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And now, here’s Rachel…

For the better part of the last few weeks, Gwyneth Paltrow once again dominated the women-of-a-certain-age-and-status news cycle, thanks largely to Amy Odell’s biography, Gwyneth. The book, an instant bestseller, meticulously reported some salacious tidbits regarding Paltrow’s early sexual history, among other topics.

Paltrow, who didn’t participate in the book and is apparently pissed at those who did, has had little control over the narrative. It’s a marked contrast from this spring, when she intimated that Goop—her content/C.P.G. brand/food delivery empire, which she insists is stronger than ever even though it still isn’t profitable after nearly 20 years—was exploring potential partnerships with “big wholesalers” after the company’s failed deal with Sephora.

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There’s a reason the industry doesn’t publish wholesale reports often: it’s nuanced, behind the scenes, and not particularly sexy. But we do it anyway because we care about how brands actually thrive.

Our latest B2B report contains data we gathered from 100+ real brands. From choosing retail partners to ditching digital tools they barely use, brands are being ruthless about wholesale efficiency and control. 

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In retrospect, Paltrow was obviously setting the stage for last week’s exquisitely choreographed WWD piece, which revealed that Goop was “doubling down” on Goop Beauty with an ambitious Ulta Beauty launch. Several people have described the partnership with Ulta as “desperate,” considering that a large slice of the retailer’s business comes from mass-priced and drugstore brands. But the partnership makes sense: Ulta’s in-store experience may leave a lot to be desired, but the retailer can mean big business for the right brands. Not only does it operate twice as many U.S. doors as Sephora (with significant global expansion on the way), but it’s more representative of the way people really shop for beauty, which is high and low.

With its $150 serums and $105 moisturizers, Goop Beauty will definitely sit at the high end of the store’s offerings. It probably would have made more sense to bring Good.Clean.Goop, the lower-end diffusion line that flopped at Target, but the company has never quite figured out how to market that product. “The consensus with everyone was, ‘Why are we doing this Target brand?’” said a person close to Goop. “It was a weird, in-between thing.” Anyway, it’s not happening.

In any case, the initial buy-in from Ulta will give Goop Beauty’s revenue a nice boost this year, and the brand could definitely see a meaningful lift in sales if Ulta leans into the partnership. Ulta’s marketing and in-store visuals are pretty awful (I’m being polite), but thoughtful displays featuring Paltrow would generate meaningful sales, at least initially. “This consumer is not a trendsetter, but often a shopper from middle or suburban America who still thinks Goop is cool,” a beauty executive said to me about the partnership.

Surely, Goop learned a lot from its failed Sephora era, and can hopefully apply those lessons this time around. My understanding is that Goop Beauty “never supported Sephora in a big way,” according to a person with knowledge of Sephora’s business—meaning it prioritized driving traffic to its own e-commerce site instead of Sephora’s. The brand, according to YipitData, did about $1.5 million in sales at Sephora during the past 12 months, which means Goop’s revenue was less than half of that. “That strategy kept it too narrow, as opposed to expanding Goop’s audience and client base,” said a person close to Sephora. “They’ll need to go hard at Ulta to appeal to the average person. But Goop is literally not created for that person.”

Regardless of how the beauty partnership with Ulta pans out, Goop is still contending with a number of underlying problems: It remains unsellable at a number that would make investors whole, though many probably consider it a sunk cost at this point and are simply more worried about exiting the business without infuriating Paltrow. I know that, in the past, Paltrow has expressed a deep desire to sell the company, but I’ve also heard that she’s reluctant to get rid of it. Both seem conceivable, and likely at the same time.

Strangely, no one seems to know whether the talented Julia Hunter, the consultant/fractional C.E.O. who was tasked with turning around Goop last year, is still working there. It’s also unclear whether Goop will ever turn a profit. I guess it’s up to Ulta shoppers to decide.

And yet, perhaps the more noteworthy blonde entrepreneur of the moment is Martha Stewart, the original celebrity lifestyle influencer. Last week, Stewart announced that she, too, would be expanding her lifestyle empire with the launch of Elm Biosciences, a skincare brand created alongside Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali, who is best known for co-formulating Rhode products with Hailey Bieber. Stewart, who catapulted back into the zeitgeist during Covid with a swimsuit selfie, remains the blueprint for celebrity reinvention—even at a youthful 84. It’s in no way a stretch to say that Goop, and maybe even Rhode, are existentially indebted to her trailblazing.

When I chatted with Odell, however, she noted a few key differences between Paltrow and Stewart. The first, obviously, was that Stewart is self-made. The other was that, frankly, she’s just a better businessperson. Unlike Paltrow, Stewart is too smart to cosplay C.E.O. with her new venture: Over the past few days, I learned that Stewart and Dr. Bhanusali wisely left the day-to-day management of the company to Natalie Sperling, a beauty executive who was previously a V.P. at Luxury Brand Partners, the incubator behind Oribe and IGK that’s also Patrick Starrr’s partner in One/Size. Sperling is also the co-founder and founding C.E.O. of About Face and AF94, Halsey’s makeup lines that were born out of Celebrands, John Howard and Allen Shapiro’s fund, which raised about $90 million in 2020 to invest in celebrity brands like Bella Hadid’s Orebella. (Howard is an investor in Rag & Bone, Skims, and Ryan Reynolds’s Aviation Gin.)

Elm Biosciences also does not appear to be a craven, celeb-brand cash grab, and has been in the works for at least a few years. I’m always skeptical about buzzwords like “biotech” in skincare, but the involvement of Dr. Bhanusali actually lends the term some credibility: Beyond Rhode, he’s had his hand in a number of non-celebrity dermatological ventures, and runs his own New York City practice. Two of Elm’s senior advisory board members are Dr. Saranya P. Wyles, a researcher who specializes in regenerative dermatology at Mayo Clinic, and Dr. Raja Sivamani, a prolific researcher who’s been “credited with bringing bakuchiol to market,” according to an insider.

So far, the brand has raised more than $3 million, a relatively modest sum that should take the company to the point of wholesale expansion. The first two products, a serum and a supplement, go on sale in early September, and a third product will debut early next year. Elm Biosciences’ approach, according to reports, is supposed to be limited in scale—a concept I always find at odds with the demands of a product pipeline, and the pressure to deliver newness. But here’s what I do know: I’m a paying, repeat customer of a handful of Rhode’s skincare products, and I’ll make a point to try Bhanusali’s next serum, no matter which celebrity name is on the bottle.

The fact that apparel prices are actually down this year, despite inflation and tariffs, encapsulates what is wrong with our culture. Clothes are too cheap. [WWD]

This watch expert guy is real worried about the 39 percent tariffs on Swiss imports. [BoF]

A very helpful and detailed timeline of the latest drama with Huda Kattan, who most recently had a video removed from TikTok because it apparently alleged that Israel was behind World War I, World War II, and September 11. [Ahead of the Kirb]

How will restaurants deal with the fact that wealthy customers are ordering less food because they are on Ozempic? By making portions smaller but charging more. Perhaps if they had made portions smaller in the first place, fewer people would have to be on Ozempic? [New York Times]

Plum Sykes writing an entire essay about what she wore to a live taping of How Long Gone—and the outfit being a Dior turtleneck and trousers—is peak something. Also, damn, she looked good. [From the Desk of the Original Voguette]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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