Last Thursday was a scorcher in New York, the sort of day where you emerge from the subway shiny-faced to unspeakable smells rising from the sidewalk. But it couldn’t have been more different inside 65 Bleecker Street in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, where the smell of freshly made waffle cones filled the chilled air.

It was the day before the opening of Catch’n, a new ice cream shop from Dylan Lemay, who appears much younger than his 25 years. In 2020, Lemay, who is from Taylor, Michigan, was working at Cold Stone Creamery when he started posting videos on TikTok of him throwing scoops of ice cream for customers and coworkers to catch in their cups or cones.

• All that catching, fittingly, caught on. Today, Lemay has 11.2 million followers on TikTok and 3.73 million subscribers on YouTube.

“If you want, you can really go hibachi on it,” Lemay told us, as he leaned over a cold slab and made a chopping motion using his steel spades to mix freeze-dried strawberries and Golden Oreos into ice cream.

You’d be forgiven if at first you mistook this for just another trendy ice cream shop, because it has the trappings of one. But here’s the scoop: This is serving up the social media content-creator-as-a-brand trend in a big way. And the cherry on top? Venture capital is behind it, and a dollop of forward-thinking store design.

Keep reading, and dreaming about ice cream, here.—AAN

The retail industry dominated global headlines again in July, with supply-chain problems in California, layoffs at Shopify, and dire profit warnings from Walmart. But amid the chaos are some exciting moves by the industry’s top dogs. Let’s jump in:

• Amazon’s SVP of Global Corporate Affairs Jay Carney, who formerly served as White House Press Secretary under President Barack Obama, is heading to Airbnb, where he’ll be the global head of policy and communications.
  • Carney, who helped grow Amazon’s lobbying efforts, will report directly to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, and be based in Washington, DC, the company said.
• Gap CEO Sonia Syngal is stepping down, and the executive chairman of the company’s board, Bob Martin, will serve as interim president and CEO.
• L’Oréal executive Marianna Trofimova headed to Function of Beauty to become the custom hair care company’s new chief marketing officer.
  • Trofimova is the second L’Oréal vet to join FOB, following Alexandra Papazian, who took on the CEO role in September.
• PVH announced that David Savman (formerly of H&M) will replace Sarah Clarke as chief supply chain officer later this year.
  • Elsewhere in the supply-chain world, Kohl’s said Paul Gaffney, its chief technology and supply chain officer, will step down on August 1, and will be replaced by Siobhan McFeeney, who most recently served as EVP of the company’s technology division.
• Meanwhile, at Nordstrom, retiring Chief Marketing Officer Scott Meden will be replaced by company veteran Deniz Anders.
  • Nordstrom also tapped Dick’s Sporting Goods exec Nina Barjesteh to lead the company’s private label brands.
• Johnson & Johnson’s general counsel Michael Ullmann is retiring, the company said. He will be succeeded by Elizabeth Forminard.
• And CVS appointed its first chief data, digital, and technology officer, Tilak Mandadi, who came from MGM Resorts International.

Checking out: Instacart said its founder and executive chairman, Apoorva Mehta, will step away from the board once the delivery company goes public. Mehta, who founded Instacart in 2012, will be replaced on the board by CEO Fidji Simo.—MA

Katie Hicks reports for Marketing Brew:

In November 2020, Hayden Rankin and Mason Manning posted a TikTok about their business idea: Customers write a prompt for a shirt design and pay to have it made and sent to them, sight unseen. The video got more than 1.5 million views and almost 370,000 likes.

Nearly two years later, Nice Shirt. Thanks! has more than 440,000 TikTok followers, 400 contracted designers, and a backlog of 6,500 requested designs, which could range from ghosts eating mac ‘n’ cheese to cats as instruments. Rankin said they plan to sell at least 50,000 shirts by the end of the year.

Read how small businesses are seeing organic success on TikTok.

Today’s top retail reads.

Smalmart: Walmart's testing extremely un-Walmart-y little general stores in popular vacation spots. (Forbes)

Economic sun-shower: Grappling with the mixed message of corporate optimism about quarterly profits and the Fed trying to slow the economy to fight off a recession. Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo said on JPMorgan’s Q2 earnings call: “You’re out buying kayaks, surfboards, wave runners just before the storm. So is it tough times or not?” (the New York Times)

Turning the tables: Restaurant Week in New York City now lasts 30 days, but can it bump up in-person dining numbers to pre-pandemic levels? (Bloomberg)

Rave reviews: Your best advertising content comes from happy customers. And Bazaarvoice’s 2022 Shopper Experience Index shows you how to highlight user-generated content (UGC) and stay steady amid ever-shifting trends. Get it here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Introducing Retail Brew’s newest debut ::drumroll:: The Sku: A Retail Brew Summit. FOMO is real, friends.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

• Meeting demand and maximizing profit
• Managing your organization across channels
• Creating omni-channel engagement with customer journeys
• Sustainability: who is doing what and how?
• Using technology to drive sales

Early-bird pricing ends soon! Register now to save your seat (and some $$). Only $499 for a limited time!

At the mall, it’s where band tees are the only tees. In Retail Brew, it’s where we invite readers to weigh in on a trending retail topic.

Zara announced in May that it was pulling the plug on free online returns and that it would start charging UK customers a fee of £1.95 to do so (while returning purchases to their stores is still free). Other retailers thought that looked like a pretty good idea.

• Abercrombie & Fitch, Dillard’s, J.Crew, Kohl’s, and Urban Outfitters are among the brands that now deduct a portion of refunds as a de facto fee for online returns sent through the mail, according to a recent Footwear News report.

It’s no wonder why a retailer would want to say sayonara to free online returns.

• Online returns cost retailers an average 21% of order value, according to an April Pitney Bowes survey of what it called “medium and large-size digital and omnichannel brands.”
• The rate of retail returns averaged 16.6% in 2021, a 10.6% YoY increase, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation and Appriss Retail.

Plus: carbon. Last week, we told you about Helpsy Shop, a new eco-minded online resale clothing store that has a no-returns policy because, as Helpsy explains on its site: “Returning an item to us creates more delivery miles and carbon emissions, and we don’t want that!”

You tell us: More retailers say returns by mail are too expensive for them and bad for the planet. What do you think?

Circling back: Last week, we asked you about the controversy surrounding some Walmart employees refusing to sell customers contraceptives on religious grounds, the subject of the #BoycottWalgreens hashtag on TikTok. (Walmart defended such employees, telling NBC News that it was requiring them, however, to refer shoppers to another employee to ring up the purchase.)

We asked if you agree that Walgreens employees should be able to refuse the sale of contraceptives on religious grounds, and you were…prophylactic: 86.3% of you said no, you did not think the Walmart employees should be able to refuse selling contraceptives, while just 12.7% said yes, they should be able to refuse selling contraceptives, and 1% were unsure.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• Inside the nine-month process of creating Oatly’s annual sustainability report
• Consumers will pay more for American-made products, but inflation takes a toll: poll
• Retailers are rising to the state-mandated challenge of plastic reduction