When "ugly" wins...

CPG and Retail news from the week of 5/5/25

Nate Rosen

and

Jenna Movsowitz

May 12, 2025

Hello hello!

I cannot believe we’re almost halfway through May already! The year is flying by…and I’m so ready for summer BBQs, ice pops (like the one I shared in last week’s Weekly Pickups 👀), and outdoor runs.

This edition, we’re changing things up a bit to make this newsletter more of a ~conversation~ between the two of us. To denote Jenna’s thoughts vs. Nate’s thoughts, we’ll be tagging them J and N, respectively :)

Let’s get into it! →

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News From the Week

Skechers, often maligned for its “ugly” shoes and reputation as a serial imitator of cooler brands, just became the subject of the largest buyout in footwear history: a casual $9.42 billion deal with 3G Capital.

This deal takes the company private at $63 per share—a 30% premium over its recent trading price.
Founder and CEO Robert Greenberg, still at the helm after three decades, will remain in charge post-acquisition. It’s crazy to me that this is still founder run.

Skechers’ business model is, in many ways, the antithesis of Nike and Adidas. While those footwear giants chase innovation, hype, and high-performance, Skechers has quietly built the world’s third-largest footwear brand by focusing on comfort, value, and mass-market appeal.

The company is notorious for borrowing (sometimes too closely) from the silhouettes and styles of its more trendy rivals—at a fraction of the cost.

But this “dupe” strategy is clearly has worked. Skechers has thrived by:

Targeting overlooked demographics: The brand’s core audience isn’t sneaker-heads or Gen Z trendsetters, but families, older adults, and anyone seeking comfort and most importantly value over hype
Leveraging private-label logic: Like private-label goods in grocery, Skechers wins by offering a close-enough alternatives at lower prices, capitalizing on the massive middle of the market. And funny enough, 3G Capital is best known for its investments in food and bev businesses like Kraft Heinz.

Skechers may never have the same cachet of Nike, Adidas, or even ugly-yet-hyped brands like Crocs and UGG, but that’s not the point. Its “ugly” shoes are a badge of honor for millions who value comfort and price > brand name. The company’s ability to consistently take market share—domestically and globally—proves that the private-label approach works in footwear just as it does in other categories of consumer brands.

CPG & Consumer Goods

Coming right for the jugular with this one. Lunchables launched a dippable, no-thaw crustless PB&J. It’s obviously a come at Uncrustables, which has been DOMINATING the category for years (to the detriment of its purported rivals, RIP Chubby). Kraft is taking a slightly different approach here—dubbed their “remix”—emphasizing that it’s not frozen like Uncrustables, and it’s designed to be dipped (it’s filled with only PB, and paired with a strawberry or grape jelly “dip”).
- Why now? Kraft definitely wants a piece of Uncrustables’ nearly $1 billion pie, and with a brand like Lunchables I think they can take a chunk.
- The refrigerated section is evolving. Brands like Perfect Bar, Belgian Boys, and Mid-Day Squares have expanded it beyond the traditional set. And kids brands in particular are standing out on chilled shelves: think Once Upon A Farm, Happy Wolf, and Sunnie.
Speaking of refrigerated kids products… this week, Little Spoon launched a limited-edition line of Barney-themed organic smoothies and merch with Mattel.
- The collab features three fruit-and-veggie-packed smoothies in pouches shaped like those familiar 90s dinosaurs we all know and love.
- What’s interesting here: While the products are for kids, they’re appealing to millennial parents—from the crazy clean ingredient standards to a “mascot” that parents associate with their own childhoods. Instead of a Bluey or Paw Patrol collab, Little Spoon opted for nostalgia—giving parents a vehicle for intergenerational connection. - J
So it begins. YETI is shifting its production out of China to mitigate the impact of rising tariffs, with plans for 90% of its U.S. drinkware capacity to be sourced from outside China by the end of the year.
- We asked our good friend Mike De Santis about what he’s seeing and how brands can do something similar even if they’re smaller:

It’s tricky. Overall, smaller less established brands are going to be able to invest less to move abroad. Step one would be reaching out to their factory partners to understand if they have established factories outside of China to move production over to. If they don’t, they should be looking to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia. Maybe India for the right products. - Mike De Santis, CEO of Doris Dev

That’s another celeb brand. Paris Hilton launched her skincare line, Parivíe, featuring six “multitasking” products. The product names are a play on Hilton’s catchphrase—”that’s hot”—including “That’s Radiant” and “That’s Tight”. I can’t not see Kourtney K. “lemme” all over this…
- The brand apparently developed a “proprietary AI-generated peptide”—the “inPHinite YouthTM Technology”—for its “That’s Tight Plumping Vitality Serum,” and that is a sentence that I swear is 100% truthful and alarmingly not from an Onion article. - J
- This feels like a early 2000s celebrity brand that won’t really stand the test of time. - N
It’s 2025, and consumers want lip balms that actually work. Today, there’s a new lip balm on the market that once again claims to be the “most hydrating lip balm ever”: Personal Day’s Emotional Support Lip Balm by Lili Reinhardt, specifically crafted for “Accutane lips” (AKA, really, really dry lips). Stay tuned for a future Weekly Pickup where we test that theory… - J
- Our friend
  Katie Stone
  perfectly explains this lip balm craze in her deep dive: “The margins are great and the product turnover is fast. They’re a reliable AOV booster, an always-alluring impulse buy… They sit perfectly at the intersection between skincare and makeup. They’re Instagrammable, giftable, and losable (which means even more buyable).”

eCommerce

Well, that’s a bummer. The FTC delayed the enforcement of the Negative Option Rule, commonly known as the "click-to-cancel" rule, which rules that companies make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up.
- Originally set to take effect on January 19, enforcement has now been postponed by an additional 60 days…
The innovation we actually needed. Instacart just launched Fizz, a new 21+ app that simplifies group ordering for drinks and snacks with a shared cart and flat $5 delivery fee—and is seamlessly integrated into the party invite app, Partiful.
- I weirdly feel so proud of the Instacart team for this one. This is innovation that people really need, and I have been waiting for someone to finally hop on the goldmine of value that is Partiful. - J
- What I’m watching: How smart brands hop on this opportunity. Will party-perfect brands boost their Instacart retail media budget for Fizz vis? - J

Retail

Feels like a long time coming. J.C. Penney ended its partnership with Thirteen Lune, which aimed to support minority-owned beauty brands in over 600 stores. This termination follows a period of declining revenues and complications in vendor payments, leaving J.C. Penney without a strategic beauty partner for the first time in nearly 20 years.
- The two have faced major struggles in their partnership over the years with Thirteen Lune falling behind on payments to the brands it worked with, leading to tension and a restructuring of their agreement back in summer 2024. JC Penny decided to bypass Thirteen Lune entirely and took on those brand relationships themselves.
- All of this is happening while other major retailers are seeing success with their beauty partnerships. Kohl's partnership with Sephora has been transformative, bringing in new customers who shop at more than twice the frequency of their average customer. Their beauty sales were up 150% year-over-year in Q1 2023, and they're planning to have Sephora presence in all 1,100+ Kohl's locations by the end of this year.
The Gang Buys a Rite Aid. Rite Aid is closing and/or selling off 178 stores and distribution centers in New York, including 35 in the city, as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings (for a second time). Despite rumors of immediate closures, some locations will remain open for now as the company works to offload its assets.

Supply Chain

Live long and prosper 🖖. Amazon introduced a new warehouse robot called the Vulcan, designed with a sense of touch to handle items more delicately than traditional robots. Unlike humanoid robots, the Vulcan is a disembodied arm that can pick about 75% of items at a speed comparable to human workers.

Funding news

A $650MM valuation → $4M sale. Meati Foods, the plant-based brand known for its mycelium (mushroom) meat alternatives, is set to be sold for a meek $4 million—a massive drop from its $650 million valuation following its $150 million Series C funding round in 2022. So… what happened?!
Let's back up here →
- Back when Meati got its massive valuation, the company doubled revenue and expanded to 7,000+ stores. It was (seemingly) defying all odds, seeing massive growth while plant-based meat sales crashed 12-19% and competitors like Beyond Meat struggled and conducted mass layoffs.
- The market conditions made it harder to attract investors and more difficult to meet the aggressive growth targets set by its lenders. And those conditions were only expected to worsen…
- …when in Feb 2025, it all came crashing down. A lender unexpectedly swept two-thirds of Meati's cash reserves due to a technical default on revenue/profit targets, despite Meati being current on payments and raising capital for 2026.
- Unable to secure rescue funding in a hostile market, Meati issued layoff notices to all 150 employees and was forced into a fire sale for just $4M—a shocking 99% collapse from its $650M peak.
- In other words? The brand that once represented the future of alternative protein became another casualty of an industry in freefall.
Making it personal. Blank Beauty raised a $6.5 million Series A funding to enhance its custom nail polish offerings and expand into other beauty products. The funding will support the development of robotic kiosks in Walmart and a customization machine for liquid foundation.
“Gone” to another buyer. Kameda Seika is selling its US subsidiary, Mary's Gone Crackers, to Dare Foods' US arm, Rosseau Incorporated, through a debt-to-equity swap.
- The rice crackers maker Kameda Seika acquired Mary's Gone Crackers in 2012 to enter the US "better for you" market—but the brand struggled with high raw material costs.
- Now, Mary’s Gone will join Dare Foods’ growing portfolio of snacking brands, including Breton Crackers, Cabaret Crackers, and Melba Toast—bringing a better-for-you alternative to the mix.