1800Hotline 021 // Stitch Fix is quietly making a comeback, Pinterest just dropped $4B on AI, and GoodPop put french fries in a popsicle

Hey DTC fam,

Worth paying attention this week.

A brand most people wrote off three years ago just posted numbers that should make the whole industry reconsider what a DTC reset actually looks like. Pinterest made the biggest infrastructure bet in its history. And GoodPop launched a french fry popsicle, which is exactly as good as it sounds.

Also, if you are in New York on June 23, we are hosting Commerce Unfiltered at Shopify NY. Real conversations about what is actually working right now. Link is in the Event Radar below.

Let’s get into it.

But first, take a second to fill out the form. It helps us connect the right people and surface opportunities across the community.

Connect w/ the 1800DTC Community

This edition is presented by Okendo.

This Wednesday, June 17th (yes, tomorrow!) at 11:00 AM ET — get the recipe for loyalty.

The Customer Experience Officer at Terra Kaffe, Cate Marques, and the Okendo team are coming together for a live conversation on how Terra Kaffe has built a loyalty strategy that drives retention, repeat revenue, and long-term brand affinity.

Espresso machines are a high-consideration purchase. You don’t just buy one when window shopping.

Realizing this, Terra Kaffe has built a loyalty engine powered by referrals and customer obsession. Those one-time buyers? They’ve converted them into superfans who come back for coffee, accessories, subscriptions, and more.

Cate will break it all down, sharing:

• How to design a loyalty program for high-consideration, premium products

• How to reward your best customers while remaining authentic

• How loyalty and referrals work together when you’re in a category driven by word-of-mouth

• How to turn post-purchase engagement into a customer feedback loop that fuels retention and growth

Come hear how that has bridged the gap between the big hardware purchases.

Including a live Q&A with Cate, it’ll run around 45 minutes.

☕Register and tune in live for a chance to win the Terra Kaffe Demi Espresso Machine, paired with their premium glassware!

We recommend registering even if you can’t make it! Okendo will send you the recording.

Register Now

From First Brew to Forever: Terra Kaffe’s Recipe for Loyalty

The Loyalty Flywheel Behind Terra Kaffe’s Cult-Like Community

Brand Feature: GoodPop - New French Fry and n’ Cream Pops

Courtesy of GoodPop

GoodPop has been one of the more interesting brands to watch in the better-for-you frozen aisle and this summer they are leaning into exactly what makes the brand work.

The Austin-based brand is launching three diner-inspired pops ahead of summer: the return of its Fudge n’ Vanilla French Fry Pop, now made with real dairy ice cream, and two new additions to its dairy-free n’ Cream line, Peaches n’ Cream and Berries n’ Cream.

The French Fry Pop is one of those ideas that sounds bizarre and turns out to be exactly right. The original version, a collab with Ore-Ida in 2024, sold out within minutes and generated an 800-person waitlist. The updated version taps into the sweet-salty flavor combination that consumers keep reaching for and does it with cleaner ingredients than anything else in the format.

The n’ Cream additions expand one of GoodPop’s strongest lines. Orange n’ Cream is already the top non-dairy item in the lineup and has grown nearly 20% in the natural channel in 2026 alone. Peaches n’ Cream and Berries n’ Cream give the category more room to run heading into peak season.

Available now wherever GoodPop is sold.

Check them out now

What We’re Seeing

• Stitch Fix just posted its fifth consecutive quarter of revenue growth and the highest revenue per client number in company history. Revenue hit $340.3M in Q3, up 4.7% year over year, active clients grew sequentially for the first time in years, and revenue per active client reached a record $578. The story underneath the numbers is about a brand that stopped trying to out-acquire its way back to health and started focusing on what it was actually delivering to the customers already on the platform. More on this in the Big Story.

  ---

• Pinterest just committed $4B to AWS through 2031 to build out its AI-powered visual discovery infrastructure. The largest deal in Pinterest’s history is designed to make search, recommendations, and product discovery faster and more personalized for its 600 million plus monthly users. For brands using Pinterest as a discovery channel, this is a signal worth taking seriously. The platform is making a real bet on becoming an AI-native shopping tool and the brands showing up consistently with clean product data and strong visual content are going to be better positioned when that infrastructure pays off. → Full story

  ---

• Fizzen, a sparkling protein drink co-founded by Kristin Cavallari and built by VO/D, just launched in 1,900 Target stores. Each can packs 8g of protein, collagen, real fruit juice, and B vitamins across four flavors. VO/D has now put two brands into Target in quick succession with Frosh earlier this year and Fizzen this week. The talent venture studio model is producing real retail results and the Cavallari audience is proving it can show up in the checkout aisle. → More

Subscribe now

Big Story: What Stitch Fix's Comeback Actually Teaches DTC Operators About Building Through a Reset

Courtesy of Stitch Fix

A few years ago Stitch Fix was a cautionary tale. The personalized styling service had gone public at a valuation that implied it would own a meaningful slice of apparel retail, then spent several years bleeding clients, burning cash, and being held up as an example of what happens when DTC models scale without the fundamentals underneath them.

This week the company reported its fifth straight quarter of revenue growth. Record revenue per client. Client retention at a four-year high. The stock moved up on the news.

What actually happened? The brand did not reinvent itself with a flashy new strategy or raise a massive round to buy its way back. It did something harder and more boring: it fixed the product experience, got serious about which customers were actually staying and why, and built around that rather than chasing the growth it had lost. The results show up in the metrics that matter most. Gross margin at 43.7%. $229M in cash. Zero debt. Full-year EBITDA guidance raised.

The part worth sitting with for operators: the instinct when a business starts struggling is almost always to go get more customers. New acquisition campaigns, new channels, new incentives to bring people in. Stitch Fix did the opposite. It focused on the customers who were already there and asked whether the product was actually earning their continued engagement. Retention hit a four-year high not from a loyalty play. From the product getting better.

That is a real lesson. Not every business can or should follow the same path. But the underlying principle, that customer quality compounds differently than customer quantity, applies almost everywhere.

Read the full story here

Quick Hits

Courtesy of Remedy, Suja Life, Diamond Brew, and Magic Spoon

REMEDY, the dermatologist-founded skincare brand built by Dr. Muneeb Shah, just raised a Series A led by L Catterton.

Norwest and Sonoma Brands Capital also participated. Launched in early 2024, hit Target nationwide by December 2025, and is tracking toward $50M in sales this year. Dr. Shah spent years building one of the most credible medical voices on social media before the brand existed, proved the demand was there, and is now scaling with serious institutional capital behind it. L Catterton moving this early on a brand this young is a meaningful signal.

Suja Life just reported its first full quarter as a public company and the results were strong.

Net sales reached $107.1M, gross margin topped 50%, and the business moved decisively into profitability after posting a loss in the same period a year ago. Volume growth, new distribution gains, and sharper retail execution drove the performance. A functional beverage brand delivering 50%+ gross margins in its first quarter as a public company sets a bar worth paying attention to across the category.

Diamond Brew, a Chicago-based craft instant coffee brand, just closed a seven-figure pre-seed round.

Backed by G/7 Venture Studio alongside Beckett Industries and a handful of individual investors, the brand was founded by Springdale Ventures alum Douglas Yu in late 2024. The instant coffee category has been getting genuine innovation attention over the last two years and Diamond Brew is positioning itself at the craft end of that market. Early stage but a founder pedigree and backer profile worth keeping an eye on.

Magic Spoon just entered the oatmeal aisle and it is exactly what you would expect from the brand: serious macros in a format the category has not innovated in years.

The new Protein Oatmeal line delivers 15g of protein, 6g of fiber, and 1g of sugar per serving across three flavors, Maple Brown Sugar, Apple Cinnamon, and Banana Bread. Made with gluten-free oats, chia seeds, and flax seeds. Hits stores June 11. Magic Spoon has been expanding methodically beyond cereal and oatmeal is an obvious next move for a brand that already owns the morning routine for a lot of its customers.

Subscribe now

Event Roundup

RSVP — Founder’s Basketball - New Edition | June 17 | King’s County, NY | 8 - 10 PM EDT

RSVP — Operator’s Happy Hour | June 22 | Brooklyn, NY | 6 - 9 PM EDT

RSVP — Commerce Unfiltered | June 23 | New York, NY | 6 - 8:30 PM EDT

RSVP — Earn Your Bite | June 28 | New York, NY | 7:30 - 10 AM EDT

RSVP — Commerce After Dark | June 29 | New York, NY | 8 PM - 12 AM EDT

RSVP — Ecomm Coffee Collective: Fancy Food Edition | June 30 | New York, NY | 9 AM- 12 PM EDT

That is Signals for Issue 021.

Stitch Fix just posted a record revenue per client number after years of being written off. What is the turnaround story in your category that nobody is talking about yet? Hit reply.

See you Thursday.

— Zach and the 1800Hotline Team

Find a partner, tool, or agency: 1800DTC.com

Become a sponsor: Partner with us

Get connected with our partners: Brand Form