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A month after its $1 billion acquisition by E.l.f. Beauty, Hailey Biebers skincare brand Rhode is heading to Sephora. Beginning September 4, the 3-year-old brand will be carried by all of the retailers freestanding stores in the U.S. and Canada as well as on its website. Rhode’s first permanent entry into brick-and-mortar comes on the heels of its explosive growth. The company doubled its consumer base over the past year, driving a total of $212 million in net sales in the 12 months that ended March 31. Rhode has had particular success on TikTok Shop, where it’s sold more than 112,000 units of its hero products, including pocket blushes, lip tints, and a curated edit of skincare items designed to achieve what Bieber frequently describes as a glazed donut look (moisturized and ultra-glossy). Sales were helped, in part, by Biebers social presence. She has 55 million Instagram followers and more than 16 million followers on TikTok. [Photo: Dudi Hasson/courtesy Rhode] Ingredients for success Though some newer celebrity brands have struggled in recent years, Rhode CEO Nick Vlahos credits his company’s success to its responsible approach to launching new products, growing sustainably and maintaining good margins before expanding. Rhode regularly sells out of limited-drop products, and presold its lip glosses to Biebers Instagram followers before they even launched. [Photo: courtesy Rhode] Vlahos, who joined Rhode in February after leading the Honest Company, said that entering brick-and-mortar retail was always part of the plan, especially as Rhode eyes international expansion. The brand will enter Sephora UK later in the fall, and E.l.fs international presence could help with further expansion and distribution globally. Vlahos also highlights how Sephoras digital prowess can help a digitally native brand like Rhode better market to customers in different areas. “Sephora really has the ability from a targeting perspective to better geotarget within their respective marketplace, he says. Priya Venkatesh, Sephoras global chief merchandiser, says Rhodes ingredient-focused approach to marketing could appeal to consumers who are looking to get into skincare but feel daunted by so many options. Rhode is a great invitation into beauty for anyone who’s not feeling comfortable with the current complexity or who finds the category a bit intimidating, she says. Venkatesh notes that Sephora saw 2 million unique searches for Rhode on its own site before the partnership was announced. As a result, the company decided to launch Rhode in all freestanding stores immediately, rather than doing a slow rollout. [Photo: Sean Davidson/courtesy Rhode] Sephora Shelf Life Key to the partnership is translating Rhodes minimalist aesthetic into physical stores. Rhode established its visual identity through striking and surprising ad campaigns that have gone viral on social mediafrom getting singer Tate McRae to model alongside life-size peptide-infused lip pencils to having Babygirl actor Harris Dickinson promote the brands new face mist. This past year, these viral campaigns led to a 367% rise in earned media. [Photo: Sean Davidson/courtesy Rhode] Last year, Rhode brought its visual identity into pop-ups in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, and London. Fans of the brand lined up for hours to purchase products and re-create viral strawberry girl or latte makeup looks popularized by Bieber. Roughly a thousand customers lined up for the brands New York pop-up, and some queued for more than seven hours in the London rain for that event. The pop-ups included design elements from the brands packaging, like rounded corners, monochrome colors, and stark lighting. In a move from Glossiers Sephora playbook, Rhode designed custom shelving and displayssimilar to the ones from its pop-upsthat will help the brand stand out in store. Customers can expect glossy grey buildouts with sleek, soft edges and mirror moments for content. Its what our community knows and expects from Rhode, now brought to life in a retail environment, Bieber said in an emailed statement. Some of the shelves include a large mirror at the center of the products, encouraging customers to take selfies and create content or social mediaa strategy guaranteed to deliver the brand even more viral, earned media.
Category:
E-Commerce
Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes in a modern airliner’s cockpit? While you’re enjoying your in-flight movie, a quiet technological revolution is underway, one that’s not only making flying safer but also reducing air time to help minimize delays and reduce each flights carbon footprint. This advancement is a new application of a long-standing technology known as ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. The new application, called SafeRoute+, is a key component of the ongoing modernization of our air traffic control system. As the vice president and general manager of surveillance at Acron Aviation, my team is responsible for designing and building many of the systems that airlines and air traffic controllers use to track planes. ADS-B is one of the key surveillance components in this effort. My background in electrical engineering and my work on flight decks and surveillance systems means I am deeply involved in understanding how this technology works and how it can be best used to improve every flight. A clear need for such innovations exists today. In 2024 alone, the U.S. recorded 1,474 runway incursionsabout four per daywhere aircraft, vehicles, or people were incorrectly present in protected airport areas. Each of these incidents represents a potential collision averted, highlighting why enhanced flight deck awareness isn’t just beneficialit’s critical. The information revolution in aviation For decades, air traffic controllers (ATC) have helped to prevent collisions between aircraft, expedite and maintain an orderly flow of traffic, and provide advice and information for the conduct of flights. Pilots, in turn, have relied on visual cues, ATC instructions, and onboard navigation and surveillance instruments to fly safely. This dynamic is changing with the widespread adoption of ADS-B technology. ADS-B Out, mandatory for all U.S. aircraft, broadcasts position data to ATC and other planes. It’s the same data that consumer tracking apps like Flightradar24 use. The major step forward, however, is ADS-B In, which allows pilots to receive and display this real-time traffic information directly in the cockpit. This significantly improves their awareness of nearby aircraft, reducing reliance on visual checks and controller updates. While this offers new pilot insight, ATC still plays a crucial role in ensuring overall safety by integrating all surveillance data from various sources to manage the entire system. Technologies like SafeRoute+ are helping to meet a key need expressed by the U.S.s aviation regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Real-world results At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, one of the world’s busiest hubs, tests of this new application of ADS-B technology showed impressive improvements. Each arrival runway could handle four to five additional landings per hour, significantly reducing congestion. Planes equipped with ADS-B In technology reported a 20-second reduction in average flight distance and time on the downwind leg of the approach, saving time and fuel. In addition to this, the spacing between aircraft at the runway could be safely reduced by 12 seconds. Visual safety improvements of approximately 14% were observed, even in poor weather conditions. Perhaps most importantly, throughout the entire testing period, there were zero safety incidents related to aircraft separation. These improvements translate to meaningful benefits for everyone involved in air travel. Passengers experience fewer delays and contribute to a smaller carbon footprint when flying. Airlines benefit from increased operational efficiency, reduced fuel consumption, and more robust flight schedules. Airports can better handle the high traffic levels without the enormous expense of building new runways or terminals, making better use of existing infrastructure. How it works: A new perspective for pilots SafeRoute+ is Acron Aviation’s ADS-B In solution. It provides pilots with a forward-looking traffic view up to 180 nautical miles. This view enables more precise aircraft spacing, safely reducing the separation between aircraft and increasing throughput, particularly in low visibility. SafeRoute+ provides pilots with a suite of tools for proactive decision-making. These tools empower them with a clearer picture of their surroundings, creating a shared understanding between pilots and ATC that leads to safer and more efficient skies. The path forward Solutions like SafeRoute+ are not only available for new aircraft but also for existing fleets through cost-effective retrofits. For this technology to reach its full potential, we need continued regulatory support, investment from airlines, and collaboration among aircraft manufacturers, technology partners, and aviation authorities. The evidence from real-world trials clearly shows that providing pilots with better tools leads to improved system performance and safety. As our skies become increasingly busy, these technological innovations will play a vital role in safely managing growing air travel demand while helping to reduce the environmental impact. The future of aviation is about flying smarter, and ADS-B technology is a key component of this.
Category:
E-Commerce
Recent Nielsen data confirmed what many of us had already begun to sense: Streaming services surpassed broadcast and cable in TV viewership. It’s a streaming world. Broadcast television just lives in it. Nowhere is that more apparent than in sports. Next week, ESPN will launch its first direct-to-consumer app that for $30 a month will offer access to all of the legendary sports networks content and coverage. But another company has already been offering over-the-top sports streaming services to fans since 2006. Austin-based FloSports streams 40,000 live events annually across more than 25 sports, from wrestling to motorsports to cheerleading. In this piece, premium subscribers will learn: How FloSports maximizes the value in the long tail of sports fandom The final 15% rule that fosters the streamers authentic coverage Why Dale Earnhardt Jrs partnership with FloSports is a model for coinvesting to grow a franchise “We try to stay out of areas that are super oversaturated, because it’s expensive and we’re not needed,” FloSports cofounder and CEO Mark Floreani says. “So we’re not competing for the NFL, NBA, and NHL. We focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports. That’s where we can make a real difference.” And real money. After breaking even in 2023, FloSports reached profitability in 2024, doubling revenue over the past two years and tracking to surpass $200 million in 2026. The company has raised $167 million since 2014, including $50 million in a March 2025 round led by the Indian technology company Dream Sports. The Long Tail Theory FloSports launched in 2006 as one of the world’s first direct-to-consumer sports streaming services (ESPN+, which offers access to select programming, didn’t launch until 2018). Its rise wasnt about a grand vision. It was about filling a need. Mark Floreani [Photo: courtesy FloSports] Floreani ran track at Texas. His brother, Martin, wrestled and was plugged into the die-hard wrestling community. That community was frustrated with the lack of coverage and attention paid to the sport they loved. He explored other circles around niche sports and found the same dynamic: frustration due to fragmented coverage, poor production quality, and no dedicated platform for passionate fans. From the beginning, we wanted to build something that we wanted as fans, Mark says. The breakthrough insight came from embracing the long tail theorythat individually small sports markets could collectively represent massive business potential. “The head of the tail is as big as the tail,” he says. “If you can actually create a process you can integrate horizontally across sports and build an authentic experience for the customers, the long tail could be a massive business.” Bootstrapping When Floreani and cofounder Ryan Ponsonby launched the business in 2006, their role model seems to have been less Bill Rasmussen (founder of ESPN) than Matt Foley (the motivational speaker Chris Farley played on SNL). They were living out of a Ford Econoline van, traveling the country to film athletes and coaches in track and wrestling. They posted everything online, and the behind-the-scenes content resonated with passionate fans starved for authentic coverage. The track and wrestling communities also embraced them, offering them meals and places to stay as they traveled. One neighbor even gave them $10,000 when they were about to miss payroll. The traction was there almost instantly. FloSports could drive 100,000 people to their site during major races, a significant achievement for a startup covering niche sports. Advertiser deals came in 2007 with Adidas and Reebok contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, which had FloSports following athletes around the globe and creating sponsored content. The model worked, but had a fundamental flaw: it wasn’t sustainable and was beginning to feel increasingly inauthentic. This led to the decision in 2012 to abandon advertising-driven coverage for direct customer subscriptions, which became FloSportss defining strategic moment. The Hidden Cost of Advertising “We were going off ad revenue, and we started going to places that only our advertisers wanted us to go, which is just not authentic, Floreani says. We realized that if this thing’s gonna work, and we believe in this community and this passion, we just have to ask our customers to pay for us, and then we’re going to try to produce the best content and cover the events that are most meaningful.” The pivot proved to be immediately successful. FloSports launched its first subscription event in November 2012a wrestling tournament that attracted 2,000 paying customers and generated roughly half a million dollars in revenue. “That’s when we knew we could do this,” Floreani says. Today, the company operates on a subscription-first model with over one million active subscribers paying $150 annually for full access to more than 25 FloSports channels. Subscribers who are only interested in following a particular sportsay, Division 1 wrestling or Division 3 lacrosseduring the height of those seasons can pay a slightly higher monthly rate ($29.99) and pause their subscriptions whenever they like. Students and members of participating institutions or conferences qualify for discounts. One channel (FloRacing) costs $39.99 for complete access to more than 1,200 events. While subscriptions drive the bulk of revenue, FloSports has diversified into advertising, software management systems, merchandise, and live events. The majority of its costs go toward sports rights acquisitions and its product and engineering teams. The subscription model, along with these other investments, directly serve their core mission of professionalizing underserved sports and create a virtuous cycle: passionate fans pay for authentic coverage, which funds better production, which attracts more passionate fans. [Photo: courtesy FloSports] Authenticity As the company grew and added more sports, increasing scalability while preserving authentic community connections became the primary focus. To that end, Floreani developed what he calls “the final 15%” approacha business model that standardizes 8085% of operations while customizing the remaining 1520% for sport-specific authenticity. “If we’re not authentic, we’re not gonna win,” he says. This means hiring leaders, which they call general managers, in each sport who understand the nuances that matter to each communitywhat camera angles work best, what graphics and data fans actually want to see, and crucially, what they hate about traditional coverage. [Photo: courtesy FloSports] For instance, they’ve developed AI camera technology specifically for wrestling, recognizing that an event with 50 simultaneous matches requires different solutions than motorsports’ single-focus events. The system launched this summer with 25 AI cameras that provide a viewer experience that looks like a person is manning the camera. The technology uses machine learning engineers who build software that enables virtual panning and zooming from any camera feed. The system automatically follows wrestling action and creates a dramatically improved viewing experience compared to static cameras, all using $90 cameras paired with FloSports’ proprietary software. This allows them to cover more individual matches while minimizing the need for camera operators, maintaining high-quality production while reducing costs. The genius is that the 15% authentically enhances each sport, while the 85% scales horizontally. FloSports leverages shared production trucks, streaming infrastructure, and data platforms that can serve wrestling one night and motorsports the next, spreading costs across 40,000 annual events while each sport gets coverage that feels custom-built for their community. Copartnering: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Most streaming services extract value from existing audiences. FloSports builds new ones. It’s a counterintuitive strategy born from necessity. When you’re serving smaller audiences that ESPN ignores, growing the pie becomes more important than grabbing a bigger slice. “Our mission is to grow our sports every day,” Floreani says. “We realized that if we can make money, our partners can make money, and we can invest in growing these sports.” Take motorsports. FloSports doesn’t just stream Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Late Model Stock Car Series, they write checks to boost prize purses, recently announcing they would host the highest-paying late model stock car race in the country, with $50,000 going to the winner. “Flow comes to us one day and says, ‘Hey, we want to have the biggest, best-paying late model stock race ever,’ Earnhardt Jr. recalls. That’s 100% Flow driven and motivated. They want to compete at that level, and I think it’s good for everybody.” [Photo: courtesy FloSports] The strategy extends to their co-owned High Limit Racing series with 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson. Thursday night’s Joker’s Jackpot at Eldora Speedway featured a $100,000-to-win race, produced by FloSports, and was co-broadcast on FS1 to maximize exposure. FloSports creates co-broadcast deals by pairing their owned content with network programming. For FS1, they combined High Limit Racing with NASCAR racesFloSports handles production while Fox provides broadcast reach, benefiting both parties. The numbers validate the approach. High Limit Racing has reached nearly two million viewers since the start of the year, averaging more than 200,000 viewers monthly. Earnhardt Jr. applauds FloSportss investment in motorsports while crediting the company with reconnecting fragmented racing communities in the process. “If it weren’t for Flow, he says, I really wouldn’t know what was happening at a lot of these racetracks that I’ve been aware of and followed for decades.” It’s ecosystem thinking applied to business strategy. Grow the sport, grow the audience, grow the revenuerepeat. [Photo: courtesy FloSports] The Future Belongs to the Authentic The numbers tell the story of a company hitting its stride. FloSports has become profitable, doubling revenue over the past two years and projecting to exceed $200 million in revenue next year, according to Floreani. The company also recently closed a Series D funding round that brings its total investment to over $100 million. The backing came from Dream Sports, India’s leading sports technology company, signaling global appetite for FloSports’ model of serving passionate, underserved communities. Recent strategic moves reinforce that confidence, including partnerships with the American Hockey League and Wanda Diamond League track and field, along with FloCollege’s expansion to 18 conferences covering 9,000 events, making it the largest streamer for Division II and III sports. FloSports operates over 600 partnerships, each structured differently based on partner needs. Some involve full exclusivity with FloSports handling production, while others accommodate existing local TV deals. Financial arrangements range from zero upfront costs to seven-figure annual deals, with its CAA partnership representing the premium end at seven figures annually. FloSports’ biggest evolution involves creating original content that competitors cannot replicate. High Limits has become the most watched sprint car series in the world in its first year, according to Floreani, beating competitors that have operated for decades. FloSports has also partnered with Fox Sports on “Dirt Season 2,” a five-part documentary series, demonstrating how they create premium content that extends beyond their own platform. “We know from our data what people want to watch,” Floreani says. “Let’s have this wrestler compete against this wrestler. Let’s build it up like it’s a UFC fight or a boxing match. Let’s tell the backstory and really drive the sport forward through those personalities and characters.” And while premium live events remain behind paywalls, significant content appears on social media, through broadcast partners, and on free platforms to grow overall audiences. “We understand that getting these stories out around our sports, around the events and the athletes, is good for the sport,” Floreani says. “And if it’s good for the sport, it’s good for us.” Going Mainstream FloSports is launching on Samsung Smart TVs in September, followed by Vizio and LG later this fall. Combined with existing Roku and Fire TV apps, this will put FloSports on essentially all major US TVs by the end of 2025, with Samsung providing prominent placement on its homepage. Effectively, you wont be able to ignore FloSports even if you try. To combat seasonal sports cycles, FloSports offers subscription pauses of one to six months and cross-promotes between related sports like grappling and wrestling. Its year-round motorsports content also helps retain subscribers during offseasons. For Earnhardt Jr., the impact extends beyond business metrics. “WhatFlo has done is one of the most insanely important things for grassroots and local short track racing,” he says. “There are a lot of people out there who would want to watch our races if they knew how convenient the Flow product is. We just gotta show people where we are and how to get there.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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