{"id":182819,"date":"2025-06-14T04:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T04:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182819\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T04:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T04:03:09","slug":"modern-retail-podcast-the-labubu-craze-retail-employment-shifts-and-headwinds-in-the-home-goods-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182819\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Retail Podcast: The Labubu craze, retail employment shifts and headwinds in the home goods sector"},"content":{"rendered":"

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts<\/a> \u2022 Spotify<\/a><\/p>\n

On this week\u2019s episode, Modern Retail\u2019s senior reporters Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels discuss two major topics shaking up the retail world. First, they dive into Labubu dolls, which suddenly seem to be everywhere. They explore how the viral phenomenon started and why it is driving big-ticket resale purchases. Then, they dive into recent news around the state of employment in the retail industry, as almost 11,500 retail jobs were cut in May, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas.<\/p>\n

Then, this week\u2019s featured segment brings together three expert furniture executives to discuss how a historic housing slump is affecting the sector. Daniels leads a discussion featuring Nicole Chaloux-Pinette, head of category management and business development at Perigold; Jiake Liu, co-founder of direct-to-consumer outdoor furniture brand Outer; and Lee Mayer, co-founder and CEO of Havenly Brands. <\/p>\n

Mortgage rates are at 6.89%, and the National Association of Retailers says April saw month-over-month transaction losses in all U.S. regions. This is a major headwind for furniture companies that typically rely on new home sales to help drive business. While the panelists all run very different businesses, they shared similar strategies around how to serve existing customers, create acquisition opportunities, and invest in opportunities that will lead to growth.<\/p>\n

Catering to existing homeowners and renovations<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chaloux-Pinette:<\/strong> \u201cThroughout the last few years, a lot of people have been renovating. There has been a huge focus on kitchen and bath. Those are categories that we\u2019ve really focused on expanding.<\/p>\n

As an example, we\u2019re moving into large appliances over the next few weeks. In conjunction with launching our first store, we\u2019ll launch that category\u2014 trying to meet the customer where they are and get upstream in their home renovation journey, so they think of us when they decide to furnish their room after the renovation. So I think just focusing on what we can control has been something that\u2019s served us well over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The power of a niche customer base <\/strong><\/p>\n

Liu: <\/strong>\u201cWe are serving such a focused customer base. In the U.S.,furniture is like $150 billion market. Then outdoor furniture is really just about $6 billion \u2014 maybe it\u2019s gone to $7 billion now. So, it\u2019s a very small portion. And the customers that we\u2019re serving are typically the top 10%, in terms of household income. Some data suggests that we\u2019re targeting the top 2%. So we basically had the realization that, one, it doesn\u2019t matter how the macro changes, we\u2019re not going to serve the mass market. Second, how can we serve our customers better?<\/p>\n

We decided to basically focus on what we do best, which is our own products. We pay attention to what\u2019s going on. We still do a lot of social media marketing, top-of-funnel, awareness, press and all of that. But we decided to just hunker down and focus on our own economics, making sure that customers are happy and we\u2019re innovating on the products.\u201d<\/p>\n

On getting a boost from trade designers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mayer: <\/strong> \u201cTrade has been really resilient. Historically, it hasn\u2019t been a huge part of our business, but we\u2019ve been expanding it more and more across our brands. Some of our custom and high-end brands, in particular, have done quite well.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re expanding commercial, we\u2019re expanding trade \u2014 because it\u2019s both a resilient customer and a sticky one. Once they like you and they have a good experience, they tend to keep coming back for different projects. And we really like that.<\/p>\n

I said this back in April to my team, who were feeling a little spooked by some of the consumer demand trends we saw that month \u2014 we\u2019ve grown pretty substantially through what\u2019s been a historic slowdown in home. So I don\u2019t think these consumer demand blips are the full picture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Subscribe: Apple Podcasts \u2022 Spotify On this week\u2019s episode, Modern Retail\u2019s senior reporters Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[51,897,75075,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-182819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-new-economic-realities","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114679736845804065","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}