Monday, the word had made it to the film’s director. Oliver Stone was interested in samples of the fledgling Under Armour brand but only if the production studio wouldn’t have to pay for the requested $44,000 in apparel. To Stone, it was free costuming for a film that was already over budget. That initial box was received by one of the most influential costume designers in all of Hollywood and it was packed by Kevin Plank, himself. Before brand executives spent hours calculating ROAs, the hard truth is that retail was mostly persistence and luck. On that day, Plank earned both.
