Ad Agency Gin Lane Has Become a Consumer Goods Retailer

Gin Lane, the branding agency that created $15 billion in brand value around kale caesar salads, botanical drinks, and ED, announced it’s relaunching as a consumer goods retailer called Pattern.

Instead of turning customers on to new labels like past Gin Lane clients Sweetgreen and Hims, Pattern’s positioning itself as a discovery space for relaxing hobbies:

• It kicks off e-commerce operations with Equal Parts, a cookware line that’s meant to cultivate your inner Wolfgang Puck.
• Its subsequent brands will “focus on other activities that foster daily enjoyment, such as organizing and maintaining a home, learning hobbies, and more” when they launch later this year. That could be PR-speak for closet shelving and adult coloring books.

Pattern’s raised $14 million in funding from investors who agree that burnout culture has created a need for more “purposeful” brands. In its introduction to customers on Medium, Pattern says that the number of adults who feel exhausted by work increased by 50% in 2016. Pattern sees it as a 50% increase in adults who could use literal retail therapy.