ThenWhat 3x5

On this episode of 3x5, a podcast by ThenWhat, Host Grant Barth talked with Cece Meadows, Founder, and CEO of Prados Beauty, which designs and crafts high-quality cosmetics, makeup brushes, and lashes. He also talked with Julie Thibault, Founder of Martingale Advisors, which manages equity portfolios for many of the world’s most demanding corporate pension plans, foundations, endowments, public retirement systems, and multi-employer funds. Thibault started her career in finance, private equity, and banking. After business school, she found herself in brand strategy, eventually falling into the beauty world. In her last role, she was the Head of Retail Innovation for Global Beauty. She then founded Martingale Advisors, which works with beauty companies, as well as other industries. “My passion is ultimately consumers and figuring out why consumers do what they do and helping to solve some of the problems that exist,” Thibault said. Meadows is an innovator on a different level. She started out as a makeup artist and has some experience in banking. Prados recently launched under Thirteen June inside JC Penney, an e-commerce beauty platform focusing on black and brown beauty products. Meadows started her brand in her baby’s nursery with $150 and the dream to be a global beauty brand one day. “We’re the first Chicana- and Indigenous-owned beauty brand in a major retailer,” Meadows said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

David Stewart, Founder & Face of AGEIST, believes that it is possible to live one’s best life is possible at any age. He joined Grant Barth in a conversation on modern aging and how that’s changing consumer behavior. While sixty may not be the new thirty, but it doesn’t have to mean ‘ready to think of retirement’ either. “I understand why it’s just so much easier to say, people thirty to fifty or fifty to sixty,” Stewart said. “Done deal. There you go. But it gets confusing. There are, I believe, certain human developmental phases that have been reasonably true through human history. But these are really broad. As people get older, the demographic is going to split. And it’s going to split radically down all kinds of different lines.” The youth culture, which many brands focus on, does not contain much difference. But someone in their 60s in the South may be far different than someone in their 60s on the west coast. Something Stewart noted brands need to tackle is how do people see themselves in the future. “That’s going to determine their future spending patterns, their ambitions, where they want to go, what do they want to do with the rest of their lives.” Lifespan and healthspan are two measures that have shifted and changed over the years. Regardless of health, people are living longer, although that’s not the case for everyone. Overall health quality could dictate how people ages sixty and above spend their time and their consumer behaviors. In the future, Stewart said there would will be people in their 90s starting new businesses. So, not too far down the road, people could be saying, Ninety is the new forty.

What traits do today’s modern merchants need to succeed in an environment where technology and behavior shift more rapidly than ever? Julie Pike, Chief Merchant at Bonobos, and Angelo Ng, Chief Merchant Officer and SVP of Wolverine Worldwide, joined host Grant Barth to provide their insights and expert knowledge on the situation. No matter the merchandising platform, there are fundamental philosophies at work that help merchandisers successfully champion their brands. Ng spoke about the merchandising evolution over the years. “If we go back, merchants have existed as long as there’s been trade,” Ng said. “From my point of view, it’s almost like coming full circle from what we would consider the initial merchant. They knew the consumer, and they went somewhere around the globe to bring them something that didn’t exist within the market and bring it to them, or they created something themselves. As everything evolved, we had a split between the wholesaler and a retail consumer.” Ng believes today’s merchandisers are returning to that ownership role as omnichannel grows in importance. With the onset of the pandemic, many changes have taken place, but Pike said many of these changes were already occurring. The pandemic only created the necessity to change faster. “How you put the consumer at the core has become more important over the last 12-18 months than ever before, because those shifts and behaviors and trends that we probably needed to be more consistent previously have turned on their head,” Pike said. “I think that’s been so important to be more in real-time than we’ve ever been before.” And, while it is important for merchants to look at data analytics to make decisions, it’s equally important to listen to the motivations of consumers.

On this episode of 3x5, a podcast by ThenWhat, host Grant Barth, CEO and Founder of ThenWhat, talked with Anthony Meindl, Founder of Anthony Meindl’s Actors Workshop, which now has the largest scene study studio in Los Angeles and locations in 10 other cities around the world: New York, London, Vancouver, Toronto, Atlanta, Santa Fe, Sydney, Chicago, Copenhagen and Cape Town.

On this episode of the ThenWhat 3x5 Podcast, host Grant Barth talked with D'Wayne Edwards, Founder of PENSOLE Academy, a design academy specializing in footwear, functional apparel and accessories, color theory, materials, prototyping, concept making, and much more.