B (3:27)

Well, Chloe, don't forget the rooftop pools. So these are private clubs and they're really having a moment. So these are members only spaces for dining, for coworking, for pickleball. Many of them have sports like that. And most of them have gift shops where you can sell things. And they're really popping up everywhere. New York, Los Angeles, London, even mid sized American cities like Lexington, Kentucky, Savannah, Georgia. The Wall Street Journal wrote a recent story about that. Of the mid sized cities or even seeing these private clubs really boom. I mean, honestly, if you've gone on social media in the past few years or looked at a tabloid picture of a celebrity, they're likely in front of one of these clubs like Zero Bond or Casa Cipriani, the Ned. They're really everywhere. And now I think what I found was it's not just people that are trying to get into these clubs. It's consumer brands that are trying to turn these velvet rope spaces into a wholesale channel.

C (4:22)

I remember when Soho House launched and how big of a deal that was, but it seems like there have been just so many more of these high end private clubs launching ever since. Is this a new trend?

B (4:34)

No, it's not new. You know, clubs have been around forever. You know, I think about there's this great line in Gilmore Girls where one of the characters says, you can't leave the Anglo Saxons waiting. They start to form more clubs. So for decades there's been country clubs, there's been university clubs, and some of those older ones have actually struggled financially in recent years. The Princeton Club here in New York actually closed in 2021 during the pandemic, never reopened. And the Soho House, which you mentioned actually has never made money since it launched in the 1990s, but there is this moment where there's more clubs. It's this new generation of clubs that are trying to take the concept in a sleeker, younger direction, less buttoned up, less wasp y.

C (5:15)

But it seems like you made a point in your story that there has been sort of an acceleration of openings of these exclusive clubs. Why is this happening now?

B (5:25)

If you think about it, after the pandemic, there was an explosion of people wanting to get together. And that really has not slowed down. You can see that in consumer spending, people are spending on experiences, not really on things anymore. And that has included a lot of these sort of what we call eatertainment concepts, which is not just a restaurant or a bar, but there's some sort of activity, whether that's pickleball or padel. And so I think clubs fit squarely within that trend. And so at the same time, Chloe, there's some major macro trends that are really driving this. So for the US economy, 2/3 of that is consumer spending. And that's really held up in the face of tariffs, price spikes, a slowing job market. But that's mostly thanks to the upper echelon. So right now, the top 10% of earners in the US actually account for half of all consumer spending, according to Moody's. So, and if you think about it, right now, the stock market is also at record highs, thanks to big tech. So if you're someone who's wealthy, getting your money from investments, you're feeling pretty good right now.

C (6:32)

Well, obviously this is a pretty specific strategy. It seems like these brands are targeting this rarefied group of people with disposable income. Is that kind of the idea that we're getting at here?

B (6:44)

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's interesting because, you know, when I spoke with these founders, I asked, well, what do you get someone who already has everything else, who can buy anything else? And what they said it comes down to is giving them experience, giving them novelty, giving them curation. And so newer brands have really performed well in this space because there's a sort of if, you know, you know, effect where this really wealthy group of people that can buy anything, they love this idea of finding a new brand that isn't just something you could get off the shelf. And this was something that happened when I spoke with David Adelman. So he's the owner of American Harvest Vodka, which is a premium US made vodka brand. He acquired the company 2021. He wanted to revamp it, wanted to rebrand it. And as part of that he was looking at only one bar where he wanted to launch his vodka. And that was Zero Bond, which is really seen as the pinnacle of this private club. Boom. It's very swanky. It's downtown Manhattan. It's attracted, you know, members like Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Elon Musk. It's also a favorite of our outgoing mayor. Eric Adams is always there. And it opened in 2020, in the past five years has just really taken off. And so David Adelman realized that these are the people that I want to get in front of that I want drinking by vodka martinis. And so he pitched the founder of Zero Bond, Scott Sarciano. And it was interesting. Cause Scott told him, not only am I going to put you on the menu because I think the vodka tastes good, I think it'd be good for our martinis. But because no one's heard of it, it's not just a Tito's. It's not a Grey Goose. So his members that are paying for an experience that, you know, are paying like $4,000 a year up to on top of a $5,000 initiation fee, they're paying for an experience in curation. So if he's giving them something they've never heard of, they're gonna think, oh, this is something I can't get anywhere else. And that really became a calling card for American Harvest Vodka. David, the owner, told me that afterwards. That was a big part of their pitch, that endorsement. So when they went into new places, they said, oh, we're on the Zero Bond menu. And now they're in more than a thousand accounts. They're in Whole Foods, they're in Total Wine. They're in some of these other member spaces like Delta Sky Club. They're in high end restaurants like Capital Grill. So it was really successful for them.

C (9:05)

Yeah, obviously it sounds like a gamble that certainly paid off. But I'm wondering about these products themselves. I'm guessing you can't just throw any Kirkland brand vodka onto the shelf of Zero Bond and have it succeed. So what is it about these products? The exclusivity, like, what qualities do they need to have to succeed there?

B (9:21)

You know, Chloe, that would probably be a great social experiment if you just changed a word of, like, the Kirkland Vodka to see if these people in the clubs even knew what Costco was, maybe it would work. But I think that, you know, every founder is gonna say, oh, my brand is exclusive. It's high end. But, you know, when I spoke with the founders who have done this, they pointed out your Demographic you're going after really has to match the clubs. There has to be alignment there. And that was something that really worked with Amundsen Sports. So this is a Norwegian outdoor brand. It's based in Oslo. It launched in 2010 and became really well known in Europe for using natural fibers for outdoor wear. So instead of Gore Tex or polyester, they're using wools and wax, cottons and corduroy and linen. And when they launched into the US seven years ago, they didn't want to go into REI or one of these large outdoor retailers. Their founder, Jorgen Amundsen told me, you know, he called it alternative distribution. And so one of their very first retailers was the Yellowstone Club. So this is this very luxe members only ski resort outside of Big Sky, Montana. It bills itself as the only private ski mountain in the world. You know, membership is capped around 900 people. It reportedly costs, according to Forbes, half a million dollars to join, plus annual dues of $78,000. And that's on top of your multimillion dollar home or condo you have to buy just to get in the door too. And so members are billionaires people, Bill Gates is a member, Mark Zuckerberg, celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel are members. So this is a very exclusive group. But in this gated community, people are skiing, they're hiking, they're going outside. And so there's two stores that have lots of outdoor wear. And Amundsen Sports managed to get their clothes, some of their sweaters, their parkas, their ski pants into these stores. And sales really took off for them. And the company is doing about $40 million globally on an annual basis and about 6 million in the US and so that was a huge growth driver for them. And I spoke with Rebecca Boyd, who is the buyer at the Yellowstone Club. And so they have, you know, a bunch of brands in these two stores that she runs. She's always scouring ski forums, fashion blogs, looking for new brands to stock because she made the good point of look, we have such high end clientele. These are people that can go anywhere in the world. They can afford to shop anywhere in the world. So what they want from me is curation. They want something they can't just buy anywhere else. They want it to feel special. So when you have a Norwegian brand that a bunch of wealthy Americans have never heard of, that's going to be interesting. It's not just Patagonia or North Face or Canada Goose. People want that kind of if, you know, you know, this is the new brand and then become kind of tastemakers and people learn about it. And it was interesting because what Rebecca Boyd told me is she said in the recent years she's actually been inundated with cold emails from founders and from things not just from outdoor brands, from even like high end jewelry companies wanting to get into the Yellowstone Club. And she told me, she was like, look, I get it. I get why people would want to be in front of our members. Like, it's really hard to beat that kind of exposure that they offer.

C (12:42)

Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense why I've never heard of him on Munson before this. I mean, I'm not getting into the Yellowstone Club anytime soon.

B (12:49)

They do have a store down on Mott street, so the mere mortals can go in there. They also have a store in Colorado.

C (12:55)

I'm curious though, aside from sort of like the prestige that I imagine this is conferring to these products just by the very nature of them being there, are there other practical benefits of being in these spaces as well?

B (13:08)

Oh, definitely. And it's very helpful for smaller upstart brands. If you think about it, when I talk to founders that are trying to launch into big national chains, big box stores, your Walmarts, your targets, your Ultas, Sephora's, that's expensive. And some of the most common headaches are I've got to ramp up inventory, I've got to scale my production and my supply chain. If you're trying to launch into one of these small stores that are by design going to be very small in scope, you don't have those same sort of inventory concerns.

C (13:40)

So this kind of sounds like that price over volume strategy we saw exploding post pandemic. To your point, just like these private clubs, what can you kind of tell us about that in relation to this trend that we're seeing?

B (13:52)

Oh, definitely, because that was something we saw from some of the biggest consumer conglomerates after the pandemic when inflation started spiking in 2021. Brands are raising their prices to account for those input costs going up. But then they realized they could actually keep raising their prices even more. Pepsi, a lot of other brands talked about this on their earnings call. And what they realized was, okay, we can drive profits by selling a lot of our products or actually selling fewer products at a much higher price. And this was something David Adelman pointed out to me of the kind of people that are going to be in these members clubs. If you're already paying tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars to belong to These clubs, you don't mind spending money, but what they want is for it not to be rinse and repeat.

C (14:37)

This kind of brings me to a point that you made in your story that we sort of touched on earlier, which was this stat that the top 10% of spenders are spending. I think you said 50% of accounting for 50% of consumer spending. But what about the rest of them? Because I've been reading reports about a bifurcation of spending. So the lower income folks on the other end of the spectrum actually pulling back, of course, as we're experiencing these sort of recessionary fears. So what about them?

B (15:03)

This is a real thing that's happening. And a lot of economists are calling this a K shaped consumer right now. So we're seeing that divergence or that bifurcation like you talked about. So the brands that aren't trying to go into these very exclusive spaces are trying to go super mass appeal and the extreme opposite direction. So that's looking at brands like for this upcoming issue of Best in Business, I profiled Smash Kitchen, which is an organic condiment brand that was founded by Samir Mehta, Sean Kane and Glenn Powell, as we know, Hollywood's big man right now. And what they did was launch directly into Walmart. And their big thing was, look, we are organic, we are all natural. They're kind of tapping into that Maha vibes of no preservatives, no dyes, but it's the exact same price as your Heinz that you're going to see on the shelf. And that's why they've done well and had millions of dollars in sales in their first year because it was on that low price. So I think what's interesting right now is we're not seeing much in between. It's either you're going to say, okay, I'm going to make this a really great price, a really great value, or I'm going to go after the wealthiest people.

C (16:09)

Since you've done so much reporting on some of these brands, you know, taking the exact opposite tack of what we've been spending most of our time today talking about, do you have any pointers for the playbook to pitching to the more mass appeal? I know you've done reporting as well on, you know, cosmetics brands and things getting into like an Ulta, for example. So what's the playbook for pitching a brand like Smash Kitchen, as you mentioned, or another one to a broader, more mass market?

B (16:35)

Well, it's interesting. When you're pitching for mass market, think about how big a Walmart is or a target is. I mean, that is a large group of people you're pitching to. That's going to be very classic pitch deck that you're sending in the same way you might with investors and showing why this is going to be an advantage for them. And I think what's different about people that are trying to pitch to these private clubs is a lot of them are privately owned. They're founder run or family run. So you're not pitching to thousands of people that work at a publicly traded corporation that are thinking about their own stockholders. You're pitching to individuals. And so I think when that happens, it's a pretty different conversation. Clint Pappas, who is the founder of Stateside Vodka and Surfside Vodka, and these are based out of Philadelphia. Stateside is a vodka brand. Surfside is their offshoot. It's a canned iced tea vodka brand that is one of the fastest growing alcohol brands right now in the country. So they're in a bunch of these social clubs in Philadelphia. They're also in a lot of these private clubs that do things like golf, tennis, even cricket was one. And he says anytime he goes into a new market, he's targeting these sort of private clubs. And Clem was saying, you know, when he's talking to these people that own clubs, it's not what he's talking to people when he's trying to get into Walmart, it's not haggling over prices. The most common question that he's getting is what can you do for my members? What can you do special for us that's unique. And so for them, they've kind of learned they have to answer that question. And so they've done things like work with the bartenders and formulate specialty cocktails with their vodka. They've done private tastings for members. They've even like taken their vodka bottles and engraved club logos on them so they could give out for things like holiday gifts. You know, they've shown up with a lot of freebies. Like if they have a golf tournament at a club where they are, they'll show up with driver head covers, with branded towels, with pickleball rackets. And they found that kind of personal touch, which may sound kind of simple, but really goes a long way because what they're selling their members is that experience.

C (18:41)

And I guess I'm imagining too, you know, when it comes to the more rarefied market that we've been talking about and the more mass market that you mentioned earlier, whereas one doesn't really have These sort of challenges in terms of scaling and manufacturing to overcome the other probably has kind of like the opposite approach. So I'm guessing when you're talking to a Walmart or like even an Ulta, you probably have to answer some pretty tough questions about, like, whether you can actually meet the scale that they're looking for.

B (19:11)

Yeah, that's much more about, like, do you have the supply? If you get off the shelf, they want to make sure that there's going to be consistency to restock you, and it's just going to be much more kind of a corporate deck that you're really pitching to them.

C (19:25)

So obviously it sounds like there's some pretty beneficial aspects to pitching to private clubs. The rarefied crowd, the top echelon of spenders, even in terms of manufacturing, not even having to have quite as much stock on hand, not having to scale so rapidly. But are there any arguments against this approach?

B (19:44)

Oh, there's definitely arguments against this. And I spoke with some founders that are actually pretty bearish on this strategy of launching and scaling a brand through private clubs. Bridget Ferdle, who's the founder of Rackaway Soda, which is a boutique soda brand here in New York City, and Oni's Rum, a boutique rum brand here in New York City. Look, she's a lifelong New Yorker, she's a member of some of these clubs herself. But even she told me, I think this is a bubble. There's gonna be a shakeout. There's no way that all these cities can support all of these different clubs. And yes, some of the best ones, maybe the Zero bonds are gonna survive that. But like any bubble, these can't all survive. And I think it was interesting too, because Bridget, this is what she's learned to do, is spot these sort of bubbles coming through because she started her career working at a hedge fund looking for consumer brands to short. So this is what she knows how to look in these hype cycles, things that are overvalued assets. And so she told me, you know, there's going to be a shakeout coming. You can't really depend on this as a channel. And I think one thing that she said that was very smart is like, look, yes, people have made this work, but it's really hard to bet on what club is going to be cool. Would you have known Zero Bond would become zero bond in 2021? That's a. That a lot of people aren't gonna know. But then once you're Zero Bond, once you're that cool place, a lot of people are gonna be knocking on their door. So it's gonna be much harder as a brand to get in there if you don't already have access. And I think, as she pointed out, well, she's like, it's very difficult. You can't manufacture cool, you can't manufacture exclusive. As we talked about earlier, there has to be some of that natural alignment, some of that capturing lightning in a bottle, which is very tricky to do.

C (21:29)

I think that point you made earlier about how Soho House has never made money since the 90s is some pretty solid evidence that this could potentially be a bubble. But Soho House is still kicking, which I think is interesting. I guess I'm curious, in terms of, like, this potential shakeout that's happening, are these some of these more favored places gonna survive because of the interest that they have from these more elite folks? Or is it one of those things where we're just gonna have to wait and see?

B (21:56)

I think we're gonna have to wait and see who survives. But if you think about the business model, look at a. So, I mean, you're essentially running like a glorified restaurant which do not make money. You're not making great margins on food, so you're going to have to make that up in alcohol, in memberships. And one of the things Soho House has run into is as it's wanted to grow and increase memberships, they've had to lower that cost of entry so that more people can afford to join. And then that kind of spirals in a way where suddenly it's like, oh, it's not as cool anymore if that person can get in here. And so I think if you're a club that, like, if there is demand, if there's more people that want to join Casa Cipriani than they allow in, you can make that work. But can the clubs be supported on this level? Do these cities need dozens of these? Probably not. And I feel like one of the things to Bridget's point of at the peak that we've seen is there's this soon to be coming club in the West Village called Kith Ivy that is going to be a padel club, which is kind of like a cross between pickleball and squash. And Emily Sundberg, the author of the Substack Feed Me, reported, it's going to cost $40,000 a year to join this club. And one of their biggest attractions is they're going to have the first Erewhon outside of Los Angeles, but it's going to be part of this private club. So you and me can't go in there and get our smoothies, but the mere mortals actually can order them on Postmates or Uber Eats for delivery.

C (23:22)

Thank you for explaining what that word means because when I was reading your story I was like, I've never heard the word Padel in my life. Which I guess is a good example of why I personally won't be a member.

B (23:33)

This is why you have to join one of these clubs to find out.

C (23:36)

But I guess like, it's interesting what you said about Soho House lowering their costs because it feels like that's certainly eroding their elite status.

B (23:45)

I mean, that's sort of like the difficult thing anytime you have a luxury product is you don't want to lose that luxury feel. You obviously want to sell things, but if it's too widely available, suddenly it's no longer luxury, which is back to that kind of price over volume strategy. You kind of have to decide, is this something I want to sell in a million shelves of Walmart and Ulta and CVS and everywhere someone can walk into off the street, or is this something that I want to sell just a few of and make it very high end?

C (24:14)

It certainly seems like with some of the brands like American Harvest that you mentioned that they did sort of start in scale, which feels like a good kind of like middle ground. I guess my question for you too is if this is a bubble, if we see a collapse in a lot of these elite members only clubs, what happens then to this strategy? Is there still an opportunity for brands who are looking to scale this way to approach this market?

B (24:43)

I mean, I think the interesting thing is there is even if some of these social clubs go away, I do think there's always going to be market for sports clubs. People are always going to be active, they're going to be playing tennis or golf or what is it. So I think that will always be a channel for brands. But then the challenge is it has to align back to a munson. Sports is appealing to an outdoor clientele. So going into a ski mountain makes sense. Something like Surfside, which is a canned iced tea vodka drink that's perfect for the golf course. That's the kind of thing people drink in the summer when it's hot. So it really aligns. But if you're selling something that doesn't really fit in, that this probably isn't going to work for you, well, I.

C (25:23)

Think that's a great place to end it. Thanks for circling back with me, Allie.

B (25:26)

Thanks for talking with me, Chloe.

C (25:27)

We'll be right back with a segment that we're calling Closing the Loop, which is how we'll end each episode of Circling Back. See what we did there? But first, a quick break.

A (25:40)

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C (26:58)

All right, well, we're back and it's time to wrap things up with Closing the Loop. This is where each of us shares a story or trend that we're obsessed with right now, business or otherwise.

B (27:08)

Ali okay, the Wall Street Journal reported this story last week that I'm still obsessed with called why Tech Bros Are Getting Facelifts Now. And so it's not just women anymore getting plastic surgery. Apparently the men of Silicon Valley are very worried about aging out of the workforce or age discrimination. So they're all getting crazy facelifts, neck lifts, eyelid lifts. And it was so funny because I talked with a bunch of these very high end plastic surgeons in LA, in San Francisco, people that are charging $150,000 for these procedures and they've said they've seen a five fold increase over the past five years. So requests for facelifts from men in tech, that's men in tech, have jumped 25% from pre Covid. Eyelid surgeries are up by 50%. And I just think this was such a funny, interesting trend that also had some really real trend lines behind it that a lot of the surgeons were talking about that this is really a phenomenon coming out of COVID We all saw ourselves on screen for the first time and for so much that people got sensitive. And this is also colliding with Ozempic, which has really taken off especially in these kind of higher end places. So maybe you've lost weight with Ozempic and now you want your face you've always dreamed of.

C (28:34)

Wow. I mean, this is an interesting story. I feel like part of me is like, how does that feel, gentlemen? Age discrimination, welcome. But at the same time, it also seems like it's kind of colliding with this, like, longevity story that we've been talking about, like, especially people in tech really fighting just aging in general. And I mean, there's no easier way to do that, as Hollywood has shown us time and time again, than getting a little facelift.

B (28:59)

Oh, definitely. If you're gonna live forever, if you have your blood boy on standby, you need a good face forever.

C (29:06)

I agree.

B (29:08)

So what is it that you've been following? What's the story you're obsessed with right now?

C (29:11)

I wouldn't say I'm exactly obsessed with this story, but this one caught my eye when I was looking around because I did some reporting on it previously and it's that Grokipedia launched, which is Elon Musk's answer to Wikipedia. So at the beginning of the month, Tucker Carlson posted an episode of his podcast that had the Wikipedia co founder Larry Sanger on it. And he has famously been critical of Wikipedia. It was an hour long episode, which I did not watch the entire episode.

B (29:37)

But that's sort of Tucker's thing is very long interviews, very long.

C (29:40)

But there was one part that sort of enraged social media, lots of folks, and it was about this so called blacklist. And it was essentially sources that Wikipedia had said were not trustworthy for one reason or the other. And you know, Carlson was kind of raging because Breitbart was officially blacklisted. Others were considered generally unreliable or deprecated. So it didn't mean that they were entirely blacklisted. So this was kind of like a spin on what was actually going on here. And it's also worth mentioning that there were some left wing, like leaning media organizations that were also considered marginally reliable. So it went both ways. But Elon Musk was one of the people who latched onto this conversation. He was like, all right, it's time. I'm going to launch Grokopedia, powered by, you know, X AI's Grok chatbot. So that actually went live and there's reporting that, you know, there's been racist, transphobic science questioning content on there. And I don't want to like talk about what that stuff is because I don't want to give platform to content of that nature. But I do think it brings up a real concern because people are already sort of getting misinformation and getting disinformation and getting confused by just the platform that social media has given so many people. I feel like Rockipedia is one of these things that could only contribute to more of that.

B (31:00)

And is it just grokopedia.com?

C (31:02)

Yeah, I brought it up. Did you look at it?

B (31:04)

I think what's so interesting about that is, you know, Wikipedia is sort of notoriously difficult for normal people to edit. When I was in college, we did this project for a class of trying to create someone's Wikipedia page. And it's very difficult. If I was gonna create your Wikipedia page, I cannot use you as a source. Oh, it has to be a third party source. So you would need like a book written about you or like, let's say, you know, you were on a podcast like this that could be cited. So it's very tricky. And there's kind of these people that are in this subculture that are very into editing Wikipedia. But it's also funny with Grok because I'm constantly seeing Grok, to its credit, fact checking people like Elon Musk or when you see some of these viral misinformation videos, Grok is saying, actually that was from 2012 and it was in a different country.

C (31:53)

Well, if anyone's gonna write my Wikipedia page, I want it to be you, Ali.

B (31:56)

So do you know, can humans write things for Grokipedia or is it just Grok AI writing it?

C (32:01)

That's something I actually don't know, but we could find out.

B (32:05)

Let me launch our own Grok page for Inc. The business model after this.

C (32:09)

Yes, Circling Back and closing the loop. All right, well, that's it for today's episode. Ali, thank you so much for being with me here today on our first ever episode of Circling Back.

B (32:19)

Thank you for having me. So honored to be the first guest.

C (32:24)

You can find episodes every Monday and Friday on our YouTube channel, so make sure you subscribe and check out some of our other videos. You can hear the audio version on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back on Friday.