DIP 028: Out of bounds

Plus, time-aware site design, anti-polish nail care, and United's Elite Status mixed nuts

Sep 17, 2020

👋 Hi. Greetings from the other side of a four-week grand jury summons — a uniquely hellish experience given the state of things. I’ve been wanting to write but haven’t found myself in the right headspace until now. So here we are. As always, reply with questions, comments, or thoughts about anything you read here.

This issue features 28 brands. Sixty-one percent are white-led, 18% are Black-led, and 18% are led by non-Black POCs. You can find the complete Chips + Dips inclusion index here.

The Chips 🌴

Wiggle Room is a new furniture company making wavy tables.
Speaking of furniture, Brooklyn-based boutique Sincerely, Tommy makes chairs under the name Raini Home.
Sleep supplement company Proper built a time-aware site — the shadows on its product pages act as sundials, moving throughout the day.
Bare Hands is an anti-polish nail care company.
Slime company Sloomoo Institute partnered with artist Katherine Bernhardt to create watermelon slime.
Under safer-at-home guidelines, the American Ballet Theater gave its dancers a TikTok 101 class — a brilliant means of nurturing a new generation of fans.
Chunkie is a forthcoming app for body confidence.
Bonbuz is a new entrant in the non-alcoholic spirit category.
United Airlines is selling its Elite Status mixed nuts in bulk.
Ghost Flower and Elastique make activewear that claims to have circulatory benefits, with acupressure seams and lymphatic massage beads, respectively.
Nestig is a high-design crib that converts from infant crib to full-sized crib to toddler bed.
CaviAir is direct-to-consumer caviar from experiential restaurateur Ariel Arce.
Premium skincare for kids? Sure, why not.

The Dip 🌲

As a bright-eyed college grad, I pursued a career in media because I wanted to write epic multimedia stories like “Snowfall.” I wanted to produce content that tapped into the vast potential of the digital world and which could exist in no other way. I soon realized that’s not how media works.

Recently, and catalyzed by the discourse surrounding the “Welcome to Your Bland New World” op-ed in Bloomberg and Web Smith’s subsequent “Brands Beating Bland” essay, I’ve been thinking about how brands are leveraging digital experiences to push the boundaries of what we think of as “a brand.”

Keep it fluid

Positioning is a key component of any brand book. It clearly states differentiating factors and the lens through which everything the brand does is filtered. It’s explicit and concise. It necessitates that everyone at a company understands it, internalize it, and apply it to their work.

But what happens when fluidity is foundational to a brand?

Faculty is a movement masquerading as a men’s grooming company. It has seven different logos and lacks a strict product roadmap. Instead, Faculty has a vision for a more equitable, accepting, and liberated future. Faculty believes in honest self-expression — whatever that means for each individual and on each day — and facilitates change by applying a drop model to cosmetics. There’s an openness and mutability to Faculty that is inherently different. Its power comes from consumers’ interpretations of its product, and therefore its brand is shaped by those who champion it.

In some ways, Faculty reminds me of MSCHF. They’re both hard to pin down. MSCHF is a company that creates things that subvert the internet and satirize popular culture. But how it does that and what it chooses to poke fun at is fluid. MSCHF represents a particular way of looking at the world, rather than a specific point of view.

Rooms in a house

The house of brands model is appealing as a means of diversifying revenue and sharing best practices. But when the house becomes a factory, it can be hard to give each individual brand the attention it deserves. And direct-to-consumer brands are often in constant competition with each other regardless of category, fighting for attention, dollars, and loyalty.

A house of brands doesn’t need to generate physical products, though.

Somewhere Good is a family of brands founded by Naj Austin. It encompasses Ethel’s Club and Form No Form — both platforms that center, celebrate, and uplift people of color. Somewhere Good has a clear ethos, and that ethos can come to life in myriad ways.

Similarly, Girls’ Night In has unveiled a house of brands called No Plans. The company launched with a newsletter, leveraged its subscriber base to build a member community, and will soon be expanding into physical products. The common thread is a desire to slow down and take care of oneself. It’s an expression of linear commerce, but with a twist. The companies share a mission and an audience but are distinct unto themselves. I’m not sure what to make of that, but it feels significant.

It’s a front

In 2017, Foursquare pivoted from a consumer-first tech company to an enterprise-focused data business. It began working with corporate partners to license out location data from its trove of check-ins and GPS coordinates and produced white papers offering insights into users’ shopping habits.

Neighborhood Goods, a department store for digitally native brands, has hinted that it may be pursuing a similar path. Earlier this year, it rolled out digital tools that offer data to its partner brands, including information about foot traffic and visitor demographics by way of facial recognition technology. Neighborhood Goods can fine-tune the tech in its own stores before licensing it out to other retailers, either allowing software to become an additional revenue stream or making a full pivot to SaaS.

The same goes for The Yes, which uses AI to customize product search and discovery. Allbirds may evolve into a sustainable materials company, having already made its SweetFoam material open source. For Days could help other companies implement circular models, just as ThredUP is working with brands to encourage resale adoption.

All of this is to say: differentiation is hard. Proprietary technology presents a clear(er) exit strategy. And starting with an idea and pushing on it and challenging it to be bigger can lead a company in a really interesting and otherwise unimagined direction. Because at the end of the day, a brand is an expression of an idea. Product can be one manifestation of that, but it’s not the only one. Nor should it be.

Still hungry?

This Hypebeast story on Faculty is worth digging into.

Real Dip 🌵

Pepita salsa verde, loosely based on the recipe in Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything.

Crank the oven to 450 and roast two handfuls of tomatillos (you should have 4–6), a poblano pepper, and a couple of jalapeños until they’re extremely charred, flipping everything mid-way through. Let it cool.

Add a few cloves of garlic and a sliced white onion to a pan with olive oil, cooking until everything starts to soften. Add the tomatillos, poblano, and jalapeños, plus salt and pepper. Throw some water in there and let everything simmer until the liquid has mostly cooked off.

Dump everything in a food processor, add a large handful of pepitas, juice from two limes, some oregano, and a handful of cilantro. Blitz away. Pause and taste. See what’s missing, then add it.

Plays well with eggs, roasted sweet potatoes, and stale pita.

Thanks for snacking,

— Emily 💐

Chips + Dips