Eager Brides & A Chic Upstate NY Inn

An $83.5 billion industry and The Six Bells

Author

Sammi Cohen
June 07, 2024

Articles of the Week

Two twenty-somethings just teamed up to start Frich, which stands for “effing rich.” It’s a social financial community for Gen Z that allows them to ask questions anonymously in order to get a better understanding of how others their age are doing financially. They’ve just raised $2.8 million in a seed funding round.

A new national stock exchange, based in Dallas, and backed by Wall Street heavyweights like BlackRock and Citadel, is looking to take on the world-famous New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The newly formed TXSE Group announced its plans to file for registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission later this year. The group is backed by more than two dozen investors with $120 million in funding.

New data from Beverage Digest shows Dr Pepper has surpassed Pepsi as the nation’s second-favorite soda brand, capturing 8.3% of the market to narrowly edge out its larger competitor. (Coca-Cola has a firm lead with a 19.2% market share.)

Over the past year, YouTube’s been looking to make its platform a little more social, through the expansion of Community Posts, which enable channel managers to post text updates that are displayed in the “Community” tab on their channel, as well as in subscriber feeds. And now, YouTube’s expanding Community Posts once again, with all channels set to be able to share social-like updates in the app.

Audrey Gelman, the founder who created The Wing, has announced that she will be opening a hotel (as an evolution from her homewares store that she opened in 2022 called Six Bells). The Six Bells hotel will open next spring in Rosendale, New York. Gelman has secured a historic building that will feature 11 rooms, a café, and (duh) a store where you can buy all the stuff in your room. Rooms will start at $400 a night, which is cheaper than some of the quilts you can buy at the store.

When James and Alexa Hirschfeld started Paperless Post 15 years ago, some saw its digital invitations as a fad. Instead, they have become a fixture of events and have spawned imitators. Since then the company has sent some 650 million invitations, according to its own metrics, has grown to employ a full-time staff of 110 people.

Mr. Beast: The YouTube Phenomenon

Chartr: Mr. Beast

Mr. Beast, aka 26-year-old Jimmy Donaldson, broke YouTube’s record to become the platform’s most-subscribed-to channel last weekend. This Chartr article covers Mr. Beast’s meteoric rise to become YouTube’s most valuable creator. He’s built a sprawling business empire over the past few years, ranging from Feastables to merch to a (failed) cloud kitchen business. Mr. Beast is a creator who has transcended beyond the platform that gave him his initial success (YouTube) and he’s now a standalone figure in his own right.

Deep Dive: The Wedding Industry Craze

As someone who got married this past January, this is a topic near and dear to my heart… And the data is in: Millennial and Gen-Z brides-to-be are no longer shopping for a single wedding dress, but an entire wedding wardrobe for pre- and post-wedding events (i.e.: rehearsal dinner, morning-of, after-party, post-wedding day brunch). That breadth is propelling the global bridal wear market, which is projected to grow at a rate of 3.5 percent annually and is expected to reach $83.5 billion by 2030, according to the Global Bridal Wear Market Industry report.

Not only are the upcoming brides searching for this content, but it seems as though more people than ever are hungrier than ever for #weddingcore content. Not surprisingly, weddings have become one of the most popular verticals for Vogue, representing 25 percent of their online traffic during certain summer months (wedding season).

Retailers ranging from Revolve to Net-a-Porter have created bridal edits, capsule collections or custom wedding outfits to appeal to the brides who are optimizing their looks for their big day. Last year, this article in the Wall Street Journal was my “ah-ha” moment that the desire for multiple wedding looks had hit the mainstream. There is now a whole sub-industry of potential careers for people who are dedicated to helping brides, including bridal stylists and content creators.

I don’t see this trend going away anywhere soon, but I think that the macro-changes to the wedding industry include dramatic cuts to the guest list (cue the micro-wedding). Last year, I created this video about the rise of the microwedding, which I attribute primarily due to the increased cost of weddings in the US. I think we’ll also continue to see the rise of destination weddings, the majority of which are microweddings as well.

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