The Debrief | BoF’s Top Stories of 2024

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Background:

As the year comes to a close, BoF’s executive editor Brian Baskin and senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young look back on some of their favourite articles from 2024. The stories include topics that dominated industry conversations throughout the year, as well as some that have had key updates since publication.

The four articles they discuss are “How Nike Ran Off Course” by sports correspondent Daniel-Yaw Miller, Butler-Young’s three-part Black beauty series, “The Fight for Influencer Marketing Dollars Heats Up” by senior news and features editor Diana Pearl and “Inside Luxury’s Italian Sweatshops Problem” by sustainability correspondent Sarah Kent. The conversation wraps up with a set of predictions for what’s to come in 2025.

Key Insights:

• Miller’s “How Nike Ran Off Course” topped the list of key stories from 2024. It was a trying year for the brand, marred by declining sales quarter after quarter. Many pointed to former CEO John Donahoe as the source, with marketing and product feeling stale since he joined in 2020. “This was the year where it really crystallized that there were viable alternatives to Nike in the market,” said Baskin, with competitors encroaching from all sides. Looking ahead, Butler-Young said “Nike is not resting on its laurels” and is doing a lot to try to “turn around a very large ship,” starting with selecting a new CEO, longtime Nike executive Elliott Hill.
• Butler-Young’s series on Black-founded beauty brands included three parts: How to Launch a Black Beauty Brand, How to Scale as a Black Beauty Brand and How to Raise Money as a Black Beauty Brand. The series examined how Black founders like Mielle’s Monique Rodriguez and Danessa Myricks have innovated and found success with their brands in a difficult year. “2024 challenged a lot of Black founders to keep their businesses viable. There’s a lack of funding and investment alongside the high cost of retail partnerships,” said Butler-Young. “Brands started to shutter at a rapid clip this year.” The stories provide readers with key pieces of advice, centering on taking time to grow, not all investment being good investment and the fact that it’s okay to pivot branding, categories and other aspects of the business.
• According to Baskin, this was the year of affiliate marketing becoming “one of the primary ways that a huge swath of the creator economy and fashion media and beauty media made money in 2024 and they’ve become increasingly dependent on it.” In Pearl’s piece, “The Fight for Influencer Marketing Dollars Heats Up,” she explored influencer marketing platform LTK suing ShopMy, a new rival whose key differentiator is giving creators  more data as well as the freedom to work directly with partner brands rather than going via ShopMy. LTK dropped the lawsuit in September, right after making their product more similar to ShopMy, effectively handing “the keys to this market over to the creators,” said Baskin.
• Sarah Kent’s story,  “Inside Luxury’s Italian Sweatshops Problem,” digs into this year’s viral scandal surrounding luxury brands’ labour practices. “It found that luxury brands that manufacture in Italy…routinely turn a blind eye to labour exploitation in their supply chain,” said Butler-Young. “They ignore red flags raised by audits and sustainability teams for the sake of convenience and cost.” Dior in particular faced social media backlash for “the disparity between what people pay for products and then some of the things that happen in the supply chain,” said Butler-Young. Next year, brands will face penalties for failing to comply with new European due diligence regulations.
• Baskin and Butler-Young shared predictions for the industry in 2025. For Butler-Young, ESG and DEI will be key to watch as they “attempt to continue to take shape in a very hostile political environment,” said Butler-Young. Early adopters of DEI who stick with it despite ebbs and flows might benefit by being the most innovative in the space down the line. For Baskin, “My prediction is one of these big struggling brands … is going to successfully pull out of its slump,” he said, pointing to Nike as a potential winner.