Peter Fisk

Brothers John and Patrick Collison started Stripe in 2010 to make the whole digital payments space easier. The hurdle with payment platforms, as they saw it, wasn’t on the finance side. Difficulties more often were due to coding and design issues. That’s when they decided to build a developer-focused instant-setup payment platform any company could use and scale.

Today thousands of companies, including Amazon, Slack, Glossier, Shopify and Under Armour, use Stripe’s software tools to securely accept payments from anywhere in the world. The company makes money by charging these customers a swipe fee of 2.9%, plus 30 cents for every transaction it processes (the same as PayPal). The money comes on top of $250 million raised in September. No word from either Collison brother about when — or if — they will take their company public.

In 2019, Stripe announced the formation of Stripe Capital, a lender for customers’ small businesses. Securing financing from traditional banks is time-consuming, and lending standards often are overly strict. Stripe Capital will advance funds to a small business, usually within a few days. The business will repay the loan by giving Stripe a fixed percentage of daily sales until the loan is paid off.

 

 

Here’s how Klarna works: A customer making an online purchase enters only their email address and post/zip code to buy an item. Klarna pays the retailer immediately and then collects the amount due from the consumer either immediately, in 30 days, in four interest-free payments or over six to 36 months, with interest.

The company makes its money predominately through the fees it charges merchants for its service and says that by using proprietary data analytics and modeling, it can give approved consumers a seamless buying experience. The service is available in 200,000 stores, such as H&M, Sephora, Adidas and Abercrombie & Fitch, and has about 85 million users worldwide, including about 6 million in the U.S. The company claims it adds a new merchant every seven minutes.

Since its founding in 2005, Klarna has distinguished itself from other fintech companies by turning a profit every year. In February it reported its first annual loss, after a year of expansion in the U.S. and Europe. In August 2019 it raised $460 million in financing, giving the company a staggering $5.5 billion valuation. Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, bought a minority stake in Klarna in March for an undisclosed amount. Klarna counts U.S. rapper Snoop Dogg and Swedish retailer H&M among its investors.

So what can any online retailer learn from Klarna?

Staying true to his hip-hop roots, Sven Voth has transformed Snipes from a small German retailer into a global streetwear brand with almost 400 stores worldwide.

In the late 1990s, the heroes of hip-hop’s golden age had some of their greatest hits behind them, and the bling era was pushing hip-hop towards massive commercial success and mainstream appreciation. Artists like A Tribe Called Quest and the Fugees were giving way to younger artists like Jay-Z and Puff Daddy, who started churning out the ‘jiggy’ hits that defined the turn of the millennium.

It was during this transitional period that Voth, then a young hip-hop enthusiast, decided to set up a business that would honour his favourite art form by making street fashion and footwear accessible to the masses.

In 1998, Snipes was born. In the retailer’s early days, when there was just one Snipes store selling the latest hip-hop fashion in Essen, Germany, a shortage of resources forced Sven to get creative.

He initially hoped to name his brand Spike’s, but without the funds to purchase the rights to the name, he had to change a few letters and drop the apostrophe. When he couldn’t afford a proper paint job for the store’s interior, he filled it with street art, paying homage to the pastime of his youth.

“There was a lot of pressure to achieve strong sales numbers back then because we had no support from any banks,” Sven recalls. “But I always knew Snipes had the potential to be much more than just a retailer. I wanted to connect with my consumer and develop this hip-hop lifestyle. It was never about opening at 10am, closing at 8pm, counting the money and going home.”

Twenty-two years later, Snipes operates almost 300 stores across Europe and, in 2019 alone, opened 93 stores in the US. Moreover, the retailer has expanded beyond just hip-hop fashion to streetwear, forging partnerships with Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Fila and Asics, plus exclusive licences to distribute streetwear labels like FUBU, Sean John and Karl Kani, the latter of which is distributed by Urban Styles, a wholesale agency owned by Snipes Group.

“We are involved in an industry that could hardly be more dynamic,” Sven says. “Our motivation is not to react, but to set standards.”

 

In a recent interview with CEO Magazine, Both takes up the story.

With more than two decades as CEO under his belt, Sven has learned that the secret to success in fashion retail is that “you have to sell more than just the product”. Indeed, sales numbers are just one ingredient in the complex recipe of Snipes’ colossal growth.

To maintain its presence in the awareness of its customers, Snipes held a total of 288 promotional events in Europe last year – far more than any domestic retailer.

Moreover, starting with a visit by Michael Jordan to Snipes’ Hamburg store in 2006, the company has maintained a star-studded line-up of product partners, including artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg and Rick Ross.

Last year, Snipes named mega-producer DJ Khaled its Chief Creative Officer. Such collaborations aren’t limited to big names in hip-hop. Last year, Snipes teamed up with Netflix for collections based on Stranger Things and Money Heist, and a collaboration with Sprite has just been announced. “This is how we get on everyone’s radar,” Sven says.

“It’s why we always say we are an entertainment event company with a little bit of retail.” These partnerships coincide with Sven’s belief that consumers increasingly expect in-store retail to be an experience that stirs positive memories and tantalises the senses.

It would not be unusual to walk into a Snipes store and see hip-hop music videos playing on several screens and staff dancing playfully on the sales floor.

“People sometimes have reservations about our employees. Maybe they just look too cool, I don’t know. But our employees are actually our USP. They are well-trained and are very special people, both visually and professionally. We regularly receive emails in which parents who come into our stores with their children tell us about the positive experiences they had with our employees,” Sven says.

The appreciation flows both ways. Many Snipes employees have stayed with the company for 10, 15, even 20 years – a trend Sven attributes to the company’s efforts to involve its staff in events and assure them they are each an essential part of the company’s journey.

“More than any other professional achievement, I am proud of the family values that we have always fostered within the company. The closeness, the connection between colleagues here is simply incredible,” Sven says.

“It was through this closeness and transparency that we managed, as a unit, to overcome the effects of COVID-19 on our company this spring. We always describe ourselves as family, but if you could see all of the employees at the Snipes family party every summer, you would understand that it is not empty phrases.”

Transforming a local fashion retailer into a global brand, however, does not come without hitting a few bumps in the road. One such bump for Snipes was the crash of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the ensuing global financial crisis.

“I consider the Lehman crash to be a very formative and influential event in my career,” Sven says. “In no other period since I founded Snipes were the challenges as concentrated as in this time after the crash.”

As the global economy slowed and sales dwindles, Sven had a choice – save money by cutting marketing and personnel costs, or spend more to maintain contact with the few customers still coming in. “We ordered products and brands that did not suit Snipes or our customers, we worked with inappropriate testimonials and started unfortunate campaigns. Although we reached more people, we lost sight of our own DNA and authenticity, which threw us a long way back as a brand,” Sven says.

“During this time, I learned the meaning of ‘stick to your roots’ very clearly.” In the 12 years since, Sven has not let the memory of that turbulent period fade, and he keeps its lessons close at hand.

“Our brand is all about authenticity. We are raised from concrete. We do it for the kids in the street,” he says.

“If you look at the whole sneaker game and the other players, they have a sports heritage rather than an urban one, which gives us a chance to create a different assortment to the others. We have the chance to establish the streetwear look and develop our brand in both directions, which is a really big point of differentiation.

“We remain a cool, young, forward-thinking company, with a lot of growth potential for individuals. And we will maintain our own growth as a company by expanding our fleet. Opening 500 stores is a short-term goal to us. So expect a lot from us in the years to come.”

DP World sees how global trade is changing. It continues to grow at pace, but – more importantly – it is transforming rapidly to meet the rise of a new generation of consumers, who demand both personalized products and customized services. For retailers at scale, this requires a comprehensive retooling of their supply chains. For logistics at large, this means significant changes are on the way – driven by new technologies and concepts.

This is an industry that already is at the leading edge of innovation. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the transportation-and-warehousing industry already has the third-highest automation potential of any sector. And according to PWC, there is “no other industry where so many industry experts ascribe a high importance to data and analytics in the next five years than transportation and logistics – 90%, compared to an average of 83%.”

Consider these five core technologies and trends that will shape trade and logistics in the 2020s:

• Hyper personalisation
• New cargo technologies (see Cargospeed, below)
• Increased automation (see Boxbay, below)
• Efficient marketplaces
• Digitalisation

DP’s portfolio of more than 65 container and non-container terminals spans six continents. The business continues to invest in developments and expansions, with new developments to come in India, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Many of its existing terminals also have the ability to increase capacity, as utilisation and customer demands grow. Its investment pipeline is anticipated to increase our gross capacity to more than 100 million TEU by 2020, subject to market demand.

DP World seeks to communicate their ambitions and business purpose and define their corporate culture through a framework of  Vision, Mission and Values, underpinned by the DP World Balanced Scorecard Framework.

DP’s strategic pillars define the objectives it needs to achieve across the group. They drive a sustainable business model, develop robust risk and compliance processes, communicate effectively to all stakeholders and implement our strategy.

The four strategic pillars are:

• Strategy Implementation: communicating key messages and defining measurable performance milestones.
• Corporate Governance: ensuring good corporate governance and adhering to international best practice.
• Communication: enhancing communication with our people and external audiences.
• Corporate Responsibility: building and sustaining strong communities through strategic investment, to leave a sustainable legacy and take the lead in being a good corporate citizen.

DP’s strategic priorities explain the strategy and describe how it will create value for stakeholders. Each of the four priorities are broken down into key goals to facilitate the setting of group-wide objectives and allow us to measure our progress.

The four strategic priorities are:

• Financial: driving sustained long-term shareholder value.
• Customer: creating a satisfied and profitable customer experience.
• People & Learning: creating a learning and growth environment.
• Internal & Operational: developing efficient, safe and secure methods of managing our operations.

More visions of the future of logistics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeKapqAQimk

 

Mette Lykke, CEO of Too Good To Go was recently interviewed by BBC.

For many people, leaving the stability of a well-paid job to join a start-up might seem daunting. For Danish entrepreneur Mette Lykke, it’s a leap she’s made not just once, but twice. Back in 2007 she was working for management consultancy firm McKinsey, but decided it was time to change direction. “I was missing the feeling of having a real impact,” she says.

In a serendipitous twist she was in New York when a stranger came over and handed her a postcard. It read: “Whatever our wildest dreams may be, they only scratch the surface of what’s possible.” “It was just a nice sign,” the 38-year-old recalls. “She gave it to me when I was waiting at a red light, and she just walked away.”

Mette decided to go for it and partnered with fellow Danes and McKinsey colleagues, Christian Birk and ­Jakob Jonck, to launch the personal training app Endomondo. “I might have done it anyway,” she says. “But it definitely didn’t feel like a coincidence at that time.”

Mette was a competitive horse-rider and for the three sports enthusiasts, launching an app to “make fitness fun” was a logical fit. Making a success of their Copenhagen-based idea was no walk in the park though. At that time – 13 years ago – most phones lacked GPS. In the first few months of Endomondo there were days when no one signed up at all. “It really felt a little bit uphill,” she says.

Mette says that her upbringing helped prepare her for the hard graft. She grew up alongside her family’s timber business in Ringkobing, a small town in Jutland in western Denmark. “I grew up seeing that there are ups and downs,” she says. “Most days are just hard work, [but] if I had known back then that I wouldn’t see any salary for the next two years, I might have reconsidered,” she laughs. “You just don’t know.” As an entrepreneur, “you’re definitely an optimist,” she explains. “We always thought next month is going to be different.”

The game-changer came when the Apple App Store opened in 2008 and smart phone sales boomed. But it still took Endomondo six years to make its first profit. By 2015, the app had 20 million users and caught the attention of American sportswear giant, Under Armour. “They were particularly interested in increasing brand awareness in Europe,” says Mette. “We could help with that, with the vast majority of [our] users being based here.”

The US company bought Endomondo for $85m (£65m). Mette was just 33 at the time, and she and her two co-founders were suddenly multimillionaires. “It’s a strange thing to sell a business you were part of creating,” she says. “While the deal was a big success from a business perspective and I was happy with the decision, it was still hard to let go of my baby on a personal level.” After the sale she continued to work for Endomondo and its new parent, managing teams both in Copenhagen where she was based and also in Texas.

It was following a chance encounter on a bus outside Copenhagen in August 2016 that the Dane embarked on her next mission – fighting food waste. She started chatting to a fellow passenger who showed her an app called Too Good To Go. “I was not fully aware of how big of an issue in society food waste really is,” recalls Mette. After doing more research she was shocked to learn about its climate impact. “That was mind-blowing to me.”

Five young Danish entrepreneurs had launched the online marketplace several months earlier. Restaurants and shops post what leftover food they have available, together with a time-slot for collection.

Members of the public can then purchase discounted meals or groceries through the app. The surplus food is saved from being thrown away – the firm makes money by taking a cut on meals sold. “The fact that we can help solve such a massive issue and then leave everyone as winners in the process, I thought that was really powerful,” says Mette. She found the start-up “so exciting” that she invested. Several months later she left Under Armour and joined Too Good To Go as chief executive. “I wouldn’t have jumped into this if I didn’t think I could contribute,” she says.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, one-third of the world’s food is wasted. When ranked alongside countries, food waste is the world’s third-largest producer of carbon dioxide after the USA and China. In recent years dozens of firms have set out to tackle this, including similar platforms like Olio, Foodcloud and Karma. Alan Hayes, from food and grocery research group IGD, says these apps have “helped to raise awareness of food waste in businesses and in schools” as well as empowering consumers.

When it comes to changing behaviour about food waste, Trish Caddy, an analyst at fellow research firm Mintel, thinks consumers respond better to rewards. “The Too Good to Go app is particularly good at normalising eating leftovers by promoting end-of-day food at a discount,” she says.

Mette has overseen a rapid expansion. The firm now employs 450 people, operates in 13 European countries and is due to roll out in Sweden. “Endomondo took three years to get to the first million users and with Too Good To Go it took 15 months,” she says. “It’s just a completely different time… the technology is ready.” Mette says it is one of Europe’s fastest-growing apps with 18 million users and is gaining an additional 45,000 daily. Customers range from bargain-hunting students to environmentally-conscious young families, while women over 50 are another big market. It has also partnered with more than 30,000 food suppliers, from Yo Sushi to Accor Hotels.

Mette describes it as a “social impact” company. “Every time we make a euro in revenue, it’s because we did something good.” It aims to ultimately be profit making, though Mette says the timeline for delivering returns isn’t yet clear. “At the moment, every revenue we make goes back into the business. Just growing it and expanding it to more and more countries. That’s our focus.”

So far the Too Good To Go team reckon they have helped save more than 25 million meals. “I feel like this is just the beginning,” says Mette. “It doesn’t feel like we’re anywhere near the goal line at all. Within the next five years, we want to have saved a billion meals.”

Luiza Trajano, founder of Magazine Luiza, was recently interviewed by BBC.

With inflation hitting a whopping 3,000%, and new currencies being introduced and then quickly ditched, it was not easy to be a retailer in the Brazil of the early 1990s. That was the tough economic backdrop faced by Luiza Trajano, then 40, when she took up the top job at her family’s chain of shops selling home electronics and household appliances in 1991.

Magazine Luiza had a small chain in the southern state of Sao Paulo. But Luiza had ambitious plans to expand nationwide. And she had a cunning plan. With inflation that high, and the Brazilian government introducing and then abandoning no fewer than four different currencies between 1989 and 1994, it would have been risky to start opening more large stores stocking the entire range of products.

So Luiza decided to open a chain of micro shops that didn’t stock anything. Starting in 1992, customers would instead sit down at a computer terminal, and browse a computerised catalogue of all the items on sale. They would then order what they wanted, and Magazine Luiza would deliver it to their homes from a network of nationwide distribution depots.

It was a precursor to online sales, from a time before Brazil got the internet – access to the net only became available to consumers in Brazil in 1997. In addition to enabling Magazine Luiza to quickly and cheaply expand, the small “electronic shops” also meant that the company didn’t have to keep printing out new physical price labels in response to inflation or a new currency. It just had to update the prices on its computer system.

Looking back, Luiza, who is now 68, says: “It was a big revolution, we introduced a new way of virtual sales. It prepared us for the internet before anyone else.” She says that she also made sure that the company put a lot of effort into explaining the expansion plans to staff, to ensure that they were happy and motivated, and therefore offering good customer service. “We did intense work with our team, explaining our targets and how we need everyone. We were very transparent with how they played an important role in this new movement.”

Within three years Magazine Luiza had a few hundred of its shops across Brazil, with some large cities having as many as 58 outlets. Today the company has more than 1,000 stores across Brazil and 30,000 employees. Meanwhile, its website accounts for 48% of sales and it has total annual revenues of 19.7bn real ($4.9bn; £3.7bn). The success of the business has made Luiza one of the richest people in Brazil. Her net worth is $3.5bn (£2.7bn), according to Forbes magazine.

The first Magazine Luiza shop was opened in 1957 by Luiza’s aunt and uncle, in her home city of Franca, 400km (250 miles) north of the city of Sao Paulo, The word “magazine” was chosen as a variation of the French word for shop, “magasin”, while “Luiza” was also her aunt’s first name. Luiza started helping her aunt and uncle at the shop from the age of 12, working in the afternoon and early evening after she had finished school. “I was a saleswoman, and it was still a very small shop [at the time],” she says. “I loved the experience, and it was a success.”

When Luiza went to university to study law, she still made time to work at the shop. And after graduating she joined the family business full-time. Over the next two decades she filled a number of increasingly senior roles, before coming chief executive in 1991, as her uncle and aunt stepped back from the day-to-day running of the business.

Another innovation Luiza introduced was opening the stores very early in the morning during sales periods. This might have long been common practice in the UK and North America, but in 1990s Brazil it was a novel development. “We opened the shops at 5am, something that we had never seen before in Brazil.” she says. “Other retail shops started to do the same.”

Today the company is one of the largest retailers in Brazil. With almost half of sales now coming online, the small non-stock shops have been replaced over the years with larger ones that do have some or all products there to take away. The focus on staff happiness remains though, and Magazine Luiza consistently tops the list of the best Brazilian retail companies to work for.

“We have been in first place since 2006,” she says. “It is one of my greatest joys after all these years.” While she has no plans to retire, in 2016 Luiza passed the chief executive role over to her son Frederico, while she switched to chairwoman.

Headspace, founded in 2010 and based in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, says that it is committed to advancing the field of mindfulness through clinically-validated research, with one of the largest research pipelines of any digital health and wellness company.

The company operates a B2B business (Headspace for Work) to offer its mindfulness products and services to more than 700 companies, such as Starbucks, Adobe, GE, Hyatt and Unilever, to help them build healthier, more productive cultures and higher performing organizations. It also supports government entities like the UK’s NHS to offer digital mental health tools.

It partners with many of the world’s most-recognizable brands, including Apple and Amazon, as well as with Nike, NBA and the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team to offer sport and movement content. Headspace Health is Headspace’s digital health subsidiary pioneering new ways to incorporate the Headspace mindfulness experience into digital medicine.

Headspace has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, Apple’s Best of 2018, Samsung’s Best of 2019 and one of CB Insights’ top digital health companies, along with being selected for five Webby Awards in health and fitness between 2018 and 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_yXe_6mYTA

Andy Puddicombe and Richard Pierson, co-founders of meditation app Headspace. In an extract from a BBC interview they talked about their journey:

It was a series of tragedies that sent Andy Puddicombe’s life onto a completely different path. When he was 22, Andy was standing outside a London pub when a drunk driver ploughed into a group of his friends, killing two of them. A few months later his stepsister died in a cycling accident, and then an ex-girlfriend passed away during surgery.

Andy was doing a sports science degree at the time, but amid the grief he dropped out. Seeking a complete life change, he decided to travel to the Himalayas to train as a Buddhist monk. He ended up spending the next 10 years as a monk, which took him all over Asia, and involved him meditating for up to 16 hours a day.

He says that the meditation helped him come to terms with everything. “It gave me a shift in perspective – it taught me to focus less on oneself, and instead bring greater happiness to others,” says Andy, now 46. His friends and family however, were a little shocked and worried. “None of them really knew what to make of it. But despite this they were incredibly supportive and encouraging.”

In 2005 Andy returned to the UK to set up a meditation business, but it still wasn’t a widely-appreciated practice in his home country at the time. “Some people were put off by the language behind meditation, or saw it as a bit of a hippy thing to do,” he says. “It was quite inaccessible. People didn’t have time for it, or know how to do it.”

Setting up his own small private practice in London, Andy taught burnt out professionals how to use meditation to help them in their daily lives.

Today he and his co-founder Richard Pierson, 38, run popular meditation app Headspace, which has been downloaded more than 54 million times around the world, and has annual revenues said to be more than $100m (£82m).

Back in 2005, Richard was one of the struggling professionals who booked an appointment with Andy. After university Richard had gone into the advertising industry in London. He had risen quickly through the ranks, but it had taken its toll.

“When I met Andy I was pretty desperate,” says Richard. “I had continuous social anxiety, and that was very challenging. I didn’t have a friendship group where I could be open with them about these pressures.

“After the first session it highlighted how many thoughts I had in my head, and just how manic my life was – I found it exciting that there was a pathway.”

Once Richard realised how much he benefited from the meditation, he decided that he wanted to go into business with Andy, to help spread the word.

“It was very much a skill swap,” says Richard. “He taught me meditation, and I came up with a bunch of ideas for him on how to make him more visible. I just thought it was such a shame that he was in a room on his own.”

By 2010 they were doing events around the UK, where they would talk about the benefits of meditation, and even do group meditation sessions.

Using this money, and help from friends, they created the first version of their Headspace app that year. Users could choose from a number of 10-minute guided meditations to follow.

Striking lucky early on, the UK’s Guardian included a Headspace booklet in every newspaper one Saturday, while airline Virgin Atlantic added bespoke Headspace meditation content to its planes’ entertainment system. This led to a growing number of people downloading the app, which today costs £9.99 per month.

Andy, who is the voice of the app, says: “In the early days it was just us, no one would give us any more money, so we’d just ask for favours from all our friends.

“One of our friends gave us a recording studio for free, and another an office for free. Some people really believed in what we were doing, and took pay cuts to come and work for us – we’re so grateful for that now.”

In 2013, Richard and Andy decided to move the business and themselves from London to Los Angeles, where their headquarters has been based ever since.

“It is not that we didn’t love London,” says Andy. “But both of us dreamed of living in California and having a more outdoorsy lifestyle – we love to go surfing and hiking, and it suited our families too.”

Largely self-funded at the beginning, Headspace started to take investment from 2014 in order to expand the app and business. It has now secured more than $75m of external funding, but Andy and Richard still own a majority stake.

Whereas at the start they’d both been involved in everything, as they started to grow they took on different roles. Richard became the chief executive, looking at the management and overall running of the whole company and its 300 employees.

Andy’s primary job is to still focus on expanding the app, and being the voice. But does it ever get recognised when he is out and about?

“People will normally recognise my voice in an airport or a restaurant,” he says. “[And], my dentist couldn’t work it out the other day. It wasn’t until we started talking about meditation, and I realised that she used Headspace, that I could see in her eye that the penny had dropped.”

Neil Seligman, author of books on meditation, says that Headspace has “led the mindfulness revolution in the digital space”.

“The genius of Headspace was to take something as difficult and nuanced as teaching mindfulness meditation, and break it down into bite-sized, snackable videos, audios and practices,” he adds. “This is how they transformed the industry and penetrated the global market.”

But Headspace isn’t just an app. The company has more than 300 business clients, such as Google, Linkedin, General Electric and Unilever, for whom it helps managers and staff meditate. It also works with US universities including Harvard and Stanford, and the UK’s National Health Service, on studies into the health benefits of meditation.

Andy still meditates every day, albeit less than the 16 hours of old. Richard also makes time for it. “We both practise meditation every day,” says Richard. “We do really believe in it and that’s important for the team and anyone that downloads the app to know.”

Bravado is the only global, 360 degree full service merchandise company that develops and markets high-quality licensed merchandise to a world-wide audience. The company works closely with new and established entertainment clients, creating innovative products carefully tailored to each artist or brand. Product is sold on live tours, via selected retail outlets and through Web-based stores.

Bravado also licenses rights to an extensive network of third-party licensees around the world. The company maintains offices in London, Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney. Under the Universal Music Group umbrella, Bravado is able to leverage a global sales and distribution network from the world’s largest record company, as well as the group’s significant marketing strength.

After Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? debuted, in March 2019, hordes of Gen Z fans purchased hoodies, shorts, and shoelaces that came with a digital album, boosting the album’s sales and helping it top the Billboard Hot 200 list. (This so-called bundling has become so ubiquitous that Billboard recently changed how it records these sales.)

But Mat Vlasic, CEO of Bravado, the merchandising division of Universal Music Group that works with Eilish and dozens of other artists, including Justin Bieber and Blackpink, sees these souvenirs as more than just a means to boost album sales. “In the past, people bought CDs or vinyl,” he says. “We want to provide something physical that they can hold onto.”

To give fans that tangible connection, Bravado designs, produces, and sells artists’ own hypebeast-worthy items, from T-shirts to skateboards, and coordinates product collaborations, such as the recent Ariana Grande x H&M collection. The company even sets up artist-themed pop-ups: one celebrated the Rolling Stones’ recent No Filter tour by selling all sorts of items featuring the iconic tongue logo, from leather jackets and tees to Away suitcases and Ladurée macarons.