Clockwise from Top.
Teen Survey
Piper Sandler’s teen survey came out last week, with lots of juicy findings. They have been doing this twice a year for almost 50 years at this point, with his latest survey reaching 6K Gen Z teens in the first quarter of this year.
Their lovely infographic is chock full of insights. Here are a few interesting ones:
Nike continues to crush their footwear competitors in this demographic, but they have been downtrending and Hoka is now #3 with upper income teens
Huge gains by Alo Yoga and Vuori YoY in athletic wear
Coach #1 in bags, beating out LV at #2, and Lululemon was #5 (what?)
Definitely a surprise to see Coach at #1, imagine this is driven by Selena Gomez’s work for them + Coachtopia
In Beauty, Sephora the top retailer and e.lf. the runaway top brand
TikTok beats Instagram, though they are pretty close
Raising Cane’s rapidly gaining share, with Goldfish the top snack
Teen spending is down almost across the board, with the exception of beauty
Here is a sampling of the Top 5’s:
Raquel noted that A LOT of these brands were brands she was shopping with in the 90s: Hollister, Bath & Body Works, etc. As our daughter is getting older, it’s fascinating how brands are able to re-invent and stay relevant decades later.
Newstand Pop-Up
We visited the new Airmail newsstand in the West Village. As evidenced by our coffee table, we are big suckers for magazines and wanted to see what this new shop had to offer. Not only that, we’ve been loyal subscribers to the weekly Airmail bulletin since the beginning.
Raquel and I both thought this would be a tiny, hole-in-the-wall pop-up, but it’s actually a fully built out shop. It’s not huge, but in addition to the small coffee bar, it has huge SKU count of items for sale: vintage watches, magazines, books, candles, olive oils, and of course Airmail merch.
If the build out is any indication, the publication must really be pulling in some good advertising dollars as the space does not look cheap or quickly put together at all. And they are clearing buying inventory, where previously their e-commerce shop was mostly using affiliate links.
A La Sala
Khruangbin released their new album, and it has been playing non-stop from Raquel’s office on our top floor. P4K is giving it a 7.1/10. The NYT takes a stab at trying to describe what exactly their music is:
I worry that the word “vibes” is overused, but in what follows it is unavoidable: The band Khruangbin, a trio from Houston, has become so popular that there now exists an entire subgenre of music broadly known as “Khruangbin vibes.” If you have walked into a relatively hip coffee shop in a major or even minor city lately, you have probably encountered Khruangbin vibes. They’re marked by low-key, reverb-heavy, often guitar-forward instrumentals — music that’s groovy and pleasant, bewitchingly exotic yet comfortingly familiar, inoffensive and instantly graspable as existing within a particular sonic space. A vibe, as it were.
The album has entered our regular car play rotation, dislodging the Encanto Soundtrack and The Sound of Music Soundtrack, and joining fellow new-entry Dave Brubeck.
Links.
Celebs have returned to the Chateau Marmont.
The company behind the Donald Judd dupes that Kim Kardashian bought.
A Hollywood remake of your fast food memories.
Meghan Markle is returning to TV.
Malibu’s most exclusive spa is coming to the Hudson Valley.
The 19 year old artist making viral shoegaze.
Mattel is launching a new version of Scrabble that is “less competitive”.
Gen Z are done with Ikea: kooky pottery and risqué ceramics are now in.
<3
Chris & Raquel