Good morning from Dieline’s editor-in-chief, Bill McCool. Here’s your daily side serving of design news, short musings, brand stuff, and forgotten ephemera.
Walmart posted its recent sales numbers and reported just a 2.6% rise in sales, apparently their slowest growth in years, which I would just like to add is STILL GROWTH and not, you know, tanking. Be a little more positive, guys. Anywho, it’s a larger reflection of the strain on consumers in a fairly dicey economy.
Kudos to Kingdom & Sparrow. Love the paper wrappers on the Dynamite Valley bottles.
Vine is back! Except now it’s apparently called DiVine, and there’s a strict no-AI rule. Have fun making 6-second videos to your heart’s delight.
Welp, they’re officially putting soy sauce in squeezy bottles now.
Pearlfisher just dropped a report on the future of private label brands, and while I haven’t had a chance to give it a thorough read, they argue that store brands are the new cult brands. Interesting! My only counterargument would be that we’re all poor and it’s only getting worse.
Goldfish now has a gluten-free offering.
Was listening to the latest Express Checkout podcast, and they mentioned (go to minute 11) that the “next wave of coffee is decaf.” Boy howdy, do I have an old Chris Farley SNL sketch for you. My broken crystal ball says probably not, but they do have an interesting point about after-2 p.m. use cases. And if you can nail a decaf that actually tastes good, maybe they’re on to something.
Toodalooooooo.
-Bill