Sapna Maheshwari
@sapna
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whatsupna? @nytimes business reporter covering TikTok and emerging media. pun lover, Tar Heel, from CT. tips to [email protected], DM for Signal, WhatsApp.
Joined April 2009
Victoria’s Secret has been under a microscope for its outdated marketing & the L Brands CEO’s Epstein connections. More than 30 people also described an entrenched culture of misogyny, bullying & harassment: w @jbsgreenberg @katierosman @JamesStewartNYT.
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NEW: Forever 21 is filing for bankruptcy tonight. The American mall is transforming quickly and so are the habits & tastes of young consumers. I spoke with the daughter of the founders and its chief restructuring officer:
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it took a pandemic for QR codes to finally have their moment.
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incredibly sad + awful. this doctor in Houston, Dr. Hasan Gokal, apparently found as many eligible people as he could to avoid throwing vaccine doses away in December - and has been treated like a criminal.
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NEW: Victoria's Secret is finally saying goodbye to the Angels. They'll be replaced with a new group of women icons, including the soccer star Megan Rapinoe, in what the brand is calling the VS Collective. It's the start of a major overhaul: w/@VVFriedman.
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every time i see someone update their status on Facebook with a series of contextless airport codes, im like. PLS > STP > THT > SHT.
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Nazi sympathizer profiled by the Times lost his job after angry calls poured into the restaurant that employed his family, says he's moving for safety reasons
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Neiman Marcus has a section called “Your New Normal” in its magazine and I have so many questions for this fictional family, starting with why are you eating Chinese takeout after ordering 30 pizzas?
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Victoria's Secret is pursuing one of the biggest brand turnarounds in recent memory. "When the world was changing, we were too slow to respond,” Martin Waters, Victoria's Secret new CEO, told us. “We needed to stop being about what men want and to be about what women want.”.
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Forever 21 was a huge success for much of its existence. But after the recession, the company basically doubled down on physical space – which we now know was the worst possible time to bet on tons of stores (mall traffic, e-commerce).
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woke up in running clothes. really admire drunk me and her ambitions.
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one NYT Pulitzer winner (@hannahdreier) just accepted her award after giving her 6-week-old infant a kiss; another (@katieengelhart) said she was assigned her winning story while 8 months pregnant. always blown away by the working moms in this building but especially today!.
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this culture was presided over by current L Brands chief executive Les Wexner, 82, and recently departed chief marketing officer, Ed Razek, 71, who oversaw the annual fashion show, according to current & former execs, employees, contractors, models, court filings & other docs.
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The filing will draw a lot of interest bc despite its size, Forever 21 has been private (& secretive) since it was founded by an immigrant couple in the 1980s. It was a true American dream success story. The co emphasized it will keep operating hundreds of stores & its website.
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MUJI, the Japanese retailer w 18 U.S. locations (including one below the NYT office), filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. The restructuring won’t affect the company’s much bigger international operations.
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NEW: women like Simone Biles and Allyson Felix were Nike athletes during the last Olympics. but now, they’re working with smaller sponsors that value them for more than their performance. I spoke with a range of women athletes about this shift:
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These tweets just skim the surface! There’s a ton in here and I hope you read it: Proud to have worked on this with such a talented, brilliant team: @jbsgreenberg @katierosman @JamesStewartNYT @davidenrich & @emilysteel.
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some personal news: just like the economy, i, too, have been experiencing record inflation! i’ll be on parental leave with a little gal starting this week and will return later this year. will still be around and following biz news, though perhaps at stranger hours… 👋
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inbox this a.m.: Gap Inc is sourcing masks, gowns and scrubs from its factory partners for California hospitals, and Canada Goose is reopening 2 manufacturing facilities in Canada to make scrubs and gowns for healthcare workers + patients.
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Employees have struggled to steer VS away from a “porny” image. At a meeting, when one employee asked Mr. Wexner what he thought about the retail industry’s embrace of different body types, he said: “Nobody goes to a plastic surgeon and says, ‘Make me fat,’” as per two attendees.
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Mike Lindell, MyPillow's CEO, told me on Jan. 25: “Dominion threatened to sue me & I said bring it on, I want you to, I 100% want you to. they won’t do it, bc they know all the evidence will come out.” Dominion filed a defamation suit against him today.
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Mr. Razek was the subject of repeated complaints about inappropriate conduct. From our story: “He tried to kiss models. He asked them to sit on his lap. He touched one’s crotch ahead of the 2018 Victoria’s Secret fashion show.”
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I was supposed to get married this weekend to this kickass guy and amazing partner! Feels surreal now. We’ll give it a shot again next year. and until then, I will continue to use the awkward word. FIANCÉ
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So interesting: Rent the Runway is testing Indian formalwear! As of today, there are two lehengas and an anarkali available for rent on the site & could be more eventually. From a brand called Sani:
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my latest! renting everything has become a way of life for a set of young, college-educated urbanites. why buy when you can borrow designer clothes, Crate & Barrel furniture, camping gear, Dyson vacuums & more?
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me before cross-country flights:.- download several movies & shows onto ipad.- save spotify playlists for offline listening.- buy books on kindle.- pack several new yorkers.- copy/paste google doc notes into Word.- end up falling asleep for most of flight.
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NEW: Lululemon is buying Mirror, the buzzy home fitness startup that sells a $1,495 wall-mounted product for streaming workout classes. The $500 million purchase is Lululemon's first acquisition & underscores its goal of being more than an apparel brand:
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Forever 21 saw sales plunge to $3.3 billion last year from $4.4 billion in 2016. It‘s exiting 40 countries and closing up to 178 stores in the U.S., where it’s a huge mall tenant. The gap between the best and worst malls keeps widening.
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i miss crowds so much. i would even go to a PR "media mixer" at a generic new york pub if it was safe.
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end of an era: the Victoria’s Secret fashion show will stop airing on network television, associates were told in a Friday memo. first aired on network TV in 2001 on ABC.
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Gap has now deleted this tweet. A spokesperson told me that it was not a real hoodie for sale.
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as the brand overhauls its marketing, it also plans to lighten up stores, add new mannequins in several sizes & start selling nursing and post-mastectomy bras. VS, which will become its own public co this summer, has a new executive team & is forming a mostly female board.
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one of my best friends finally got a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever after months of trying and it’s so cute that i must share here. welcome this no-name-yet to NYC plz
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NEW: the Gap brand is looking to Kanye West to help revive its fortunes. The retailer struck a 10-year partnership with Kanye & Yeezy, his fashion co, and will introduce a "Yeezy Gap" apparel line for adults and kids in the first half of 2021
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The 5 O'Clock Candidates would be a good indie rock band name.
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ladies: if a guy tells you to "grow a pair" a good response is to say you already have a pair — of hands!— and slap him with each.
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The Markup, an eagerly anticipated news site dedicated to scrutinizing technology and its effects on society, fired its editor-in-chief @JuliaAngwin via email last night. Big surprise for everyone including staff. We'll be updating our story here:
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have we completed the roman, ronan, rogan news cycles yet.
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NEW: A group of Montana creators filed a lawsuit last month challenging the state's TikTok ban. TikTok didn't admit until now that it's actually paying for the case:
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NEW: Nordstrom will open tiny outposts known as "Nordstrom Local" in the West Village and the Upper East Side this September. They won't sell anything but will be hubs for online orders, returns, tailoring & more:
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inbox: a white paper from Pinterest, describing the 4 phases of marketing during the pandemic
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front page today: Amazon and Google have filed patent applications that outline how they could target ads from conversations and “infer mischief” from kids through smart devices listening at home. voice data is just starting its rise:
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for years, Outdoor Voices was a startup/direct-to-consumer darling. but with the exit of its 31-year-old founder last month, its problems have become apparent. they include a rift with Mickey Drexler, $22,000 in candles & a revolving door of execs:
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there’s a $15,000/month SoHo apt that was designed specifically for Instagram influencers to pose in. Read about it - and look at it - here:
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historians say the original sext was 58008 on a calculator upside down.
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The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which first aired on TV in 2001, is leaving network television. It lost two-thirds of its viewership within five years (and attracted a slew of unwanted attention late last year):
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H&M hits pause on buying leather from Brazil as concerns grow about the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
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using the office printer again after 14 months of your home printer
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HOW IS THIS REAL: Google hires camel for desert Street View http://t.co/c71ZiSGM0a
http://t.co/guZWBaHugU.
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The VS Collective, which will expand in coming months, also includes Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Eileen Gu and Paloma Essler & they will alternately advise the brand, develop products and appear in ads (plus a podcast.) The fashion show will return in a new form in 2022.
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Unilever plans to remove the words "fair/fairness, white/whitening & light/lightening" from products. J&J said it will stop selling fairness lines from brands like Neutrogena. This month brings a new reckoning for companies selling skin lightening abroad:
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A source told me that the deal comes with the option to renew after five years. In five years, Gap is hoping that Yeezy Gap will be generating $1 billion in annual sales. For context, the Gap brand brought in $4.6 billion in global revenue last year.
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on a group chat today: “I’ve received what my Gen Z analysts are calling the ‘Arnold Pharma’ – 2 parts Pfizer, 1 part Moderna”.
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whoa: Gap (which also owns Old Navy, Banana Republic, Athleta) said it sold $130 million in face masks in its latest quarter.
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Rite Aid will stop selling e-cigs and vapes in stores after seeing their popularity boom w/teens. wild: the C.D.C. said that btwn 2017 and 2018, tobacco product use jumped 38% among high school students and 29% with middle school students
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with all of these changes, Victoria’s Secret, which once peddled Jessica Rabbit curves to the world, now says it wants to eventually be “the world’s biggest and best advocate for women.” The question: will customers buy it? Read our story: @VVFriedman.
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Lord & Taylor, which started in 1826 on the Lower East Side, is liquidating all of its stores & website after failing to find a buyer. When acquired by Le Tote last yr, L&T had 180 corporate employees and 4000 store-related workers, Le Tote had 250 workers
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INBOX: snack company makes my head hurt with pivot to. “humaning”?
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i went all the way to India to get my wedding dress (aka my bridal lehenga) in December. the craziest thing about this journey is how totally normal it is for Indian-Americans (and the people marrying Indian-Americans.) read about it here!:
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“The revelations may be ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back,’ said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth officer for the Publicis Groupe. ‘Now we know Facebook will do whatever it takes to make money. They have absolutely no morals.’” advertisers sound off:
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it is so hard to remember what you're supposed to watch on Netflix when you're so busy watching America.
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i have a survey to share if you agree to an embargo.following up to see if you agree to the embargo.please agree to the embargo so i can send the survey.well, the embargo lifted so here’s the survey!.any plans to write about the survey.hey just checking in on that survey.
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good morning - successfully spotted New York’s newly famous Mandarin duck at the 59th and 5th pond while running!! ( cc @BirdCentralPark
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home printers have become little more than online return enablement machines.
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Patagonia was one of the first major retailers to temporarily shutter its stores & website in North America on March 13. Its CEO thought it might last a month. Now the brand has lost 50% of its sales & is looking at a transformed landscape. My feature:
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ABC actually kicked off its annual upfront presentation to advertisers this month by joking about Roseanne's Twitter feed and whether she or a top exec wrote her tweets.
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what if the "pain" in "no pain, no gain" refers to bread?.
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Gap's CEO just mentioned its khaki sales spike tied to Steve Kornacki's election coverage on its earnings call (context: .
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a hot San Francisco co is going public this week! no self-driving cars here though – it’s Levi’s, which invented the blue jean in 1873 and now spends its days fighting the yoga pant
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if you're embarrassed to tell people you make tampon commercials but also honest, just say you work on period pieces.
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I got this Summersalt swimsuit catalog yesterday along with a ton of women I know - quite an evolution from the swimsuit catalogs of my youth
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