The Briefing Room | Issue No. 3
Ciao & happy Tuesday 👋🏼 from The Briefing Room: Your weekly pulse on the latest in brand moves, cultural shifts, and emerging trends. Curated insights, straight to your inbox. Subscribe now and stay in the know. :)
🧢 Fashion & Apparel
Skims, the shapewear company founded by Kim Kardashian, is launching a new limited-edition collaboration with Dolce & Gabbana. The items go from $50 to $700 and they are a blend of Italian appeal with Skims’ signature comfort and solution according to co-founder Jens Grede — link
Vinted, the second-hand marketplace, is postponing plans for its IPO. The company is focusing on expanding into new categories and markets and is in no rush to go public — link
Louis Vuitton opens a temporary store, as its flagship undergoes a 3-year renovation, with a restaurant and bar, fine chocolate shop as well as a capsule collection — link
🧴 Beauty & Personal Care
Hanni, the body-care brand tackling pain points in busy women’s routines, is rolling out its products across all Sephora’s stores in the US — c. 600 locations. The company makes products that can easily fit into a routine without adding extra time — such as rust-free safety razors and gel sticks for dry shaving — link
Hanni / Splash Salve OneSkin, the healthy-aging skincare brand, announced a new $7m capital injection led by Selva Ventures. The company is famous for its signature OS-01 peptide claiming to reverse and slow skin aging — link
The global beauty industry is experiencing a slowdown, as this quarter’s earnings reports reveal a downward trend in both the U.S. and Europe. Consumers are reducing discretionary spending across various categories, and there’s a limit to how much prices can be raised to offset declining demand. Attention is now turning to Gen Alpha, expected to be the next key growth driver — link
🧖 Health & Wellbeing
Whoop, the company making fitness wearables, adds psychedelics tracking including ketamine and LSD. With changes in policies for psychedelics regulation, Whoop is trying to stay ahead of the curve — link
Noon, a new company in the wellness space, has just launched three new products to help with focus, sleep, and relaxation. These are gummy supplements made from functional mushrooms — link
🧃 Food & Beverages
Paleo, a Belgian company using precision fermentation to produce animal proteins using yeast, and Revo Foods, a Vienna-based food tech company, raised €2.2m to speed up research and production of a vegan salmon fillet — link
Molson Coors buys majority stake in Zoa energy drinks. The beverage giant behind Coors and Blue Moon doubles down on the better-for-you category and goes beyond beer by betting on the brand Zoa, which was co-founded by Dwayne “The Rock“ Johnson
Is there anything 23-year-old YouTuber turned businesswoman Emma Chamberlain cannot do?
She’s just announced her second collection with Warby Parker. Sure, she’s in it for the money BUT she’s one of the few influencers who manages to bring a more genuine side to collabs. She makes it feel like they’re not trying to sell you frames.
She helped curate all of the glasses, which reflect her style and taste.
Everything about the collection screams curation, luxury, and fashion. The illustrations are made by Isabella Cotier who has been commissioned works by the likes of Gucci, the New York Times, and more.
P.S., the frames are only $95 (!) — will Warby Parker show they sell more than just affordable glasses?
💊 As Ozempic gains popularity, a skin-care category catering to GLP-1 users is inevitable
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, both FDA-approved for treating type 2 diabetes, are rapidly gaining popularity as weight-loss solutions. Approximately 15 million Americans have used these drugs, with many taking them “off-label” specifically for weight loss.
While these medications are effective for weight loss, they can have unexpected side effects on the skin — causing the “Ozempic face”, marked by volume loss, a flatter appearance, sagging skin, and deeper wrinkles.
This happens because rapid weight loss can deplete fat beneath the skin and cause it to stretch, leaving collagen and elastin fibers struggling to keep up. Some compare the effect to stretched-out clothing losing its shape.
These changes to the skin can be long-lasting or even permanent. To combat these effects, doctors now recommend various treatments, including topical creams and in-office procedures like fillers or surgeries.
For skincare brands, this presents an emerging opportunity: developing targeted products to address the unique skin challenges associated with GLP-1 use. Solutions could focus on improving skin elasticity and firmness while stimulating collagen and elastin production to help restore a youthful appearance.
🍻 Why Nonalcoholic Beer Is So Popular Now
While traditional beer sales in the U.S. have flattened, the non-alcoholic (NA) beer segment is increasing, reaching over $440 million in 2024. Leading the movement is Athletic Brewing, which has driven about a third (!) of the category’s growth over the past four years.
According to Athletic Brewing's founder, the landscape for NA beer wasn’t great when they launched, offering only one type of beer, very few brands, and limited distribution. Today, however, Athletic Brewing outpaces giants like Heineken and Budweiser in NA beer sales. This success stems partly from its singular focus on NA beer and substantial investment—over $100 million—in proprietary R&D and production.
Historically, NA beer, as a category, has seen minimal innovation since Prohibition — imagine, no innovation for about 80 years. With most brands simply removing alcohol from regular beer, through additional processes. Athletic Brewing, however, developed a distinct process that involves 10-12 modifications throughout brewing, yielding greater efficiency. For instance, the company uses only 3.5 gallons of water per gallon of beer compared to the industry’s typical 7 gallons.
Athletic Brewing’s strategy also capitalized on the flexibility of direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales, which are less regulated than alcohol sales. In 2018, DTC accounted for over 50% of its revenue, providing invaluable insights into customer preferences, geography, and buying patterns. This data informed both their distribution and marketing tactics, especially in California, where they quadrupled production capacity to meet demand.
Today, roughly 80% of Athletic Brewing’s customers still drink alcoholic beverages, with more than 75% under age 45, a demographic inclined toward mixing NA options with traditional alcohol. This shift reflects a growing market as younger consumers age.
Breaking into competitive retail spaces was pivotal; within a month of launching in 2018, Athletic Brewing was on Whole Foods’ shelves, later expanding nationwide and becoming the top-selling beer at the retailer. This expanded distribution has boosted production from 875 barrels in 2018 to over 258 thousand in 2023.
Despite the industry’s intensifying competition, Athletic Brewing’s focus on repositioning NA beer as a standalone product has opened up unique sales channels—such as coffee shops—where alcoholic beverages aren’t typically available. Their vision is for NA beer to replace options like water or soda, catering to occasions where alcohol wouldn’t normally fit, like lunchtime or late afternoons at work.
Athletic Brewing’s story underscores a broader market potential: with consumers more willing than ever to embrace NA options, the question now is just how high the ceiling for NA beer can go.
See you next week!