CONSUMER BEHAVIOR & TRENDS

Cara Santana Leto (left) and Stephanie Suganami with, from left, Mercer, Sheppy, and Binx. Lil Luv Dog

The co-founders of Lil Luv Dog both worked in the prestige beauty industry: Cara Santana Leto as the founder of The Glam App and Stephanie Suganami as the COO of Kardashian West Brands. So when the longtime friends and dog lovers decided to start a line of dog-grooming products, Lil Luv Dog, it would be understating it to say they took a page from beauty brands.

They took the whole book.

The brand is “taking the trends that are prevailing in the beauty industry and applying them to the [dog] grooming business,” Santana Leto told Retail Brew.

Last August, the brand launched with dry shampoo, which retails for $36 for 1.41 ounces, and has since added pet wipes ($24 for 80 wipes).

Santana Leto said Lil Luv Dog is “clean beauty for dogs,” referring to the trend for safer seeming ingredients and transparency by cosmetics brands.

The New York Times put it this way in the headline for a feature on the company last November: “Like Goop, but for Dogs.”

Five months later, as if the Gray Lady had manifested it, the brand announced it had landed distribution through Goop. But far from being a fluke, ending up on a website that is synonymous with clean beauty had been the brand’s retail strategy from the beginning.

Keep reading here.—AAN

      

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E-COMMERCE

Meta

Meta introduced a host of new shopping formats at Cannes Lions this year.

The tech giant rolled out Live Video Ads, a tool that lets merchants and creators promote live videos on Instagram. The feature will expand to Facebook across all markets, according to the company.

Meta said it is working with live commerce platforms like TalkShopLive and Firework to turn livestreams into ads. Plus, the company will offer Live Shopping Tools so people can browse products, check prices, and buy without leaving the video they’re watching. Live shopping is expected to become a $30 billion–$40 billion business within the US in 2026, Talkshoplive CEO Sandie Hawkins told Retail Brew in March.

This summer, Meta will also add a new checkout experience with payment giants Visa and Mastercard that will let people pay using a virtual credit card, so actual credit card details never get shared with the merchant.

Keep reading here.—VC

      

STORES

Getty Images

We’re halfway through 2026 and between PBM reforms, the continued rise of GLP-1s, and agentic AI adoption, retail pharmacies have kept busy.

The retail pharmacy landscape has evolved drastically in recent years. Think Rite Aid’s bankruptcy and subsequent going out of business, Walgreens’s sale to private equity firm Sycamore Partners, and CVS’s selling off of unprofitable assets.

The industry continues to face challenges in adapting to new competitors like Amazon Pharmacy and Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs, as well as the push to digitize pharmacy services.

We reached out to leaders across the retail pharmacy sector to see how they’re navigating these changes and how they plan to tackle the rest of 2026.

Keep reading here on Healthcare Brew.—MA

      

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swapping skus

Today’s top retail reads.

Decaffinated: Why Starbucks’s recent app outage is a warning to other retailers. (Inc.)

Wrapped up: A district court judge dismissed a lawsuit alleging packaged food giants like Kraft-Heinz and PepsiCo “failed to warn consumers of the risks associated with ultraprocessed products.” (Food Dive)

Meat me in the middle: Walmart said it will lower prices on ground beef, produce, and soda across its Walmart and Sam’s Club stores. (Reuters)

Jobs

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