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Dick's Foot Fetish, Church Gets a Handy (...Sanitizer)

... Just Another Week in Retail
May 16, 2025
(Left-to-Right) Phillip and Brian of Future Commerce join Brian Cano of True Classic to discuss AI Agents and scaling culture and commerce into a 100-year brand.

Welcome to Friday, futurists. 

Our 2025 predictions hit hard this week as the Gen Xers conjure up Cold War-era negotiations in Geneva, and the CPG space continues to agglomerate.

But the real stories are how Silicon Valley keeps reinventing nostalgia, but worse! 🔄 This week Netflix reinvented cable TV ads, but with worse UI, dark patterns, and password-sharing paranoia. 📺 Uber reinvented the bus with scheduled, predetermined routes between fixed points (INNOVATION! 🏆).

And Brian Chesky "reinvented" 3D isometric icons in his Airbnb reboot, which has become a new Ghibli-style trend. 🍄 Someone please send this man a time machine back to Windows XP clipart.

🔮This week Future Commerce ventured to Los Angeles to greet members and partners of the Future Commerce Plus community and the broader ecosystem across a number of events: from our main stage session at The Whalies to a (███redacted████) visit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and to host Salon Twenty Eight at Santa Monica’s Rustic Canyon. 

Pictured: Sarah Stuart, Chief People Officer, Glossier, speaking at FC Salon Twenty Eight

In addition to executives and leaders from Glossier, AG Jeans, Johnny WAS, The Wonderful Company, Apple, Square Enix, Beyond Yoga, Authentic Brands Group, and Sonos, we were accompanied by brilliant ideas, challenging discourse, and a healthy pour of wines vinted in 2007, 1996, 1960/1860

Our next Salon will take place in NYC during The Lead Summit. Want to attend? Join Future Commerce Plus, and drop us a line. 

— Phillip

Image: FC Prompt Factory

Netflix & Shill. Netflix is weaponizing your bathroom breaks with a new AI-powered ad format that ambushes viewers when they hit pause. During this week's Upfront (television's annual ritual sacrifice to the gods of commerce) advertisers drooled over demos showing their products uncomfortably nestled within Stranger Things and Bridgerton universes. 

In addition to ads during pause screens, they can now also be stealthily embedded within the background of shows as they’re playing. :shudder:

With 94 million monthly users on their "cheaper" ad-supported tier, Netflix has realized the real treasure isn't your subscription fee, but your eyeballs.

A look inside the Foot Locker Home Court store in New York City. Image: Foot Locker

Dick’s Plays Ball. One week after Skechers shocked Wall Street with a (surprisingly high) $9.42 billion acquisition deal from 3G Capital, Dick’s Sporting Goods is saying “hold my Gatorade” and purchasing Foot Locker for $2.4 billion. Experts note that this is an obvious move for Dick’s Sporting Goods to reaffirm its role as a core tenant in the new shopping mall experience. However, it also could be a play to keep customer mind and wallet share as “premium disruptors” continue to rise up the ranks. HOKA and On alone are major magnets for the retailer, but they’re also investing heavily in their own brick-and-mortar expansions.

Our Take: While Foot Locker is undoubtedly the smaller player of the two, the brand has history, especially in the context of the category. In many ways, it is still a beloved institution that has strong ties to pillar moments of consumers’ lives (think back-to-school). The retailer also has focused extensively on rolling out smaller-format stores and more community-driven formats as part of its “Lace Up” transformation plan, which was unveiled in 2023 but has recently started to gain traction

Foot Locker’s pivot towards more experiential approaches to brick-and-mortar aligns with Dick’s House of Sport and Field House stores, which lean heavily into the tactile nature of shopping, especially for a new pair of running sneakers or a new baseball bat.

Image: Touchland

Purell, But Make it Fashion. Church & Dwight is betting the farm on fancy hand sanitizer, acquiring Touchland for an eye-watering $880 million—$700 million in cash and Church & Dwight stock, plus another $180 million if Touchland reaches its net sales goals. Andrea Lisbona and Ruggero Grammatico founded 2018, transforming a somewhat dull and established product category (hand sanitizers) into a luxurious self-care purchase. 

After riding the demand wave sparked by pandemic panic, Touchland continued to build out its product mix to include more brightly colored hand sanitizers, body and hair fragrance mists, and color-coordinated cases. Thanks to the influence of #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, the brand has become a fixture in Gen Z and Alpha culture, and “already has a high level of brand loyalty and repeat purchases in line with category leaders,” Church & Dwight CEO Rick Dierker said in a statement. 

Founded in 2018, Touchland turned "please don't give me norovirus" into "this sanitizer matches my outfit!”—surviving beyond pandemic paranoia by transforming into Gen Z status symbols. The brand's rainbow-hued dispensers and K-pop collaborations proved that even germ-killing ethanol can become a pick-me girl essential when packaged correctly.

Yogurt Daddy Buys the Farm. Chobani, not content with dominating your breakfast routine, is swallowing up frozen food startup Daily Harvest for an undisclosed sum that probably has several commas. Daily Harvest, still crawling back from the Great Lentil Crumble Disaster of 2022 (ah, memories!), has been frantically establishing retail partnerships with anyone who'll have them.

This acquisition is just another step in Chobani's quest for grocery store omnipresence, following their $900 million La Colombe coffee conquest and launch of coffee creamers that taste suspiciously like their yogurt flavors. "Diversification," CFO Tarkan Gürkan (presumably) whispers to himself in the mirror each morning.

Image: KITH

The Cronut Goes Metro. KITH, purveyor of $200 hoodies to people who only listen to vinyl, is partnering with Dominique Ansel Bakery for the Cronut's 12th birthday with a limited-edition "Metropolitan" flavor. KITH Treats has also created a limited-edition ice cream special that infuses the flavor.

Both will be sold at all KITH Treats locations across the US as the brand celebrates the reopening of its Manhattan flagship, which will carry KITH’s in-house and multi-brand ready-to-wear apparel, accessories, and footwear for men. Also waiting in the wings? The much-awaited ABZORB 2010 collaboration, which will be sold exclusively in-store. Nostalgia: it's what's for breakfast.

Pixels to Products. Roblox is giving brands and eligible creators the power to create digital shopping spaces where players can purchase physical goods. IRL products can be bundled with digital items via Roblox Commerce APIs with Shopify, the gaming company’s first integration partner. 

Fenty is one of the first brands to test the new features with a new shoppable game that offers a new shade of its Gloss Bomb Universal Lip Luminizer— something that currently isn’t available in stores or on its branded eCom site. The Weeknd is testing how these in-game experiences can adapt to the global live music industry by launching a worldbuilding experience that offers an exclusive shoppable ticket bundle for his film, “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” and a limited-edition digital item.  

For the full anthropological study of brands desperately trying to seem relevant to 12-year-olds, check out Future Commerce's Roblox Brand Activation Hub – where we document corporate attempts to use the word "sus" correctly.



🔮
Every day, 97.8 million users visit Roblox to play, discover, and express themselves. In a 2023 survey of more than 1,500 Gen Z users, the company found that 56% say virtual styling is more important to them than styling themselves in the physical world. Other research has pointed to gamers using platforms like Roblox to express themselves in a freer and more authentic way. 

With Roblox Commerce APIs, brands and eligible creators can close this expression gap, making it possible for consumers to turn their digital identities into physical manifestations. The company indicates that this move will make the online shopping experience far more social and exciting than what traditional eCommerce sites provide, which is why brands increasingly need to take notes on which brands are launching their own Roblox experiences, why, and how. 

Roblox’s growing role in both culture and commerce is why the Future Commerce team launched our own activation tracker back in 2022, and continue to update it regularly with the latest campaigns and experiences.

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