Ulta's sexual wellness bet

0:00Welcome back to another episode of the Express checkout podcast gonna have to get used to saying that I am Nate Rosen and I'm Jenna and Jenna what the hell have you tried this week do you have any fun snacks in front of the express chat chat it's basically like we have gone full circle from mac and cheese to just noodles but i'm excited about it and in their pr package they sent sporks brilliant brilliant sports during the pandemic during the pandemic i did have an idea to start a company just selling sports i think that's brilliant i think that is the most underrated utensil and it's fun because as we mentioned in the newsletter and you mentioned in your Instagram post about the Good Olds new launch, it does feel like it's more geared towards adults because it's these longer noodles.

1:10I don't know. I'm like, if I were a kid, I'd want mine cut up into small pieces, but also because the flavors, there's a spicy flavor. There's a flavor that is Alfredo with miso, which just feels a little bit more elevated, but they're still keeping it fun with sporks and adults should use sporks, I think. it's the best so i'm excited to try it i'm very excited to try it but something i did have today that i want to shout out is i made myself a little afternoon matcha with a new brand called maracha m-u-r-a-c-h-a and it is a new premium matcha brand that is actually ceremonial grade which doesn't really mean much and is used as kind of a marketing play but this is really high quality matcha and it's actually named after the woman who grows it who's an 80 something year old woman in japan but it was really delicious high quality matcha and the best part of it was that i made it with coconut water strange water is my new favorite coconut water brand so if you're making matcha at home you should buy strange water and it will be like you have this cafe experience at home but what are you eating and drinking oh girl you know i I have so many things on my desk right now.

2:24I am trying the new True Bar Pro, which is their 18 gram of protein. And, oh, my God, 12 grams of fiber in this thing. I am a fan of this. This is like a thicker power bar texture. And I really like it. Also, it tastes really good. This is – I don't even know what flavor this is. It doesn't – oh, cake it till you make it. It's a long name for a flavor. It's a chocolatey cake flavor. I am a fan of this. I'm very impressed with this bar. And I think 18 grams of protein for 240 calories and 12 grams of fiber ain't that bad. It's decent. It's not the best macros for a macro head. But for the average person, it's great.

3:05And then I am also drinking a gummy, sour gummy splash C4. And I feel tingles all over my body. C4 does that. Because, okay, we started drinking C4s, just energy drinks generally, but they started as a pre-workout. And pre-workouts, often I should know what is in them that does this. But they have an ingredient that makes you tingle. Beta something? Yeah, and I always forget that when I'm drinking the C4. I'm Googling it. Because the flavors are fun. I was in a bodega the other day. What makes you tingle in pre-workout? Beta alanine. Beta alanine. I was going to say that, but then I didn't. I psyched myself out.

3:42Anyway. Anyways, I feel the tingles, but it's also good. I was up late last night. I'm excited. Granted, I will not be running after this. I will be... Running a business. Running a business. Running a media company. I also have the noon drink here. This is the vanilla one. I like this better than the honey banana one. Really? I like the banana one. I love banana. I like the flavor, but there was something about the viscosity of that one that threw me off a little bit. But I want a bigger... I want more. It's too small. Yeah. So Noon just launched in the US. It's an Australian brand that is quote unquote liquid breakfast, which is to say that it's a protein drink, high protein, high fiber, basically could have it instead of a breakfast if you wanted.

4:31I don't really like language around meal replacement, but I do think that liquid breakfast doesn't necessarily imply that it needs to replace a meal. It's just something you can have as part of your breakfast. And it basically is liquid breakfast. It's made with oats and bananas and some other milk. It's like a liquid version of what I would have for breakfast. I mixed mine with my coffee. So it was like an all in one meal. Yeah, I got to do that. I have to do that. That's so good. Oh, it's the best. Prime combo. Even the vanilla one does taste a little banana-y because it still has banana puree in it, actually.

5:06Oh, for the fiber blend. Fascinating. Fascinating. Love it. So yeah, wow. We've got a lot of good goodies right we're energized and jacked energized and jacked indeed i feel like we've been getting so many fun samples recently we always do but there's been like a lot of good a lot i this one i get another one from pulpito they launched fruit bars and they are so good i love a fruit leather i love a dried fruit and each bar is half a mango a great snack yeah there's definitely been a lot of high fiber stuff recently too though hero sent a bunch of their stuff over and i love hero products they are fantastic the croissants are ridiculous the pasta is 32 grams of fiber per serving so you need the liquid death at good wipes collab yes or okay something that the people should know, and I'm not necessarily speaking from experience, but too much fiber can also have the reverse effect of making you constipated.

6:15And nobody's talking about this. So be careful if you're like eating so much extra fiber, hoping that you'll get some bowel movements in, you need to know that too much fiber can also make you constipated, especially if you're not hydrating with your fiber. So with all this fiber craze going on, that is my disclaimer of the week. We should do a disclaimer of the week every week. I like that. We honestly should. I always have something, I feel like. Yeah. There's always something. Always something. A quick call out before we continue on with the news. Last week, We dropped our interview with Troy Bond, the co-founder of Saws, one of the nation's fastest growing tomato sauce brand.

7:02And it was a really fun conversation. We got into how he came up with the idea, the name for Saws, which is surprisingly simple, but surprisingly effective. So definitely go check that out. You can find it on our website, expresscheckout.co. Indeed. And because we did a little interview episode last week, we did miss a little bit of the news. So this week, we're actually going to get back into the news, and it'll be a combo of some of the biggest headlines from last week and this week. And we're going to start off real strong with a conversation around sexual wellness. So why are we talking about this, Nate?

7:43because plus one sexual wellness brand and one of the market leaders in the US, they just launched, I think they're like entire line at Ulta beauty in their wellness section. So devices and toys, lubricants, and sort of everything in between. And it's so cool to see how evolved Ulta's wellness section has become. They are really growing that thing. We've talked about this a lot of times, how they've tripled their footprint in the wellness section. But adding sexual wellness is a really big next step, both for the sexual wellness industry, but also for Ulta. What's really interesting about this is it feels like this huge never-before-seen deal, but it actually, it's been a thing before where we've seen an intersection of wellness slash beauty and sexual wellness.

8:38In February 2022, Sephora actually introduced a few different more premium sexual wellness brands like Dame, Mod, and a brand called Smile Makers, iconic name for a brand, bringing toys, lubricants, and more in both stores and online. But then since that launch, which was pretty groundbreaking, like a really big deal for its time, Sephora has slowly and actually pretty silently pulled back. They never really announced anything. But at the end of last year, they halted sales of all sex toys. So if you go on their website now and you browse what they call the intimate wellness category, you're only going to find like massage oils, ingrown hair treatments, and some of these pH balancing washes, quote unquote, which by the way, your body naturally balances your pH.

9:27So you do not need any of these products. but Sephora is no longer selling any toys or lubricants. And it's interesting, especially because this is obviously a more taboo category. There's no denying that even though it shouldn't be. But over the last few years, hormone health and menopause care, which were historically other taboo subjects that are adjacent, have really been reframed by VCs, by retailers, by media to be an essential part of wellness, a wellness and longevity play. And it's been proven that's been backed by health claims, but sexual wellness hasn't really caught up to that yet.

10:09But what we're finding really interesting about this move in particular is this is a really smart way for Ulta in general to reach its target audience, but also to stand out from Sephora in particular, because they're validating this category that Sephora decided to kick off of their shelves and basically telling the public that this is a category that they expect them to be shopping for as part of their wellness routine, which makes them stand out as this cool retailer in a way that Sephora often kind of struggles to. Yeah. Ulta is clearly taking a lot of notes from Target. They definitely learned something in that partnership before they cut it off because Ulta and Sephora could not be more different.

10:57Sephora really tries to lean in on being, though I don't think it does a great job at it, at being like part of the LVMH family and being a little bit more luxury, being a little bit more fancy leaning. But it's very clear that Ulta is trying to lean into culture, lean into the future a lot more where Sephora is really trying to stand on what it's always done. Like they've clearly, they've pulled back from the sexual wellness market. They're not really leaning into wellness in general, which is one of the largest drivers of consumer growth right now is having, is wellness products from all different categories.

11:37Even from, we're even seeing it in the fragrance aisle. We're seeing it in what we'll talk about later in laundry care. We're seeing it in everything. And And Sephora is not really, it doesn't seem like Sephora is really trying to stay too much with the times and where these adjacent categories are living. Beauty and wellness and skincare, they're all together, which Ulta, I think, has made a very, very smart bet in building out that wellness category. Yeah, absolutely. We'll get into this later too, that Sephora is making moves to stay relevant on at least the brands that they carry, but they're not really expanding category-wise in a way that Ulta is.

12:21And maybe that will work for them. Maybe them being a niche beauty skincare retailer and that's it will help them win. There's really not a lot of those options out there. There's Credo, there's Blue Mercury, but a lot of these retailers are leaning into other categories like Ulta. But I think to compete, you need to evolve a little bit and not just be the same thing you have been for years. Yeah, stay in one lane. Yeah. But yeah, on specifically the sexual wellness side of things, I think something that made me really excited about sexual wellness landing in Ulta in particular is that Ulta, one of the things Ulta does best, and this is where they compete with Sephora, I think pretty head for head, is that they have product experts.

13:11on the show floor, on the store floor, who are really interactive with the customers and really educated on all the products. That's something that Sephora has done well for decades. They are known for their Sephora. They have a name, but the Sephora experts. No, they have a kitschy beauty expert name or something. And Ulta similarly has really educated sales associates. And so what's really cool about a sexual wellness product entering a store like Ulta is that, and I learned this actually from the SVP of marketing at Plus One, the sexual wellness brand, that these sales associates are going to be interacting with customers about sexual wellness products in addition to everything else in their basket.

14:00And what's awesome about this is that is putting sexual wellness on the same plane of social acceptance as beauty. And I think that's such an awesome thing to see happen for this category because, again, taboos are really hard to break. And when consumers are shopping for these products in a very isolated way, either by ordering online or also as Catherine Pratt, the SVP of marketing at Plus One told me, ordering through delivery, which has become incredibly popular, which is very fascinating to me, ordering through Uber Eats to get a vibrator. You're not interacting with anyone in that experience.

14:41And there's so much shame tied to that experience. But when you bring it into a store like Ulta, you put it next to products like supplements and you open up discussion between these experts and the consumer. That's such a great way to break a taboo. And so retailers have a lot more power than we think they do in changing the rhetoric around some of these categories. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself. I think we should move on to our next story. And this is very aligned where this is another unexpected category getting the wellness treatment. And it's laundry care. So this week, WashWise, which I have right here.

15:26I know this is a podcast, but there's also a video. So I have it in my hand. Don't you worry. So WashWise is a clothing care brand built entirely around these between wear moments. So between when you wash it, you then wear it and you want to wash it again. So between those moments, they raised a$1.2 million pre-seed. And their first product is a reset spray, which again, I have right here, which the brand basically describes as dry shampoo for clothing, which I think is one of the best descriptors of a product I've ever heard. It's so smart because we know what that means. Right. Yeah. Right.

16:06It's so clear. Yes. And the use case like bubbles up for me instantly. When I hear dry shampoo for clothes, I think, oh, it's the clothes that I threw on the chair in my room because I can't hang them back up because they're too dirty to hang up, but they're not dirty enough that I want to wash them. It's such a perfect use case. It's so smart. And its whole shtick is it will neutralize scent. It will release wrinkles and, of course, buy you another wear. And the brand is actually claiming that it's going to save you up to 300 bucks in dry cleaning, around six hours of laundry, and 110 gallons of water, and 13 kilowatt hours of energy.

16:46So there's a bigger story here than just saving your clothes. But the cool thing about this is that this brand is not innovating alone in the laundry care space. U.S. laundry care sales hit around$20 billion last year, up 3 % across all price points. And the global market is$110 billion market right now and is expected to grow basically 5 % over the next five years. And P &G's laundry care business, Procter & Gamble, they own a few different brands, does$3 billion alone. And they control 60 % of the market. It's a real market that is really ripe for some disruption and there are a lot of brands having their hand at this disruption obviously it started with the laundress in 2004 which then sold to unilever in 2019 the lawn yeah the laundress for those who don't know because i actually didn't know about it until only recently even though it started in 2004 oh my parents have had it for years i'm not chic enough to know about it but that's the point so they launched in 2004 and positioned themselves as the first luxury lifestyle brand in laundry care.

17:57So they were way, way ahead of their time. And they were really smart. They aligned themselves with these early lifestyle and fashion bloggers that were all the rage at the time. And then the burgeoning clean beauty moment that was happening in the early 2010s because it was a free-from brand, meaning it was free from certain chemicals that people don't want in their detergents. and it also emphasized luxurious scents. And so the Laundress really kicked this off. And then it was founded by Lindsay Boyd. And as you were saying, even though this was bought in 2019 by Unilever, she wasn't done with laundry care.

18:40So she came back. She came back. And this past April, she launched Lindry Lab, which is another luxe laundry brand with detergents and some fabric sprays. And it's around, again, it's around cleaner ingredients, but it's also around what they're calling functional fragrances, which who knows what that really means. But it's leaning into the fragrance side of things, and it's leaning into cleaner and free from ingredients. And again, they're not the only brand. There's also Laundry Sauce, which raised a$7 million Series A back in January. They've raised$18 million total. They're in Target stores.

19:21This is another Luxe laundry care brand focused on better, quote unquote, better ingredients and also focused on scents. That's the big theme we're seeing across all of these different detergents and laundry care brands. Yeah, there are so many. And then there's my favorite and the brand that I'm actually currently using, which is called Wishing Well. I love Wishing Well because it comes in a pump. Everything should come in a freaking pump. Everything in a pump. Wishing Well was founded on the thesis of laundry should be self-care. And I love that because laundry obviously does feel like a chore.

19:58But when I do my laundry with Wishing Well, I'm like, oh, I'm about to make my week so much better because all of my clothes, first of all, are going to smell fantastic. The actual experience of using this aluminum pump bottle is really satisfying. it's also ultra concentrated so you're not just lugging around a huge thing that's mostly water which one is worse for the environment but two is again just a nicer experience when you're doing your laundry they really lean into naming their skews around very fragrance oriented names boyfriend material is the one that i'm currently using actually which is perhaps a more masculine woodsy scent it's my favorite totally gender neutral yeah how it makes my clothes smell but because as we said there are so many fun fragrances in this space now fragrance brands are also getting in on this so the brand dead cool became sephora's first ever laundry skew back in 2022 and it is still the only laundry brand on sephora shelves wild crazy they haven't gone with any other of these brands that we're about to mention.

21:07Yeah. Sniff, which is another fragrance brand, has a full laundry collection, now on shelf at Ulta. Duh. DS Endurga, which is one of my favorite fragrance brands, sells a luxury detergent in a reusable aluminum bottle. They partnered with the brand Guests on Earth for this, and it sold through Revolve, which again, so smart because Revolve is a premium premium fashion brand bougie bougie and if you're buying fancy clothes you probably want to wash them in fancy detergent yeah but it's not all fancy detergent and big cpg is trying their hand at this which so in february png procter and gamble they own tide they rolled out tide evo nationally which is a three and a half inch waterless tile they basically figured out a way to compress detergent fiber and weave it into a little pad.

22:03It looks like a cotton pad you'd wipe your face with. Don't wipe your face with it. It's concentrated detergent. And obviously this isn't clean or luxe, but it is something that you'd see an emerging brand come to the table with, not necessarily a big CPG. And it's so interesting because you don't see big CPG do these kind of innovative things themselves and do it at the scale that they're doing it with Evo. Evo, they're leaning to sustainability in a very significant way, which you do not see big CPG brands do that all that often. And it's all within the lens of upping their detergent game. But I don't think it has.

22:41It's not leaning much into scents. Obviously, Tide and other P &G and other big CPG laundry care brands, they have scent stuff. Their gain is known for its scent, even though I don't really like the gain scent. They have these scent boosters that they've been doubling down on, partnering with the Febreze brand and all of that. But the fragrance side for the big CPG is different. There's a difference between scent and fragrance. Yeah. Fragrance to me, actually, there probably is a definitional difference. And that aside, the meaning of scent to me is more like this product has a use and then we just added a scent to it.

23:23fragrance feels more like the inception of the product was built in yes with premium fragrance in mind it's more in line with perfumes and colognes than a project a product that is for the home and just has a scent yeah and just like we're seeing broadly that fragrance is booming it's bled into this category as well which we've clearly seen with the the brands that we've mentioned they all are luxe coated in some capacity they are or they're directly from a fragrance house and they're trying to you build a fragrance wardrobe this is a legitimate fragrance wardrobe here yes that's so true i didn't even think about that and specifically like fragrance paired with the word non-toxic correct there was a big phase where unscented was the biggest thing that was like the quote unquote like healthiest thing you can do for most of these kinds of products that will touch your skin in some way.

24:23And now it's more about, no, you can have fragrance, just clean fragrance. Yeah. I think the biggest shift is obviously like the laundress would, if the laundress launched today, we'd be like, yeah, that makes sense. But that, that clear, free from non-toxic, those kinds of products lost a lot of credibility over the past decade and they're gaining credibility now, but they lost a lot of credibility because a lot of them were just not effective or they have, yeah, it was free from, but it was just like essential oils and water. It was like effectively like water would be better than using these products.

24:55And now I think there's such a demand for this kind of free from and upgraded ingredients in these products that there's a lot of effort and money going into actually formulating something that works, that is effective, that somebody will buy again and say is a good product to use, but is also a free from non-toxic yada, yada, yada, which I think is the biggest shift in why we're seeing all these non-toxic brands yet again. And hopefully this also means we'll start seeing a lot more sustainability focused brands coming forward, because a lot of the sustainability focused brands that I've tried were never that good, unfortunately no i think another reason that we're seeing this boom right now is that this is just another version of the lipstick index a little bit everything's a lipstick index basically i feel like everything we talk about is like why are people spending so much on on seltzers these days it's because it's a little luxury it's a little upgrade that makes them feel better about their life and it makes also it makes an unglamorous chore feel much more fun and feel expensive It makes you feel expensive.

26:04And I think when everything else is costing so much more, spending a little bit more on a detergent, spending 45 bucks on a detergent that makes you feel prestigious and luxury and fancy, people will be doing that a lot more. They'll find ways to cut costs elsewhere, but if they're not spending a lot on trips or whatever it is, these little luxuries, these little upgrades make you feel a lot better about your current situation. Totally. Yeah. And coming off of that, this is just like an extension of how the home has really become a place of self-expression. There are certain things that you now want to leave out on your counter that are indicative of the kind of person you are and the kind of lifestyle you lead.

26:49An example of that is like how people leave their Graza bottles out in the kitchen counter. So now this is moving into the laundry room. This used to be a place that you would hide the things that were in the laundry room because you don't want to show the neon green plastic jug that you use, the Tide or the Gain. But now this$45 trendy, muted, colored bottle that you could put out in your laundry room is another signifier of the kind of person you are and the values that you have and the luxurious lifestyle you lead. And it's as more and more of our lives are being exposed by social media, I think people want to have a reason and something in every room of their home that is an expression of the ideal version of them.

27:41And it might sound trivial that has landed in laundry, but it's not very surprising. So that's on laundry. But. And that's on laundry. What? These sentences we say? I know. Get me every time. It's so silly. But something that's not silly, Jenna. Oh, okay. I'll get serious. K-Beauty is coming to Sephora in a massive way. It's in the U.S. K-Beauty is Korean beauty. Korean skincare is huge. Huge. So Olive Young, which is South Korea's largest health beauty skincare brand, retailer, excuse me, They have partnered exclusively with Sephora to bring around 19 Korean skincare brands to 500 U.S. locations with also a dedicated Olive Young space in the Sephora in Times Square, which you will never see me at.

28:39That Sephora is a mess. But good for them. Good for all the tourists who will come through. And this comes about four months after Olive Young opened its first two U.S. locations out in L.A. with three more on the way. And now the retailer is expanding through these store-in-store formats in Sephora. And I think this does give Olive Young a lot of credibility in the U.S., but we were saying that this definitely helps Sephora a lot more. USK beauty sales are going to hit around$3 billion in 2026, which is crazy. It's up around 50 % year over year. And it's only growing. On TikTok shop, the top five beauty products that are selling are all Korean beauty brands, like MediCube and things like that.

29:33And as we were saying earlier, Sephora tries to battle their growing competitor in Ulta, it needs to present other ways to become a discovery platform to be socially relevant online. And this partnership is a really good starting point. It's so smart. I think, especially as Olive Young is starting to open up some stores in the U.S. in some of these elite bi-coastal locations, people elsewhere in the U.S. are going to want to get their hands on it and going to want to feel like they've experienced that brick and mortar Olive Young experience. And if that location isn't near them, they can do so through Sephora.

30:15And so it's such a smart way to hop on this hype and 19 products is not nothing. It's a mix of some of the biggest and most popular brands in Olive Young in South Korea, as well as some of the most emerging brands that are like more the Tik TOK new brands of the Olive Young world. So it's interesting. The assortment that they're choosing. I kind of feel like it's a, it's a test. They're trying to see it, do viral products do well in a premium retailer? Or is that something that should be reserved for a place like Ulta? Yeah. We'll see. I want to see how much they actually emphasize like the Olive Young branding and make it feel, there's such an opportunity to make this feel like an immersive multicultural experience.

31:02And I hope that they don't just whitewash it. Also, Sephora and Ulta both are like, they feel like mini, mini department stores where like each brand has a little section. I really hope they do like a build out for Olive Young because this is a really like big thing for them to have this partnership to be bringing the top South Korean skincare retailer to the US in this strategic partnership. I really hope they do not diminish the brand in any way. I hope so too. We will see. But yeah, we're going to move back to food, which is the heartbeat of this podcast, even though we just talked about laundry care and skin care and sexual wellness for 30 minutes.

31:46Love it. Our next story is about protein again. Finally. No, we can't. Finally. No one ever talks about protein. No one ever talks about protein. We're doing everyone such a favor right now. I know. So it seems that protein has found a new home in soda because just last week, C4, which Nate is drinking a C4 right now, but not this product. I do have this product though. You do have this product, yes. So C4, which historically has been a pre-workout and energy drink brand, just launched C4 sparkling protein, which is its first ever caffeine-free ready-to-drink beverage. 20 grams of protein, zero sugar, vitamins and minerals.