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

Erin Cabrey

retailbrew.com

These CPG brands are reportedly exploring a sale

With a potential valuation of $2 billion, Rare Beauty leads the pack of brands recently eyeing deal options.

Katishi Maake

Retail associates believe employers could better integrate tech

40% said their employers have not invested in their tech needs.

Retail associates believe employers could better integrate tech, survey

Alex Vuocolo

USPS drops FedEx, makes UPS its primary air cargo carrier  

The shipping shake-up crowns UPS as the Postal Service’s new partner in the air. 

Operations

Morning Brew Creative Studio

Health and wellness businesses help others feel their best through classes, resources, and even supplements. But healthy businesses need support, too, especially when it comes to cash flow.

Whether you’re hiring staff, restocking inventory, or prepping for seasonal demand, fast, reliable access to cash flow is essential. Breathe easy, business owners: The 

 gives you instant access to your sales, so you’re ready for whatever the day brings.

In 2019, Square and Mastercard partnered to offer a free debit card made for small businesses: the Square Debit Mastercard. Fast-forward to 2025, and sellers can now sign for checking and payments in one seamless process.

Today, Square reports having over 265,000 active debit card sellers per month. In 2024, sellers using Square Checking spent more than $3.6 billion using their debit cards—a 29% increase compared to 2023.

We teamed up with Mastercard and Square to learn how the Square Debit Mastercard empowers wellness leaders to care for their customers 

Like any healthy practice, sustainable access to cash flow starts with creating a strong foundation. With the Square Debit Mastercard, merchants gain access to profits the moment they make a sale.

Picture this: You own a small yoga studio in the heart of your hometown. To celebrate your studio’s one-year anniversary, you organize a calendar of themed classes ranging from costume contests to ’90s jam sessions. After a successful marketing campaign and record turnout, those themed events bring in record revenue for your business. Score!

Traditionally, this is where the waiting game starts—aka waiting for your funds to transfer to your bank account before you can access them. With the Square Debit Mastercard, your funds are available instantly

—ready to cover new mats, better speakers, or even to hire more instructors.

Small businesses rely on dedicated, dynamic staff members. The Square Debit Mastercard helps support your entire team, from full-time employees to vendors. Because the debit card makes cash available immediately after a sale, paying guest instructors, maintenance crews, nutritionists, and anyone else on your team is a breeze. You can also pay using a vendor’s preferred method, from debit card and ACH

Running a health and wellness business takes resilience and adaptability—and that starts with steady, instant cash flow. The Square Debit Mastercard helps small businesses improve their agility and resilience, preparing for whatever the day brings.

 to sign up for checking, debit, and payments in one streamlined process. This helps businesses access funds instantly to pay for new equipment, restock supplies, pay instructors sooner, and invest in what matters most for your business.

Square-Mastercard

square_mastercard_article2

How health and wellness businesses get fast access to daily sales

Access your earnings instantly and keep your business moving.

 Follow the flow: How fast, flexible cash flow supports health and wellness businesses

Thrive Market has added a COO role for the first time and tapped Amazon vet Scott Lescher to fill it, rounding out a C-suite full of execs hailing from the e-commerce giant as the online grocer gears up for continued growth.

Lescher is the second Amazon vet Thrive has added to its C-suite in the last year, following the hire of chief merchandising officer 

 in 2024, who spent 12 years at Amazon and worked on its Amazon Fresh business. Thrive CFO Hetu Patel, who joined in 2023 and brought on Lane, also spent over a decade at Amazon. Lescher previously worked with Lane at Amazon.

Lescher spent 15 years across two stints in a number of operations roles at Amazon, most recently director of surface transportation support and fleet. He also served as Uniqlo USA’s director of logistics and supply chain for two years. In an interview with Retail Brew, Lescher described himself as a “builder at heart,” who started at Amazon in 2007 leading hourly associates in fulfillment centers, establishing standards for running those early fulfillment centers, through the launch of ultra-fast delivery and integration of those operations into Amazon Fresh, and finally overseeing middle-mile transportation.

Thrive Market has amassed more than $700 million in sales and ended 2024 with 1.6 million paid members, according to the company, with membership seeing a double-digit percentage increase year over year in the first quarter. Lescher said his joining Thrive will help ensure “the operations space is ready for sustained high growth moving forward.”

“I’ve always gravitated towards the early-to-mid-phase growth opportunities, really helping take operations from the one to 100 phase, helping scale,” Lescher said. “As I learned about Thrive Market, really got to know the team, see the culture in place, I saw an opportunity to really apply this operations toolkit that I've been fortunate to build in all my years with Amazon.”

He’s about two months into the role, and has spent nearly half his time thus far alongside Thrive associates in its fulfillment centers and doing delivery ride-alongs to “see things at the ground level,” he said.

As COO, Lescher will oversee operations across Thrive’s three fulfillment centers in Nevada, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, the teams working at those centers, supply chain and demand planning, and transportation including last-mile delivery. His previous Amazon experience has helped prep him for these responsibilities.

“By understanding what it takes to be successful at each of those levels, it really helps me be a strong strategic leader on a sort of end-to-end basis in the ops space,” he said.

He aims to “strengthen” the safety culture within its fulfillment centers, ensure consistent member experiences (which will reduce needs for refunds, damaged products, or late shipments), grow capacity, and find efficiencies. Creating efficiencies includes “evaluating and improving” its operation design and potentially turning to technology and “various automation options” to create savings that are ultimately passed on to customers, Lescher said.

Lescher’s work will help launch Thrive, which reached 

 in 2023, into its next growth stage, one that it’s been working to set with a number of recent operational changes. Over the past year, it’s moved its frozen fulfillment in house. Thrive has since shipped more than 1 million units in frozen products itself, boosting delivery speeds by 20% and cutting refunds while giving the company the capacity to carry more frozen SKUs.

The online grocer has also begun making its own deliveries to members in New York and Philadelphia to further improve delivery speed and the quality of customers’ experience. It has used third-party logistics providers for delivery in the past and will continue to do so in other delivery locations, according to Lescher. It’ll evaluate expanding the capability to additional locations and bringing other operations in house “where it makes sense,” he said.

Thrive’s push into further growth comes as online grocery has notably 

 after a post-Covid slump, with sales jumping 15.2% to $9.8 billion year over year in April, according to Brick Meets Click. While ship-to-home grocery delivery remains the smallest online grocery method, compared to delivery and pickup, the segment continues to grow. In April, sales rose 22.1% YoY to $1.9 billion.

Looking ahead, Lescher said his biggest challenge as COO will be accurately predicting what’ll happen next.

“It definitely is a challenging area, especially with a company that’s growing quickly, but we continue to improve the models that we use and make investments so that we make it easier to have high quality forecasts, which in turn improve the member experience.”

Thrive Market hires Amazon vet as first COO

The e-commerce grocery is gearing up for the next phase of growth and has started bringing more operations in house. 

Exclusive: Thrive Market hires Amazon vet as first COO

Retail in 2025 never sleeps. Payment technology is advancing and exciting new tools are constantly arriving on the scene. These tools offer enhanced operational efficiency and better customer experiences, must-haves in this competitive landscape.

But along with all this new tech, merchants also have to prepare for new forms of fraud. Juniper Research found that 

, with losses expected to exceed $343b from 2022 through 2027.

Here’s the situation: Payments and security are increasingly intertwined, often built in tandem and living within the same systems. And sophisticated attackers are relentless in their efforts to infiltrate this ecosystem with fraudulent transactions, identity theft, and other cyberattacks.

To respond to fraudsters’ latest tactics, payment tech companies, governments, and banks are experimenting with new security measures like biometrics, tokenization, and AI.

 to learn about the latest fraud trends and how merchants can take advantage of efficiency-boosting tech—without leaving themselves vulnerable to attacks.

To fight fraudsters’ new tricks, merchants and institutions are getting creative. The introduction of biometrics and tokenization are cutting edge new tools, providing a hard-to-hack layer of protection. What makes these security measures effective? Let’s find out.

Biometrics are specific biological identifiers that combine with tech to confirm your identity (think fingerprint ID, facial recognition, retinal scans, and even vein patterns). These traits are all difficult to replicate, making them useful tools for enhancing security measures.

Because while hackers may be able to guess your cat’s name, it’s far less likely that they can recreate your fingerprint.

Think about the last time you completed a purchase on your smartphone. When you finalized your information at checkout, you may have been prompted to rescan your face or use your fingerprint to confirm your identity. This additional layer of protection helps prevent fraudulent activity, and it also streamlines the payment process.

But as with many new tech offerings, there are privacy concerns to consider. Issues of security and consent are inescapable when discussing biometric security. Merchants using biometrics should ensure that their technology partner is securing the consent of each individual to collect their biometric information.

Next comes how they secure and store the information. To address the regulatory and privacy concerns of biometrics, many companies turn to tokenization instead.

Payment tokens and cryptograms (aka encoded messages to validate transactions) are another rising star on the security scene. With tokenization, consumers’ devices get assigned a payment credential. Users just unlock their devices using biometrics or a passkey, and they can verify login information using their existing credentials.

Tokenization is taking off in the international market, too. New payment methods that utilize tokens and cryptograms allow users to reduce or avoid exchange fees, all while keeping payments fast and secure.

Here’s how it works: The tokenization process converts sensitive data into unique digital tokens that are securely transmitted using standardized definitions, with no need for complex verification processes. And existing payment systems can deploy tokens regardless of location.

Tap-to-pay’s popularity has outlived its pandemic-era boom. While adoption took off in an effort to protect personal health and safety, tap-to-pay has evolved to become a preferred payment method.

Tap-to-pay and other contactless payment technology brings both tokenization and biometrics together. The tokenization protects consumer data from third-party inception and biometrics integrate identity authentication, especially for purchases made via smartphone.

Okay, so that’s a rundown of select new security measures. Now let’s pivot to a technology that's taking the world by storm: AI. Just like other industries, generative AI is making an impact in the cybersecurity world. By spotting variations in consumer spending and account activity, GenAI can flag potentially fraudulent activity.

And with large language models, AI can alert payment technology companies about activity that differs from an account’s historical activity with surprising…intelligence. Let’s say you’re a season-ticket holder for your local minor league team, but your account suddenly shows big purchases for courtside seats at a pro basketball game. The system might detect potentially suspicious activity and flag the purchase.

AI is also changing the way merchants approach illegal chargebacks, or the practice of credit card providers asking retailers to refund or replace fraudulent or disputed transactions. Traditionally, merchants go through a grueling manual investigation to track down a product from order confirmation and shipment through delivery confirmation.

With AI-enabled tools, retailers can separate legitimate chargebacks from fraudulent claims and even detect patterns that need more investigation.

With new developments come new opportunities for fraudsters to attack. AI’s massive power can be harnessed by bad actors not only for mass phishing but also to constantly check security systems for weaknesses and generate deepfakes.

New tech gives merchants the power to fight fraud like never before. Fraudsters are developing increasingly creative (and sophisticated) cyberattacks, but companies have the tools they need to understand the threat landscape—from synthetic identity fraud to real-time payment fraud—and get ahead of potential issues. 

 helps merchants create secure, streamlined payments across all channels so you can provide your customers with a safe buying experience.

Learn about the trends influencing merchants this year in the 

restaurant worker taking credit card payment from two diners at table

Global Payments

Global Payments Q2 2025 Branded Article Native Ad #2 

 How merchants are preventing fraud with new security measures

As cyberattacks become more sophisticated, merchants are experimenting with high-tech security measures.

Lock it down: How merchants use innovative new tech to prevent fraud

While American consumers have long enjoyed the upside of free trade—cheap, on-demand goods from low-wage countries such as China and Vietnam—the push for more domestic manufacturing has come up over the years, from the anti-globalization protests in Seattle back in 1999 to the Biden administration’s attempts to reindustrialize the American economy following the pandemic.

And riding these waves of public sentiment are companies like Steele Canvas, a Massachusetts-based maker of laundry baskets, totes, and furniture that has operated for over 100 years.

Now, the new round of tariffs from the Trump administration are spotlighting trade issues once again, and Steele Canvas Co-Owner Paul Lordan weighs in on potential pros and cons for his business.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Do tariffs present any immediate concerns to Steele Canvas?

It’s not anything that we're necessarily panicking about. We have no plan to adjust our pricing. Fortunately, prior to the tariffs we had a good amount of stock and raw materials built up, mainly just in preparation for our busy seasons. So short term, it's kind of business as usual, but in the background, it’s giving us a little bit of queasiness.

Do you see them as a potential business opportunity?

We hope so, but we’re not doing anything necessarily to capitalize on this. There are a number of people in this country who are willing to pay extra. I think what’s happening is [tariffs] are encouraging people who may not have considered going that route in the past to see the benefits of giving us a shot. It could be a retailer making a calculation that their customers—because of how prevalent it is in the news these days—might be willing to pay more than they might have prior to this tariff issue because they want to support an American-made product.

Over the years, how has public awareness of the “Made in USA” label evolved?

I think the appetite’s out there. It’s just more of an awareness problem, and the spotlight is on American manufacturing right now, which I think is great.

How do you think this moment compares to other times when this issue has resurfaced in the public consciousness? Has there been any downside to the divisiveness that has come with the Trump administration's approach?

The biggest problem is we don’t know what things are going to look like next week or next month or next year. Speaking to other manufacturers, that’s our biggest concern. We don’t have the stability of knowing what our supply chains are going to look like.

So long-term, it could be an opportunity, but short-term, it’s bringing some uncertainty.

It is. It’s nerve-racking…We know that we've built a business that can take a few knocks that are out of our control. This one is kind of a new one for us, but I think unlike all the others, there is an upside to it. I don’t see anything wrong with promoting American manufacturing. I don’t know if this is the ideal way of going about it, but as a core principle for pushing domestic production, I’m all for it. I think there are a lot of Americans, regardless of their political party, that are behind it as well. As long as they feel like they’re getting a quality product at a fair price, I think they’re willing to pay a little bit more for American labor.

Do you think there’s an opportunity here for both retailers and consumers to sort of acclimate themselves to slightly higher prices, if it means more American-made goods?

I do 100%. I think retailers who are willing to give American manufacturers a chance will be pleasantly surprised at the reaction, as long as it’s a quality product. Retailers are asking, “What are our options?” We could have a slightly more expensive quality product on the shelf, or risk something happening with the supply chain down the line, or crazy tariffs down the line, and have nothing on the shelf. So that might be the calculation retailers use to make more space for an American manufactured product on their shelves. If that’s the end result, I’m all for it, but it’s not just putting any American made product out there. If it’s junk, I don’t think it really matters where it comes from.

Steele Canvas's new manufacturing facility in Wilmington, MA

One US manufacturer weighs the pros and cons of tariffs 

Paul Lordan, co-owner of Steele Canvas, a Massachusetts-based maker of laundry baskets, discusses how tariffs are a mixed bag. 

Kimberly-Clark, maker of personal care products and cleaning supplies such as Kleenex, Huggies, and Scott, is forecasting $300 million in additional costs this year related to the Trump administration’s new tariffs, and as a result is lowering its 2025 profit forecast from high single digits to flat.

But the hit to the CPG brand’s bottom line shouldn’t impact prices or investment plans, according to the company’s top brass. 

CEO Mike Hsu told shareholders on Tuesday that tariffs won’t translate into price hikes because Kimberly-Clark plans to “mitigate most of the cost by switching sourcing.”

Motivating this approach are competitive pressures, he added, as some rival brands already source more of their products and inputs locally, making any price increase a potential risk.

CFO Nelson Urdaneta said 80% of Kimberly-Clark’s costs are US-based, leaving just 20% exposed to tariffs, with about two-thirds of the $300 million impact coming from the aggregate 145% tariffs recently placed on Chinese goods.

“We’re working fast through actions to mitigate these costs, and frankly, the learnings that we had in the ’21, ’22, ’23 cycle have come in pretty handy,” he said.

In addition to holding the line on pricing, Kimberly-Clark plans to move ahead with its long-term investments, as it chooses to lose profits rather than pare back capital expenditures.

“The reason why we are calling or changing our guidance for the year to about flat in operating profit and EPS has to do with the fact that we do not intend to cut investments behind our innovation and our plans,” Urdaneta said.

In 2024, the company unveiled its “Powering Care” transformation plan. The strategy aims to restructure the company around innovation in order to bring new cutting-edge products to market faster—a process that’s set to continue despite higher costs from tariffs.

“Overall, I would say there’s no impact to the long-term strategy,” Urdaneta said.

Kimberly-Clark plans to maintain prices through tariff headwinds 

The CPG giant is taking a hit on profits, but it’s holding the line on prices and capital expenditures.

Personal care brand Kimberly-Clark plans to maintain prices through tariff headwinds 

 to shareholders, CEO Jamie Dimon took retailers to task for pushing for regulations that limit their share of transaction costs.

“It is unfortunate that retailers and banks have been in a battle for years over who should bear the cost of processing money—and that retailers continue to use ‘lawfare’ to get their way,” he wrote.

, which was enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. The law sets standards for determining if a debit card interchange fee is “reasonable and proportional to the costs incurred by the issue with respect to the transaction,” according to the Federal Reserve.

Regulation II cut average debit revenues in half from approximately $130 to $60 per transaction, according to Dimon. In his letter, he said that lower balance accounts cost more to maintain than they generate in revenue, and the regulations have made it harder for the bank to recoup.

“In setting the pricing for debit cards, the government looked only at the cost of the debit card swipe, which is illogical as that assumes a debit card is a separate and distinct product from its underlying checking account,” he wrote, outlining how checking counts can come with myriad costs ranging from fraud prevention to staffing at bank branches.

Under the current law, he added, the average transaction cost for retailers (0.47%) is “far cheaper” than debit card alternatives such as cash, which is “probably more than 4% of the payment” when you account for sorting and delivery to the bank. (Dimon has long advocated to roll back some regulations in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which passed after the 2008 financial crisis.)

“This also makes it ironic that retailers are now adding ‘buy now-pay later’ features as another payment option for their customers, which usually cost the retailer considerably more than processing a debit or even credit card transaction,” he wrote.

, merchants typically pay between 2% and 8% of the sale cost on BNPL transactions.

Despite these costs, major retailers such as Walmart are adopting BNPL services, expanding the offering to a large portion of US consumers.

Dimon closed out this section of the letter with a warning that a “new battle is brewing,” as third-party fintech firms seek access to bank’s customer data “so they can exploit it for their own purposes and profits.” He said JPMorgan has no problem sharing data, “but only if it is done properly” and is authorized by the consumer.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon takes retailers to task 

In JPMorgan’s annual letter to shareholders, CEO Jamie Dimon criticizes rule-controlling merchant fees, and says consumer payments are becoming a battleground.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon takes retailers to task for using ‘lawfare’ to bring down merchant fees

Just across the hall from an exhibition floor packed with vendors peddling new technology solutions at eTail Palm Springs, Richard Jones, chief revenue officer at performance marketing platform Wunderkind, made the case that many retailers feel as though there are “too many tools and not enough results.”

“We've been sold a dream that more technology equals better performance,” Jones said in a keynote. “But here we are drowning in tools, drowning in logins and dashboards.”

He pointed to a data point from business research firm Gartner: Companies only utilized 33% of their marketing tech stack in 2024, down from 58% in 2020. “That’s a massive amount of wasted investment that isn’t helping drive profitable growth,” he said.

In such a “cluttered landscape,” Jones noted that “60% of marketers are shifting investments towards services over software, recognizing that managing multiple solutions is no longer sustainable.”

This is part of a broader shift toward “adaptability, optimization, and consolidation,” he added, which will be crucial to growth in 2025. “The focus is no longer on adding more tools,” he said. “It’s on selecting and making the right ones work better together.”

As Retail Brew reported from NRF’s Big Show earlier this year, technology investment is 

 new solutions willy-nilly; and some are reprioritizing “

“We have 5,000 different platforms that all promise some form of simplification,” Jones said. “The only thing is we don’t have any real ways…to explain to our CFO why our tech stack costs more than our revenue.”

At eTail Palm Springs: ‘Too many tools and not enough results’ 

Richard Jones, revenue officer at performance marketing platform Wunderkind, says there’s a shift underway toward consolidation and simplification in retail tech solutions. 