Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.

Retail Brew

Jeena Sharma

retailbrew.com

A Chipotle burrito and a storefront on top of a smartphone 

How Chipotle is experimenting with BeReal, Gen Z’s new favorite social platform

With 7.5+ million downloads this year alone, the app is exploding. But what’s a brand doing there?

Katishi Maake

Pinterest rolls out new shopping features for merchants

Merchants using the Pinterest API tool for shopping saw 97% accuracy for price and availability data, the company said. 

Julia Gray

Ear-piercing brand Studs talks social media strategy

The company sees YouTube as fit for storytelling and TikTok as better for trendsetting.

Chat bubble with a retweet symbol in the middle on a light background

Social Media

Erin Cabrey

Sephora and Vogue publisher Condé Nast are looking to cash in on the power of influencers, both unveiling new creator-led marketplaces to compete with affiliate marketing leaders like LTK and ShopMy.

Speaking at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Tuesday, Sephora President and CEO Artemis Patrick announced the launch of My Sephora storefront, which allows creators and influencers to curate their own shoppable Sephora.com storefront. Patrick said the retailer was inspired to create the platform after receiving 14,000 applications this past year for its content creation program, Sephora Squad, which can only accept 50 annually. The platform, currently in alpha, is set to debut next month, she said.

Condé Nast’s new offering, Vette, also announced this week, allows influencers to operate their own online storefronts filled with products they picked. The platform will use “AI-powered merchandising and marketing tools,” the company said in a statement, which includes recommendations for inventory creators can add to their storefronts, 

. Vette, set to launch in early 2026, will use a revenue share model with creators and brands.

The new platforms are both efforts to get in on the nearly $16 billion 

—used by 40 million monthly shoppers and bringing in $5 billion in annual consumer sales, according to the company—and ShopMy, which scored $77.5 million in funding this year led by investors that previously backed Shopify and Rent the Runway.

Both Condé Nast and Sephora emphasized their new platforms differ from those affiliate marketing competitors because consumers can check out through the platforms themselves, rather than being redirected to the brands’ or retailers’ sites. Patrick said My Sephora is integrated into the retailer’s site on the app, desktop, or mobile devices, creating a “seamless experience,” while Vogue Business reported customers can shop and check out directly via Vette. The platforms more closely align with Amazon’s Storefront, which allows shoppers to convert sales directly though Amazon.

Lisa Aiken, Vogue’s executive fashion director and Condé Nast’s SVP of commerce, said in a statement that Vette will serve as a destination “where influence, distribution, and community come together in one place,” while Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch said it “sets a new standard for what the future of commerce can be.”

Condé Nast Vette creator commerce storefront

Sephora, Condé Nast announce new creator-led storefronts

The storefronts, which let consumers checkout directly on the platforms themselves, will compete with LTK and ShopMy as well as Amazon Storefront. 

Andrew Adam Newman

Foot traffic fell 1.3% year over year at American Eagle for August, the first full month after it launched its controversial Sydney Sweeney campaign, according to Pass-by data provided exclusively to Retail Brew.

The campaign “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” has faced criticism for allegedly having eugenics undertones and being hypersexualized, as we 

American Eagle competitors that also launched denim-themed celebrity campaigns appeared to fare better with foot traffic in August. The Gap, which 

 a viral video featuring the diverse all-female group, Katseye, on August 19 (four weeks after the Sydney Sweeney campaign launch), saw foot traffic climb 2.8% YoY for the month of August, per Pass-by. For the week that began August 25, the first full week after the Gap campaign launched, foot traffic rose 8.5% YoY. At Levi’s, which 

 a campaign featuring Beyoncé on August 4, traffic was up 1.8% for the month over last August.

 to collect and analyze its foot-traffic data, including infrared sensors, pressure mats, and anonymized data collected from smartphones.

The Sydney Sweeney campaign has had vocal defenders in very high places, including 

. The New York Post, dismissed the campaign’s critics as a “

In response to a request for comment about foot traffic, Rebekah Margulis, an associate vice president at Shadow, a PR firm that represents American Eagle, directed Retail Brew to comments pertaining to overall traffic from executives during a September 3 earnings call for American Eagle Outfitters, Inc (which along with American Eagle owns the brands Aerie, Offline by Aerie, Todd Snyder, and Unsubscribed). Margulis pointed out that Sydney Sweeney items for American Eagle, like a jacket and jeans, sold out in one day and one week, respectively, with items curated by the actress “performing four times better than AE’s other women’s items.”

During the earnings call, executives made several references to traffic increasing YoY for the second quarter across its brands, but did not reference in-store 

 traffic more specifically (as opposed to web traffic or a combination of both) .

We asked the company to clarify whether it had internal data that differed with Pass-by’s findings that foot traffic was down at American Eagle’s brick-and-mortar stores. It did not comment on foot traffic.

For Q2, which ended August 2, 10 days after the Sydney Sweeney campaign began, revenues increased 2% YoY for the company overall, but 

 for the American Eagle brand, falling from $827.6 million to $800.4 million, a drop of 3.3%.

 with Marketing Brew, American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers was triumphant about the Sydney Sweeney campaign, stating that it resulted in an “unprecedented spike” of 790,000 new customer acquisitions and nearly 320,000 new social followers.

“Sydney Sweeney is worth every single dollar that we invested,” Brommers told Marketing Brew. “Every single marketing metric that I look at is flashing a green light, and we’re only six weeks in.”

Syndey Sweeney poses wearing denim in an image with the text, "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans."

Foot traffic down 1.3% at American Eagle for month

Traffic up at Gap and Levi’s, which also launched celebrity denim campaigns, per Pass-by.

Exclusive: Foot traffic down 1.3% at American Eagle for month after Sydney Sweeney ad 

Isaac Hetzroni—or as he’s known to his more than 500,000 social media followers, The Sourcing Guy—may only be in his 20s, but he’s got decades of supply chain experience.

As a kid in Canada, his family owned a dancewear apparel company and he essentially grew up in a factory, learning the intricacies of fabrics and apparel production, he told Retail Brew. Then, when his father moved into electronics manufacturing in China, he, too, traveled to the factory there, developing an “unbelievable fascination” with manufacturing. In college, he started his own gig making merch sourced abroad and brought in more than $1 million in revenue.

Aiming to diversify this supply chain amid the onset of Covid-19, he toured, and began posting content about overseas factories from Turkey to Thailand. But he’s gained the most traction in the last year, as tariffs have “made sourcing and supply chain sexy,” Hetzroni said.

As tariffs have sent brands scrambling to save their margins, global supply chain expertise has not only become a coveted skill in the retail industry, but also, more surprisingly, a viral topic on social media, as 

 piqued consumers’ interest this spring by sharing the behind-the-scenes of where consumer products are made—even if many of those claims were 

With The Sourcing Guy and his own sourcing agency, Imprint Genius, Hetzroni said he’s capitalizing on both, en route to helping build a “unified global economy through manufacturing.”

Across Instagram and TikTok, Hetzroni has shared stories of 

 from Vietnam; spoken with manufacturers of leading brands of 

; pulled back the curtain on events like giant Chinese import and export event the 

At first, getting manufacturers to open up their doors to the internet wasn’t easy. He started with those he already worked with closely, but as the videos have taken off, most of the factories are now coming to him. Before a recent trip to India, he posted to social media looking to fill some filming slots and he said his inbox was filled with more than 100 DMs, and recently filmed in eight factories across two days in Portugal.

It’s a win-win for the factories, who now get customer inquiries from the videos, giving Imprint Genius a small commission for the business it sends their way. Plus, Hetzroni can use those factory tours when pitching clients to “paint a better picture” of who they’d be working with.

“We’re able to build a lot more relationships with really cool factories through the content,” he said. “Now that we have the relationships, our agency side of business is able to then more confidently go and manufacture products with those specific factories, because it’s a deeper relationship.”

 Through Imprint Genius, Hetzroni said he currently mentors ~400 brands across categories like apparel, accessories, and supplements, doing more than $1 million in sales, “troubleshooting” their supply chain issues, and working on diversifying supply chains, lowering costs, and launching new products. It also offers resources for new brands to learn the basics of manufacturing and sourcing.

Tariffs, of course—how hard they’ll be hit, and how to figure out where to move manufacturing next—have become a top issue for brands he consults. Still, issues like on-the-ground quality control—which prevents a brand from, say, receiving a $100,000 order of shoes from China in the wrong color—remain evergreen.

“Because I’ve been studying this for so long, I can very quickly hop on a 20-minute call and help these companies make really large decisions during all the craziness and really work with them on solving their supply-chain headaches,” he said.

Videos on freight forwarding and quality control aren’t 

 the most riveting, so the more entertaining behind-the-scenes manufacturing content has acted almost as a Trojan horse to get the right people to the right education content as they engage with and share it, he said. While his videos (and follower count) benefited from their similarity to 

, he believes he’s built up the trust with his follower base, largely by having his own boots on the ground, to be a reliable source.

“My larger purpose here is trying to be that guiding light for the aspiring entrepreneurs on how to manufacture in all these other countries that have fantastic infrastructure and have fantastic factories,” he said. “There just isn’t enough education or visibility on how to do it.”

The Sourcing Guy supply chain influencer on TikTok

Meet the sourcing influencer helping brands navigate the trade war

Isaac Hetzroni, aka The Sourcing Guy, has amassed half a million followers posting overseas factory tours and supply chain advice on Instagram and TikTok. 

 it will expand its free same-day grocery delivery service for Prime members from about 1,000 locales in the US today to more than 2,300 by the end of 2025. The service will require Prime membership and a minimum order of $25 for free delivery.

If you’re a Prime member whose local market doesn’t have free same-day grocery delivery yet, will you try it if it becomes available where you live? 

, we asked if you thought American Eagle’s campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney, which some have 

 for allegedly having eugenic undertones and being hypersexualized, would help or hurt the retailer’s revenue in the coming months. Nearly 3 out of 4 (74.1%) of you responded the campaign will boost American Eagle’s revenue, while 13.1% responded that it would decrease its revenue and 12.7% thought it would have no impact on revenue.

American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ads will boost sales, say 3 out of 4

Plus: Will Amazon’s free same-day grocery delivery entice you?

Hot Topic: American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ads will boost sales, say 3 out of 4

Foot traffic fell 9% year over year at American Eagle stores for the week that began August 3, marking the second week of traffic declines since the retailer launched its controversial campaign featuring actor Sydney Sweeney, according to data from 

American Eagle launched its campaign, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” on July 23. For the first full week after the campaign, which began on July 27, its foot traffic declined 3.9% YoY. In both of the two full weeks preceding the campaign, its traffic increased over last year, up 5.9% on the week that began July 6 and 4.9% on the week that began July 13.

The latest week (from August 3 through August 9) saw foot-traffic declines among some of the retailer’s direct competitors for younger clothing shoppers, too, though not as steep as American Eagle’s 9% YoY drop. Abercrombie & Fitch experienced lower foot traffic (-3.3%), along with H&M (-4.9%), Gap (-2.8%), and Urban Outfitters (-2.7%), per Pass_by.

Correlation, as ever, is not causation, so there’s no telling if the Sweeney campaign has directly impacted American Eagle’s foot traffic.

Retail Brew asked American Eagle to comment on the foot-traffic data. We asked whether, according to its own data, traffic and sales have increased or decreased since the campaign launched. American Eagle did not respond.

, some have criticized the campaign for what they claim are eugenic undertones and for being oversexualized, while others, including The New York Post, dismissed the critics as a “

.” Vocal defenders of the campaign include 

A photo of Sydney Sweeney wearing denim that's part of a new American Eagle ad campaign. 

Foot traffic down 9% at American Eagle after Sydney Sweeney ad

Traffic fell for both weeks since the campaign dropped, per Pass_by.

Exclusive: Foot traffic down 9% at American Eagle following Sydney Sweeney ad controversy

Controversy over American Eagle’s new Sydney Sweeney campaign is dominating headlines, but social media posts about the campaign have been mostly positive, according to data provided exclusively to Retail Brew from 

 of the campaign on July 23 through August 1, 63.7% of posts that mentioned American Eagle across TikTok and X combined were favorable, while 29.4% were unfavorable and 6.9% were neutral.

Molly Dwyer, director of insights at PeakMetrics, told Retail Brew that she found the results “slightly surprising,” but not inexplicable, considering the way the campaign has found more voluble defendants on the right than critics elsewhere.

Critics of the campaign, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” 

 to the double-meaning of the actor having great genes in the genetic sense, with some seeing eugenic undertones.

As recently as July 28, favorable and unfavorable mentions about American Eagle on the platforms were “roughly even,” Dwyer said, adding that shifted when “the right-wing media ecosystem got a hold of this.”

The New York Post dismissed critics of the campaign as a “

 on Fox News. Then conservative politicians, including 

, spoke out in defense of American Eagle, but no comparable cadre of high-profile Democrats raised objections to the campaign.

“Basically the favorable [to the campaign] side kept up the volume,” Dwyer said. “They kept their foot on the gas, drawing this into the Fox News discourse, drawing this into the White House discourse, and there is nobody on the anti-American Eagle side” who is as impactfully “keeping this conversation going.”

In other words, the backlash was trumped (and 

“The trajectory of all this is well rehearsed at this point,” Charlie Warzel 

about the online reaction to the campaign. “Progressive posters register their genuine outrage. Reactionaries respond in kind by cataloging that outrage and using it to portray their ideological opponents as hysterical, overreactive, and out of touch.”

American Eagle did not respond to a request for comment.

Retail Brew asked PeakMetrics to compare mentions on X (irrespective of sentiment) of both American Eagle and a rival for Gen Z and millennial consumers, Abercrombie & Fitch, for the year to date.

Since January, daily mentions of Abercrombie mostly modulated between 25,000 and 75,000, with American Eagle well below that, but with the campaign, American Eagle has soared much higher than Abercrombie, reaching more than 170,000 mentions.

A recent analysis provided exclusively for Retail Brew from 

, an analytics firm tracking corporate reputation, aggregated the sentiment of mentions of American Eagle from both mainstream media outlets and social media.

With news outlets in the mix, negative mentions far outweigh positive ones, but the positive mentions after the campaign began still dwarf 

 mentions of the brand before the campaign started.

Overall, before the campaign American Eagle averaged 67 daily mentions in media outlets and on social media, but since the campaign broke, that average has escalated to 33,000 mentions, per Maps.

Google Trends tells a similar story. Since 2004, which is as far back as Google Trends goes, Google searches for “American Eagle” reached an 

But what do all the numbers mean for American Eagle’s bottom line? Plenty of the American Eagle coverage is negative, and the notion that all publicity is good publicity—paging 

—doesn’t really hold up in the social media era.

Still, PeakMetrics’s Dwyer predicts it’s “going to be good for American Eagle” because the brand has struck a chord with conservatives. 

“The data volume that we’re looking at shows more people in defense of” American Eagle, Dwyer said. “And I think that they’ve successfully coded themselves now as a wink-wink nudge-nudge right-wing brand.”

Sydney Sweeney in an American Eagle ad with the copy "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans."

Most social posts about American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ads favorable

On TikTok and X, 63.7% posts about the campaign are positive, per PeakMetrics.

Exclusive: Most social media posts about American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ads are favorable

A new American Eagle campaign featuring actor Sydney Sweeney is going 

, but not necessarily in the way the brand had hoped.

As evident in the wordplay of its tagline, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” the campaign plays on the idea that both her American Eagle denim and her genetics are exemplary.

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,” Sweeney purrs in one 

, the camera lingering on the blond and blue-eyed actor. “My jeans are blue.”

For some, who took to social media to object to the campaign, the message seemed to echo the dark legacy of eugenics and “

A TikTok from rapper and singer Doja Cat mocking the campaign had more than 20.2 million views at the time of publication.

“What it communicates to people is that there is a prototypical standard for good genes: white, blond hair, blue eyes,” Dr. Marcus Collins, 

 and marketing professor at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business, said in a 

 he posted to LinkedIn. “Considering the political and social, cultural backdrop that we’re in right now, that could seem like some pretty bad dog whistling.”

While Collins stressed he had no idea of American Eagle’s intent, “it certainly makes sense that people will see it as such.”

The backlash drew coverage from media outlets including 

. Some coverage defended the campaign, with the New York Post characterizing critics as a “

.” (“Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women,” Senator Ted Cruz 

 about the controversy on the platform. “I’m sure that will poll well.”)

Retail Brew asked American Eagle to respond to criticism of the campaign, and whether it planned to respond to critics on social media and elsewhere. American Eagle did not respond.

After 14 consecutive Instagram posts over three days featuring Sweeney, American Eagle 

 an image of a woman of color wearing denim that said, “AE has great jeans👖✨.”

Many of the top comments to the post were dubious.

“Just like clockwork. Damage control,” responded @acolortheory. Added @cinddyy.liz, “Quick let’s add a poc so we don’t get hate.”

 on LinkedIn as the campaign was launching, American Eagle’s CMO Craig Brommers wrote, “A massive thank you and CONGRATULATIONS to our internal teams and external partners - and SYDNEY herself - for this defining moment 🙏🙏🙏.” But a few days later, as critical comments far outnumbered positive ones, comments to the post were turned off.

Similarly, Ashley Schapiro, VP of media, performance and engagement at American Eagle, turned off comments on her LinkedIn 

 about the campaign (“The ⭐️ star power of Sydney and the double meaning behind the campaign has a culture shaping power beyond anything I could have ever imagined being a part of,” she wrote) following critical comments.

Responsible Marketing: How to Create an Authentic and Inclusive Marketing Strategy

, told Retail Brew that she thought the new campaign by American Eagle is “pretty overtly referencing” eugenics and called it “egregious.”

Bakare was disappointed that American Eagle had not directly (at least not before this article was published) addressed the controversy—aside from 

 some of its ads from its social campaign, per Ad Age.

“They still have time to turn it around, but I am losing faith that they will,” Bakare said.

Bakare said American Eagle should at least address the criticism, even if it doesn’t pull the campaign.

“‘We really appreciate that our loyal fans are letting us know that there’s some issues that many see with our recent creative,” would be a good start of a message from the company to critics, Bakare said. “‘We hear you, we’re listening, and we’re working really quickly and getting together to see how we can make sure you know everything that we put out continues to do what we always care about most, which is respecting our fans.’”

Sydney Sweeney in an American Eagle campaign for jeans