Fashion's Biggest Winner Owns Zero Products
The economics of retail's zero-inventory future, Recent fashion tech fundraising wins and what Beyoncé ticket prices reveal about consumer fatigue
Hi to my little insiders!
I’m in such a good mood today~
Let me set the scene: it’s 80 degrees, a UV of 7, not a cloud in the sky and the slightest breeze. I have a fatttt iced coffee by my side and have spent the morning outside with this girl:
My house is spotless, I’m almost completely caught up on laundry and yesterday I did a little shopping and there were sales galore! I bought a few things (feel like my 2 year low buy has made me such a rational shopper) saved a few to my Carted (P.S. shout out
pgirl for having the best customer service! I reached out to her last week to be able to upload my lists from another app so I could have price drop alerts and she got her team to manually do it all for me so I didn't have to re-save hundreds of items from scratch. I am the BIGGEST fan forever!).Have you guys been to Old Navy recently? I hadn’t been in probably ~5 years, no lie. But I went yesterday and was so shocked.
Three things immediately stood out:
Their expanded product mix - activewear that rivals Beyond Yoga, trendy jelly ballet flats for $20, and an impressive selection of sunglasses / accessories as a whole (can never buy enough claw clips)
Unexpected category expansion into beauty with e.l.f, Treehut, and Neutrogena:
Price points that still deliver clear value ($4.99 flip flops might not be the $1 specials from my childhood, but they're still competitive)
I talk all the time about how the middle is dead and I fear for Target, Kohl’s, etc who cannot figure out their value prop and that’s because Old Navy came in and stole it right out from under them. So while I'm quick to call out retail's middle market failures, I have to give credit where it's due - Old Navy is fucking killing it and you should not sleep on them right now because I could've bought the store upppppppp.
All of that to say - today is a good day. I’m so happy to be sitting here writing this and I’m so happy to have my sun and moon in Leo and that it’s summer (at least here in Vegas). We are thriving!
But first, let's set the scene: Grab that café au lait you just made (decaf if you’re reading this at night), queue up some Charlotte Gainsbourg on Spotify, and settle into that perfect spot on your couch. Maybe light your Diptyque Baies if you're feeling extra French today ~ We're celebrating French fashion dominance (Vinted just became the largest retailer in France!), talking global fashion fundraising wins, and what Cowboy Carter tickets can teach us about consumer behavior. Consider this your passport to the most interesting corners of the fashion business—no jet lag required.
Let's get into it, shall we?
Google and eBay rolling out AI shopping features signals how quickly commerce is evolving (and how mainstream fashion tech is becoming!). Google creating 3D product visualizations from just three photos and eBay auto-generating social videos solves real problems for both shoppers and sellers (pls don’t ever find yourself being a solution in search of a problem). This isn't just tech for tech's sake - it's addressing the fundamental challenge of online shopping: helping people visualize products they can't touch. The implications are massive - smaller brands can now create immersive experiences that previously required expensive photography studios and video teams. We're moving toward a world where AI handles the tedious parts of shopping online, letting humans focus on what they actually want to buy rather than struggling to imagine what it might look like. Curious to see adoption rates on this.
Dick's $2.4B acquisition of Foot Locker is exactly the kind of middle-market power move we need more of (but analysts don’t fully agree). While everyone else is downsizing or desperately trying to go "premium," Dick's just doubled down on what they actually do well. The timing couldn't be better - Nike is returning to wholesale under new CEO Elliott Hill after their direct-to-consumer experiment mostly flopped. By keeping Foot Locker as a standalone business, Dick's isn't messing with what works, they’re playing the long game: adding $8 billion in revenue, 2,400 stores across 20 countries, and massive negotiating power with brands like Nike. This is how you survive the retail apocalypse - not by pretending you're something you're not, but by getting bigger at what you already do well.
Walmart announcing price hikes as soon as this month confirms what we've all been dreading - tariffs are finally hitting consumer wallets. The most telling part? Despite having 70% of products made in America, they still can't absorb these costs - which means literally no retailer can. Walmart specifically called out unexpected pressure on everyday items like bananas (my dog is devastated) and coffee due to tariffs on countries like Costa Rica - impacts that most consumers haven't even considered yet. Their expectation to still "increase profits faster than sales" tells you everything - they're confident consumers will accept higher prices rather than changing shopping habits. The next few months will reveal exactly how elastic consumer demand really is.
Richard Baker confirming Saks Global will slash up to 600 brands while S&P questions their "ability to service fixed charges" is retail drama at its finest. Their bond prices have crashed to 54 cents on the dollar, and their solution is... creating more private label products and launching a Barneys-themed show on Amazon? Baker's plan to boost "controlled brands" to 20% of sales makes financial sense (better margins), but won't solve their fundamental issue - luxury consumers want the brands they want, not store brands with fancy packaging. The ultimate irony? After years of luxury retailers avoiding Amazon "to protect brand image," Saks is now creating "walled gardens" there out of necessity. How quickly principles change when cash flow gets tight. It’s just one piece of bad news after another and I’m v curious to keep watching this one play out.
The Cowboy Carter ticket situation (prices dropping exponentially from resellers while setting a $55M LA record- what a queeeeen) perfectly illustrates the tension every brand is navigating right now - even the deepest community loyalty (and the Beyhive defines loyalty) eventually hits the wall of consumption fatigue. We're seeing the same pattern across fashion and retail - consumers who enthusiastically bought everything from their favorite brands are now overwhelmed by the constant stream of drops, collaborations, and must-haves. This isn't about pricing strategy; it's about the fundamental limits of what even the most engaged communities can absorb. The lesson for fashion brands isn't about discounting but about understanding that community building and constant selling are increasingly at odds. When even Beyoncé's superfans need to be selective about how they engage with her offerings, every brand needs to reconsider their relationship with their most loyal customers.
Shein leasing a massive 15-hectare warehouse in Vietnam is the latest move in the fast fashion tariff chess match. With Chinese shipments now facing 54% duties while Vietnam still enjoys the "de minimis" exemption for packages under $800, Shein is clearly planning for multiple scenarios. Supply chain experts are literally telling clients the tariff exemption "could be gone completely" soon - and Shein isn't waiting to find out. What's fascinating is they won't admit they're shifting production away from China despite suppliers confirming they're losing orders to Vietnam. Fast fashion's entire business model relies on exploiting trade loopholes - Shein is just better at staying one step ahead of regulators.
Offe market: $1.25M pre seed round led by Bankaust
Doji raised a $14 million seed round led by Thrive Capital with participation from Seven Seven Six Ventures.
Replenysh raised an $8M series A led by M13
Persi closed a 600K pre-seed round, undisclosed investors
Hilos has reportedly closed a 9.7M series A, undisclosed investors (via traxcn)
Simplifyber raises $12M in Series A Funding led by Suzano Ventures
Fairly Made closed a $16.3M Series A led by BNP Paribas' Solar Impulse Venture Fund, GET Fund, ETF Partners, and Frenchfounders.
Markmi raised a €1.1 million seed round from a wide group of fashion and tech investors
Flagship raised a $3.75 million seed funding round led by Coreline and Veridical Ventures, with participation from Tidal Ventures and Macdoch Ventures.
My friends at Vypr raised a $6.4M Series B from YFM Equity Partners
The most valuable retailer in France's fashion capital (arguably in the world) has zero clothing designers, zero manufacturing contracts, zero fashion weeks, and zero markdowns. Vinted just became France's largest clothing retailer, and everyone's rushing to call it a sustainability revolution. I’m not.
This is about economics, not environmentalism. Vinted has figured out what traditional retail refused to acknowledge: inventory is a liability, not an asset. Their 330% profit increase in a down market isn't happening because consumers suddenly care about carbon footprints – it's happening because they've eliminated the fundamental inefficiency in retail.
Think about it: Saks is cutting 600 brands, Burberry is eliminating 1,700 jobs, and LVMH is slashing costs across divisions. Why? Because their entire business model depends on guessing what consumers want months in advance, tying up millions in inventory that might not sell, then discounting whatever doesn't move (shoutout to my friends at
who can help you with this problem!). The RealReal is a behemoth that still can't figure out sustained profitability because their operational inefficiencies all tie back to holding too much product.Traditional retail operates on a brutal equation: design → manufacture → warehouse → distribute → markdown → liquidate. Each step requires capital investment before seeing a single dollar of revenue. The model demands retailers bet millions on preferences seasons in advance, with increasingly narrow windows to recoup that investment before discounting begins.
Vinted bypasses that entire mess by simply connecting people who already own products with people who want them. They're not paying designers, manufacturers, warehouses, or markdown specialists. They're just taking a cut of transactions they facilitate but don't finance.
Second-hand isn't winning because it's virtuous – it's winning because it's smarter. When you can get virtually identical products at 60-70% off just because someone else owned them briefly, paying full retail starts to feel irrational.
I see this on calls all the time - the "sustainability" conversation that's doomed to fail. LinkedIn has to be one of the worst offenders of this as well: When "sustainable" influencers and brands take this holier-than-thou stance where you'll never be green enough, never do enough, never sacrifice enough - why would anyone want to join that movement? It feels like you're fucked no matter how hard you try and like the simplest of well-meaning changes are never enough. The educational cycle feels endless and for what reward?
And please don't misconstrue this as me saying sustainability isn't important – it absolutely is the most vital conversation we can be having in fashion today. But people are self-interested and that’s not breaking news. If you can convince them that by making secondhand their first choice there's something in it for them ($$$! although a livable planet would be nice too), you'll be infinitely more successful than trying to guilt them into taking the moral high ground. Vinted isn't winning a sustainability contest; they're winning the value proposition contest while sustainability comes along for the ride. Make the better choice also the more appealing one, and you won't have to convince anyone of anything.
Meeting consumers where they are isn't just good business - it's the only business that works right now. The luxury market has literally lost 50 million customers in the past few years. People aren't suddenly uninterested in beautiful things; they just can't justify full retail in an economy where everything else costs more too.
Vinted recognized this shift and built an infrastructure that aligns perfectly with how people actually shop: hunting for deals, comparing options across multiple brands in one place, and feeling like they've outsmarted the system. They didn't try to change consumer behavior; they simply created a more efficient platform for behavior that already existed. While fashion brands are busy trying to convince people to shop differently, Vinted is busy meeting people exactly where they are - and simply put, that's why they're winning.
For traditional brands, this creates the nightmare scenario. Every product they create eventually competes with itself on platforms they don't control. Their carefully crafted brand experiences get replaced by peer-to-peer transactions where they receive zero revenue after the initial sale.
The future of retail belongs to whoever creates the most efficient connection between products and people. Vinted understands this perfectly – they're building the infrastructure for a post-ownership economy through their core marketplace while adding payments processing and logistics networks. They're not just facilitating transactions; they're creating an entire ecosystem where products circulate indefinitely.
The trillion-dollar question: if re-commerce platforms increasingly capture value after the first sale, how long before they start influencing what gets produced in the first place?
Quick q before I leave you all- do you like interacting with the substacks you follow on IG? Is it too much info (don’t want to be spread across substack and IG) or do you like chatting in a place you already spend so much time in? Just a little market research for me ;)
I hope you all have the best weekend- I will be in my yard with my MIL a few margaritas deep and I cannot wait.
I’ll see you on Monday!
LYLAS <3
xx
Carly
Ha! I will make sure to pass that love on to the rest of the team :) And we're happy to do this for anyone else who needs it. Any friend in need of Carly's is a friend of ours 🛍
The lattice jelly from Old Navy is really the best - just bought my second pair.