Sliders, sunblock, a sinister kiss cam, and all the latest brand news

Weekly Exhale

At just four years old, the retro-chic sunscreen brand Vacation has hit $40 million in revenue. The business began as Poolside FM—an 8-bit internet radio station playing summer synth-pop, built by designer Marty Bell. Later joined by two Brooklyn ad guys, Dakota Green and Lach Hall, the trio turned these sunshine vibes into a product. The result? The World’s Best Smelling Sunscreen ™.

It’s made a splash. Vacation’s Classic Whip — a whipped cream can that squirts out SPF in star-shaped mousse dollops — generated over 14 million posts and beauty press praise. It’s a familiar creative trick: Mash two unlikely things together and hit a neural sweet spot between nostalgia and novelty. It’s used a lot as a visual device, but turn those collisions into something shoppable with an actual tilt nozzle, and the algorithm fixates.

As ad guys, whatever they lack in formulation expertise, they make up for with audacity and timing. With Bell calling himself “Executive Pool Boy”, Vacation puts you in a 1987 beach club, with a heady mix of banana, coconut, pool water, and lycra.

Like its forerunner, Liquid Death, Vacation has already been shoved in the faces of every traditional marketer as the new playbook. Build a fantasy world. Use all your fingers and toes to tickle the algorithm. Let the internet do the rest. Vacation sales are forecast to double in 2026.

“Take it to the limit, just for the good times”, as Sonny chirped in Miami Vice, hopping off a speed boat in espadrilles.

But as fate would have it, in the same week Vacation was soaking up its Wall Street Journal coverage, beloved beauty brand Ami Colé announced it would be closing.

Following a heartfelt message on Instagram, the response was swift—and stunned. An existential cry rippled through the beauty world, as fans posted furiously to share the news and mourn what felt like more than just a brand.

The contrast is hard to ignore.

Ami Colé launched the same year as Vacation in 2021, founded by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, ex-L’Oréal, ex-Glossier.

Built from deep product expertise, its approach was a little more grounded than Vacation’s: clean, minimalist skincare for melanin-rich skin. The products, lip oils, tint sticks, are good. Really good. The kind beauty editors use.

And still, it ran out of money.

Despite landing 600 Sephora stores. Despite making Oprah’s list. Despite inclusive brands growing 1.5x faster than less exclusive ones. Ami Colé simply didn’t have enough capital to scale.

That’s the part people don’t talk about. What happens when the early buzz ends and crossing over into the mainstream begins. When founders announce those “pinch me” retail listings, all they’ve won is a ticket to start buying retail media. End-caps and floor space all run into six figures. And good luck landing in anyone’s shopping basket without them. Even Oprah’s list. You pay to play.

Vacation is facing those same costs now. Its next move includes investment with Target, CVS, Costco, billboard buys and even a TV campaign.

The real difference between Vacation and Ami Colé? About $24 million.

Ami Colé raised only $3 million. And only after George Floyd was murdered. Investors who had previously ignored her couldn’t form a queue fast enough. That's a seventh of Vacation's war chest, filled by the likes of Lehrer Hippeau (Warby Parker, Allbirds).

We can talk about product-market fit. Total addressable markets. Founder credibility. Unit economics. But we’d be kidding ourselves.

Like everything else—what we say, wear, vote for, whether a stock goes up or down, or whether an executive caught having an affair at a Coldplay concert gets cancelled or rewarded with a podcast deal–capital is now a slave to the attention economy. Reality is distorted by those who feed, influence and bend the algorithms.

So what are we left with? Whipped-cream sunscreens and inside jokes for the chronically online?

Because Ami Colé didn’t fall behind on product or potential. It was pushed out of frame. And in the attention economy, once you’re out of frame, you’re out of funding.

If you came through the small front door of the nail salon at 118 Oatlands Drive, the answer was always yes. Didn’t matter how busy they were, you were welcome.

Inside this yellow handmade London brick two-up, two-down shopfront, you’d be met by the sweet sting of acrylic powder, pale blue ruffled blinds, soft furnishing, neat rows of varnishes. And just four small desks. At each one sat a technician carefully applying, shaping and perfecting the most immaculate sets of nails you’d ever seen.

The room was flooded with light from the front bay window, but still every desk was armed with an Anglepoise lamp for focused work. Plus, a 1980s Supernova electric nail file, still the gold standard, if you asked my Mom. The salon was called The Nail Machine. It was her shop.

And she couldn’t stand turning people away. So she never did. You know that restaurant feeling when half the tables are empty but the host won’t look up from their iPad before telling you they’re full? My mom HATED that. The place could be fully booked morning through night, her approach never changed: Come in, get comfy, we’ll get to you very soon.

She knew money was hard to come by. She wasn’t about to ask it to come back later.

Upstairs, she ran a miniature product distribution centre. Tips, glues, files. Whatever nail technicians needed, she manufactured and supplied it. In MBA terms, Mom was vertically integrated. Literally. She ran between floors like a one-woman relay, taking orders upstairs, doing nails downstairs.

One time, I remember watching her decant acetone from a huge drum into small bottles, carefully adding three drops of pink food colouring to each.

“Why pink?” I asked. “Because no one else’s is pink,” she replied.

It was my first lesson in branding.

It was also my first work placement. My best friend’s summer job. It even led, through a lucky connection, to my first step in advertising.

Life was no Summer breeze. The Nail Machine started as a single desk in the corner of a luggage shop. And there were many times when it went right back to that.

The crash of ’87 wiped out the yuppie crowd overnight. Trade vanished. Another year, Boots gave her plastic tips a try. Weekends were spent driving store to store, merchandising whatever boxes the store managers had bothered to put out. It drained all the cash in the till and most of what was left in the bank.

And there were the betrayals. Staff, friends even, would poach clients to set up down the street.

Then a moment came. ITV wanted to do a feature on the rise of nail salons. They sent a limousine to pick her up at 5 a.m., and by 9:13 a.m., she was on the sofa with Lorraine Kelly, broadcast to the nation. My school even paused classes so we could gather around the TV and watch her demonstrate a flawless set of French tips.

Everyone talked about it. A few new customers showed up. But they were there for the buzz, not the work. What made The Nail Machine special was the skill. My mum knew the hands, the shapes, the stories. As I was once told: Don’t waste time learning the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade.

Which is why I worry—just a little—for the founders of Vacation, and the investors now pushing them out to sea on lilos pumped with hype. They might surf a wave. But tides turn.

And meantime, perhaps naively, I have hope for Diarrha, who named Ami Colé after her mother. A mother who, like mine, ran a small salon.

“To every Brown girl out there, don’t be afraid to fail out loud. Take it there! Dare to dream big! Learn, dust your self and try again. Pay it forward,” Diarrha wrote beautifully to her audience.

I recognise that energy in the echoes of my late mother’s spirit: fierce, resilient and generous. Though how far the scales were tilted against each of them, I imagine, was different.

Still, the shape of that love, a daughter looking back to honour what her mother built before her, feels identical.

Today, I can still tell a good infill from a bad one. A flattering nail polish from a miss. And when I look at all the things I have, or on the days I dare to call myself a success, I know the truth. I’m only here because of the grit of a woman who kept the lights on and the door always open.

For in her mind, she wasn’t building a business. She was building a ramp. Bit by bit by bit. Over years. Until it rose tall. Steady and high above the ground.

Then she stood back, placed me in front of it, looked me in the eye, and said: Go on. Don’t look back.

And with that blessing, and by the grace of her hard-working hands, all I had to do was walk up it.

Let's rise together with every issue. ♡

Market Moves

That state of Britain | Financial Times

Retail sales boosted in June due to hot weather | BBC

UK-India bilateral deal set to boost trade by billions | CNBC

AI drives new trading highs | Reuters

Brand Beat

Why I’m closing Ami Colé and what’s next | The Cut

Three friends build a fun, multimillion-dollar sunscreen brand | The Wall Street Journal

Influencers can move markets but not for long | mediacat.uk

Kraft Heinz reportedly planning a major corporate breakup | Reuters

Cindy Rose is CEO material—but not for WPP | The Media Leader

Brands hire agencies of record as creator economy matures | Digiday

Hershey recruits collab-loving Wendy’s boss as CEO | The Wall Street Journal

Subway’s CEO Jonathan Fitzpatrick on the future| The Wall Street Journal

Tesla opens retro-futuristic diner as Musk hints at new locations | TechCrunch

Sinister truth at the heart of Coldplay’s kiss cam | The Guardian

Liquid Death expands into low-caffeine energy drinks | The Wall Street Journal

Mastercard shifts from ads to experiential experiences | Marketing Week

Jet2 holiday advert resurfaces as viral joke meme | The Guardian

TikTok global ECD Tom Skinner on 10 advertising questions | The Drum

How Expensify scored prime placement in Brad Pitt’s F1 | Fast Company

Patrón’s new ads mock tequila regulators | The Wall Street Journal

Sleepwear emerges as the latest athleisure trend | Business of Fashion

YouTube vs Netflix: streaming wars narrow to two | The New York Times

Ofcom warns public service TV is endangered by YouTube era | The Guardian

American Eagle bets big on Sydney Sweeney | Marketing Brew

Starting Up

Sydney Sweeney's new $1bn Bezos-backed lingerie brand | Pop Culture Crisis

The one thing Jen Atkin says female founders need | People

15 early-stage Nordic AI startups to watch now | Sifted

Thermondo raises €50M to lower German home heating costs | EU Startups

How founders who ship define real startup speed | Forbes

Tech Tidbits

Open AI needs more money | Wired

How an AI birthday letter blew me away | The Atlantic

Netflix debuts generative AI in new show | New York Times

Epic battle for AI talent between Altman and Zuckerberg | The Wall Street Journal

AI chatbots guide users through psychedelic trips | Wired

Venture Vibes

VC firms aren’t putting as much money into climate tech | Fast Company

Entrepreneurs First CEO Alice Bentinck warns of nationalism in VC | Sifted

Muse Capital backs women’s health and sports ventures | Forbes

Blackstone withdraws from bid for US TikTok stake | Bloomberg

Trustpilot shares soar after raising full-year 2025 guidance | Shares Magazine

Substack raises $100m, becomes unicorn | New York Times

Design Driven

The Row’s £600 sliders: good design or rage bait? | The Guardian

Peek inside George Lucas’s nearly finished Los Angeles museum | Wallpaper

Photography as a wordless diary | It’s Nice That

Happiness

OpenAI investor suffers ChatGPT-linked breakdown | Futurism

The political legacy of Jerry Garcia | New York Times

New show on happiness by makers of “Breaking Bad” | The Independent

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