AG1, formerly Athletic Greens, is projected to reach $600 million in revenue this fiscal year by selling just a single product—its signature daily health drink mix—solely direct to consumer.

While it’s been following this model since 2010, it’s gearing up for its “first steps” into new retail channels and products, CEO Kat Cole, who took over the role from founder Chris Ashenden in July, said in an NRF panel alongside Shopify president Harley Finkelstein and Favorite Daughter founder Sara Foster.

“The power in our decisions for years was saying no to those things,” Cole said, but after years of behind-the-scenes work to prepare for this moment, from iterating on its products to build a community of consumers, it’s ready to start saying yes. Speaking with Retail Brew following the panel, Cole, alongside Finkelstein—who has worked with AG1 through its partnership with Shopify—shared why the timing was right and how digitally native retail brands should be thinking about the move to offline in 2025.

Changing channels: According to Finkelstein, we’re living in a “post-omnichannel” world, where retail brands being available everywhere—DTC, Amazon, flooding the shelves of mass players like Target or Walmart—isn’t necessarily a key to success. During NRF, Shopify held an AG1 and Favorite Daughter pop-up in SoHo, while AG1 has also recently partnered with 1 Hotels and True Food Kitchen as avenues for new customers to “help people have their own real experience—not a billboard, not a podcast,” Cole said.

Keep reading here.—EC

At the NRF Big Show earlier this week, it was a rare occurrence when AI didn’t come up at least once during a panel or speech, not to mention the countless booths on the exhibition floor touting the AI-powered capabilities of their services or products. Yet while much of this talk was predictably optimistic about the potential of AI, there were notes of caution buried under the hype.

Keith Mercier, vice president of WW retail and consumer goods industry at Microsoft, said during one discussion that he’s seen a lot of customers have struggled to scale their AI projects and applications.

“Last year, a lot of CEOs were asking their leaders, ‘What are we doing about AI?’ And a lot of pilots kicked off around different technologies, and we’ve seen a lot of our customers get stuck in this pilot purgatory,” he said.

Keep reading here.—AV

New Balance is continuing its robust growth trajectory. President and CEO Joe Preston said the company will reach $7.8 billion in sales for 2024. Preston noted that the athletic footwear major experienced this growth on the back of a successful holiday season.

“We had a really strong holiday,” Preston said during his NRF keynote on Monday. This is the fourth consecutive year of more than 20% growth for New Balance, he added.

“That growth is coming here in North America, which was really strong this past year,” Preston said. However, about 60% of New Balance’s business is international.

Keep reading here.—VC