Bubs was a cult favorite Swedish candy with steadily growing sales and a small international business when its founders, the Lindström family, sold it to Norwegian CPG giant Orkla in 2023. Neither had any idea that, in a year, a Swedish candy craze would sweep the US.

One weekend in January 2024, an influencer’s viral TikTok chronicling her visit to New York City chain BonBon to get Swedish sweets, including Bubs’s dual-flavored marshmallow-gummy hybrid candies, kickstarted a stateside consumer obsession that sent lines snaking, sales soaring, and new candy stores opening to capitalize. Soon, a global Bubs shortage ensued: retailers, distributors, and consumers were calling nonstop, and the candies were even being sold on the gray market, Niclas Arnelin, who was Bubs’s CEO before its sale and has since shifted to lead its international expansion, told Retail Brew.

“As a company, you need to ask yourself, ‘Is this hype [lasting for] two weeks, or is it two months? Or is it two years?’ We had no clue,” he said.

Fast forward two years, and with expansion into 35,000 US retail locations to show for it, it’s clear the Bubs bonanza is still quite sticky.

Keep reading here.—EC

The pace of fast fashion is quickening. Trend cycles have only shortened since the pandemic, which means consumers are buying clothes more frequently, incentivizing retailers to produce copious garments, more than half of which are made from polyester.

Once clothing items are no longer en vogue, they might be sold on resale platforms, donated to secondhand stores, or repurposed into cleaning rags—but that’s the best-case scenario. Mostly, the nearly 100 million tons of annual global textile waste go into landfills or are burned.

Reju, a polyester recycling company, offers a unique alternative: It repurposes polyester, a synthetic material made from petroleum that can take up to 200 years to disintegrate, by breaking it down to its molecular components and then rebuilding it into a stronger, better-quality fiber, ready to be made into completely new garments. One material scientist told Morning Brew that Reju’s method is the “holy grail” of the circular economy, and an industry expert said the company is proof that investors are ready to support sustainable textile innovation to tackle the global waste crisis.

Keep reading here.—TC

At risk of ruining a pleasant (or perhaps not so pleasant) surprise, April Fools’ Day is this Wednesday, and you can expect a number of brands to test out their comedic chops with some kind of marketing prank. Sometimes these attempts generate laughs; other times, controversy. We’ll see how brands fare this year. In the meantime, check out Retail Brew’s four-decade compendium of retail brands’ April Fools’ pranks for a sampling of famous examples.

Here’s what else is going on in retail this week:

In data releases: April Fools’ also just happens to be the day the US Commerce Department is releasing its monthly retail sales numbers for February. The previous report showed sales in January declining 0.2% from December, and rising 2.9% from the year before, with much of the month-over-month drop coming from motor vehicle and auto parts dealerships.

Keep reading here.—AV