Open to Buy: Phia's Cookie Monster

Plus: Loonen Water, Ringer and Baseball t-shirts and retail's obsession with easy pants.

In this send: If you are wondering what is going on with affiliate marketing start-up Phia, I’ve got the cliff notes-style version for you with my own thoughts. Plus: Mélisse, Goop, Rebecca Taylor, Ringer t-shirts, baseball t-shirts, Leset, Cou Cou, Loonen Water, Therabody, Walmart, “cookie stuffing”, Colby Crops, Sol de Janeiro men, Anoraks, Running Wylder, and let me know in the comments what your favorite find was this week!

• Field Notes - a look at even more weekend pop-ups.

• Forecasting - trends that keep popping up and I want to discuss with you.

• Retail Reads - A quick read on Phia and cliff notes on what is going on.

• Fashion & Beauty Finds - including items my 13 year old told me about.

• In My Feed - fun stories and content I enjoyed reading this week.

Field Notes

More pop-ups of note for this weekend.

• Mélisse handbags — the fun, colorful, beaded and fringed, evening handbags — has a pop-up at Goop in Sag Harbour this weekend. If you can’t attend you can always pre-order one here.

• Toccin in Southampton has a Stephanie Gottlieb pop-up this weekend.

• Rebecca Taylor (a brand I haven’t heard about in ages) has a month long residency in Bridgehampton.

• At the Miami Design District, a Ferragamo event with their CITYMATCH (sporty) pieces.

For the full recap of pop-ups from this week check out the Deep Dive here.

Forecasting

• Add this to the Loonen Water discourse: Have you seen Emily Sundberg’s reporting and Totally Recommend’s reporting? I’ve been watching Karen Sayah’s Instagram content around the Sun Valley fashion and noted that Evan Spiegel was seen toting around Loonen Water. The other water bottles in Sun Valley have been mostly Smartwater and the occasional Dasani so Spiegel possibly brought his own?

• Put a ring on it: I noticed in my late night scrolling that Ringer t-shirts kept appearing in new deliveries this week. This white and black ribbed version, a colorful option in Leset’s July drop, and from J.Crew. This one from B Sides is pretty great too.

• Take me out to the ball game: If you aren’t wearing a ringer t-shirt maybe you opted for a baseball t-shirt. New from Leset (of course I love the solid white and black versions), Reformation, Jungmaven, Cos, or Cou Cou. How cool is this NPR one?

Retail Reads

Cookie Monster — What happened at Phia?

The latest in the affiliate discourse is this article from Bloomberg on Phia. In case you want to discuss without reading the full article the TL;DR¹

• What is Phia? It’s the shopping app from Phoebe Gates (Bill and Melinda French Gates’s daughter) and Sophia Kianni, built to act like a personal shopping assistant. Download the browser extension, shop like you normally would, and it claims to find the lowest price on whatever you’re looking at. Even surfacing a secondhand version if one exists, and applying discount codes for you at checkout.

  The money: Over $43.5 has been raised, including a $35 million Series A that landed a $185 million valuation. The Series A was led by Notable Capital and included Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures. The big buzz from press was over the extensive A-listers in the raise too (here is a small list): Khloé Kardashian and momager Kris Jenner, Sydney Sweeney, Paris Hilton, Jessica Alba, Mindy Kaling, Ice Spice, Halsey, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Alix Earle, Karlie Kloss, Ashley Graham, Winnie Harlow, and LVMH heir Alexandre Arnault.

• So what happened? Bloomberg, Capital One Shopping, and researcher Ben Edelman found Phia’s browser extension was silently opening a hidden background tab during checkout and inserting its own affiliate code. It would essentially automatically click its own link without the shopper doing anything. So it could grab credit for sales it never influenced. This worked even when a shopper arrived via someone else’s legit link, like from Wirecutter, a Google ad, etc. Phia’s tab would fire after the fact and overwrite that code with its own.

• This is referred to as “cookie stuffing”. A banned tactic and it violates the terms of service of every major network Phia works with, including Impact.com, CJ, Rakuten and Awin. Impact.com has already suspended Phia’s account.

• Why to pay attention: Edelman, as noted above with the Phia research, also researched and found evidence that helped land two affiliate marketers in prison for defrauding eBay back in the 2010s. Also worth noting, Capital One Shopping, one of the accuser here, settled a nearly identical class action last year after influencers said its own extension was swapping out their affiliate codes. Same story played out with PayPal's Honey in 2024, which has still been playing out recently.

• Phia says the auto-click code was introduced in December and got fixed within 24 hours of Bloomberg flagging it, and claims it’s passed regular network audits. But this is the second shady data practice in eight months. Fortune reported in November that Phia was logging users’ full browsing sessions, including bank statements and private email content.

• My thoughts: This is not a good spot for Phia. They made a huge deal marketing their recent investor line-up like a concert line-up, and then played that up more with Coachella style marketing. All of this will be discounted now and Phia is in the position of having to prove themselves as a respected, trustworthy, and fair player in the affiliate marketing space. Plus it might turn off the very creators and influencers that already use affiliate links from wanting to support Phia and promote the platform to their users in the future. I want to hear your thoughts in the comments — can Phia move past this? How fast?

• BoF reported on the top Amazon Prime Day Deals for beauty (as reported by Perpetua Prism) and what I found most interesting is the top 2 items were higher priced hair tools (valid — bigger savings on a higher retail purchase) but none of the top 5 were the devices that have been the top of the rankings in the ShopMy beauty rankings. When I reported for Puck’s Line Sheet in May, of the top 10 devices, 8 were face tools and many were the new red light devices. So what is typically driving ShopMy’s engaged shopper is not what is driving purchases on Amazon or perhaps the items aren’t being discounted yet. I checked the top items from ShopMy’s links and they have not been on sale recently on Amazon according to CamelCamelCamel. Related, the devices I use and recommend:

  • Ziip Halo* all because of this video of founder Melanie Simon from 8 years ago. Her skin is unbelievable — note I’m not a dermatologist and this is a dated video but her skin has stuck with me for 8 years (!!!) because of this content. (Use code RetailZiip for 10% off.)

  • This wand from Therabody which helps with my sinuses, puffiness, tension and even headaches. Perfect for traveling too.

  • Personally I can actually see a change when I use this device. Again, I also love it for relieving tension especially in my jaw.

• There are times when even larger retailers with a lot of red tape still surprise and delight me. Take Walmart’s quick thinking surrounding international visitors and the World Cup. After seeing social media responses and visitors in stores thrilled with the idea of shopping at Walmart, they are offering tours and marketing activations around experiencing the stores even though they are not an official FIFA sponsor. I think this is a great lesson for retailers and brands of all sizes to not feel constrained by regulations. It also isn’t breaking rules to do so. Well done.

• Devastating, and I’m sorry for the sad and depressing news on the weekend, but this should be mentioned. A fire in a shoe factory in JinJiang China kills 28 and required 200 people to evacuate. [WWD]

Fashion & Beauty Finds

• Of all the Easy Pants the Colby Crops I’ve been able to both dress-up and wear with a sweatshirt and flip-flops. I’m also shocked at the quality for the price, it’s that good. I’m 5 feet 2 inches and the crop length fits me as a regular length. After I posted on Instagram I was flooded with DMs asking when they would be back in stock and if they would come in other materials. I reached out to La Ligne and the update is that the ivory will be restocked the week of July 27th and the black and navy the week of August 10th. I’ll likely be adding the navy to my uniform. (Privatelabel10 for 10% off your purchase.)

  • P.S. Y’all, I might have a problem. I think I own more Easy Pants now than I do denim. That speaks more to the denim gaps in my closet but this is a really interesting trend to note. With Easy Pants so simple to fit and so many great materials to chose from, are they a retailer’s dream easy sale? I could spiral on this a lot. For now they just keep ringing the registers.

• Emme Parsons launched this Bari slide in nappa leather. I own in the black rubber. I love that it has a comfortable footbed like a Birkenstock but a more sleek upper.

• Rothy’s newest iteration of the clog, a more academic penny clog.

• Freda Salvador’s July collection launched this week and my eye went immediately to these: a suede fisherman — extend your summer footwear well into the fall. The zebra haircalf Jada — one of their best styles! And cowboy boots have been picking up year-over-year and their Loretta is a fantastic starter cowboy boot. (Retaildiary10 for 10% off your purchase.)

• My 13 year old daughter alerted my ten year old son that Sol de Janeiro is launching men’s. Smart of Sol de Janeiro to go after the men’s fragrance mania with teen boys. My daughter could seriously be a scent influencer.

• My daughter is also very excited about these new launches: Plumping Lip Gloss, Glowy Balm, Lip Sleeping Mask. Lip products are a true gateway beauty product for the teens and apparently you can never have enough. I do like their Lip Mask but lately this* is the new lip balm I’ve been using in the Rose Dahlia shade from Violette_fr.

  🛍️ Quick note: I write a lot (too much good stuff to share!) If you’re reading via email only, you may need to click through to the web version or read on the Substack app. I promise it will be worth it. 🛍️

In My Feed

• For a different type of look at fashion week from what you might typically read, check out Katherine Douglas’s recaps. This is for the sporty girls too. Douglas’s running boutique — Running Wylder — located in my old neighborhood, Noe Valley, is the absolute coolest. I love her vintage running t-shirts and the brands she sources are the best — she has an excellent eye. Part one and part deux.

• The Financial Times HTSI spread for wellness and workout gear is so well done. I’m excited for all the anoraks. Like this cotton one that just dropped this week and is already sold out in most sizes (the color is so good!) I saw this Agolde one at Hero Shop and it is fantastic. But I still own this old school anorak that I got in high school (and wore practically everyday) so I’ll just stick with this one for now.

• Top links of the week: most clicked are three of my favorites!! A travel bag I love, the set* I can’t stop wearing, and the handbag line from Berlin that I’m obsessed with. Top orders are from my favorite car lip oil (it doesn’t melt) and my favorite bathing suit three years running/swimming.

• I have a lot of questions about Reformation’s use of technology in the stores. So does this guy. My dream is to have two Reformation in apples-to-apples locations and test the technology first location and have the other location like a typical store with all the inventory in various sizes out. See which one has higher revenue.

Catching Up:

The one where we talk about the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale:

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Quick note: some links here are affiliate links — I may earn a small commission if you shop through them, at no cost to you. It helps keep this newsletter going. Gifted items are marked with an *. All opinions are my own, and everything I share, I’d tell my best friend about and probably already have.

1. too long; didn’t read