Shake, Rithum and Roll

Welcome to the VSpot, your home for the e-com nerdy news. This week, Rhythm decided 4 years of anti-marketing was not good marketing and let the world know that they are a big deal. 2.4 billion transactions per day, to be precise. They also disassociated themselves with songs such as Rhythm Is Gonna Get You, Slave to the Rhythm, and Rhythm Is a Dancer. Suggestions amongst the team were that now they're at an age where dancing to those songs could really damage a hip or a knee— things that do not age well. Also, in Economics 101, I learned that it's £13.90 for a large Malbec around the Liverpool Street area of London. Let's do the news. First up, uh, Harry's coming up smelling of roses. Once the darling of DTC disruptor, Harry's has now taken its place in mainstream consumer culture, launching a permanent entry into the fragrance category with 3 new colognes this week. Names look like props from Anchorman. The 1.7 fluid ounce bottles are retailing at the very affordable price of $35. So your weekend choices are a $15 glass of wine or a $35 bottle of alone. I wonder which one gets the better result. I put all my money on red. Story 2 next. Bath, Bed, Beyond— Bed Bath Beyond, Beyond, whatever they're called right now— proved once more they love column inches more than they do strategy. Not content with being a quiet retailing brand for more than 3 weeks at a time, they announced their new franchise opportunity. An insider told us, we think we're being really smart. Why 'While everyone else is taking out complexity, we're adding shitloads back in. Yeah, in a zig left— we are a zig left and everyone zags right kind of company, and we love it.' He then proceeded to drink his new Harry's cologne. 'Remember Domino's? That's what we're going to be saying a few years from now after the new Domino's rebrand, including the invention of something that they call the Cravemark.' It was at this point That I tuned out. Next up, an interesting study we're exploring is rogue ways to make it seem like you're working but not actually working. With the back-to-work mandate now in place and gripping the world, we're correlating this with the rise of conferences about conferences. Watch this space. Rhythm yesterday hosted their— Rhythm yesterday relaunched the Rhythm Live Roadshow in London, and in a move that surprised many people, they had a so-called AI expert that had— wait for it— more than 3 years experience in AI. I mean, this is even before ChatGPT. Do they know when AI started? Who is this dinosaur? He did leave me though with this brain worm: better insights do not equal better decisions. AI, it seems, has a human problem. Story 6: a 2025 fashion benchmarking report surveyed fashion retailers about their changes in a post-tariff world. Only 17% of them are bringing our abroad operations back to North America. Don't tell DJT. And finally this week, Hooters are still in a fistfight to bring the brand back to the masses. Yes, leading the way in this charge is CEO Nick Kiefer, who's trying to bring Hooters back to good old-fashioned family values and stay away from the sex appeal side of private equity. A sentence no one ever thought they would say. We all have our knockers, I guess. We're buzzing to keep rolling with our sponsor Omnisend, the email platform that's officially Vinny-proof. No needless jargon, no alphabet soup of nonsense, just one acronym that matters: ROI. Because merchants get $68 for every $1 invested. That is not marketing spin, that is just math. And you don't need a PhD in UX, as I've said before, to make this work. If you've got half a clue, you'll be making money by lunchtime or evening, depending on what time zone you're on. The only questionable move Omnisend ever made was sponsoring this goddamn show, but we love them for it. Thanks to Taras and the team for continuing to back the chaos. That's the 6 minutes you're not going to get back this week. You've been watching the VSpot.