☕ Need a hero?

A growth strategy. August 25, 2026 View Online | Sign Up | Shop Presented By It’s Tuesday. Changing pricing models can be dangerous ground for businesses. The latest company to change tack is Airbnb. It’s moving US hosts to a new fee system, where they’ll pay a single service fee of 15.5%. There’s a September 15 deadline to adjust prices—we’ll be watching with interest. In today’s edition: Hero strategy Finding the value Staying the course —Layla Ichi, Patrick Kulp, Jeena Sharma REVENUE STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP Unsung hero Getty Images In an era of fast fashion and microtrends, sticking to what you know can be a risky strategy for some fashion brands. For luxury sleepwear label Petite Plume, focusing on a hero product has proven successful. Launched in 2015 by founder and CEO Emily Hikade, a former CIA counterterrorism agent of 15 years, Petite Plume has been profitable since the start and hasn’t taken on any outside investment. Hikade said the rise of athleisure and loungewear—bolstered by the Covid pandemic—has helped create steady growth for the brand, as has Petite Plume’s bridal collections and hospitality partnerships. It’s on track to hit $100 million in revenue this year, according to Hikade. Hero strategy Hikade credits the brand’s growth to its hero product strategy, an approach where a company focuses its marketing and design efforts on a best-selling item. The founder recognized the value of the strategy after the success of the brand’s Olivia pajamas style. This was reinforced by her conversations with other founders, some who said their hero products made up 30% of sales. To promote customer retention through the hero product strategy, Petite Plume regularly releases Olivia pajamas in different fabrics and prints—especially ones anchored to various holidays or seasons. “We’ve been really driving into customer acquisition and performance marketing,” Hikade said. “I always tell my team we need to make sure our stallions are able to run at full speed, so we tried to edit our SKU count and amplify our depth.” Read how a hero product strategy can help establish a customer base.—LI        Sponsored By PwC The next phase of AI: Accountability At this point in AI’s journey, enterprise leaders are looking at their watches. Translation: It’s time for results. The truth is, expectations are rising but results are uneven. PwC shares that nearly half of organizations are seeing measurable gains from AI, while an equal chunk are struggling to unlock value. The difference between the successful cases and the laggers? Strategy. Early wins can create confidence, but they don’t always translate into sustained performance. That’s where PwC can help. What can emerge is a more disciplined approach—one that connects AI across the enterprise. When data, workflows, and decisions operate symbiotically, AI becomes part of how the business runs. Cut through the AI noise with a clear, outcome-focused approach to AI so you can turn this investment into measurable business results. Start with PwC. REVENUE OPERATIONS Valuing AI J.R. Storment Whether token-maxxing or token-scrimping, it seems everyone in the industry would like clarity on what exactly a token is worth. Companies like JPMorganChase, Accenture, Oracle, SAP, IBM, and many others have signed onto Linux Foundation’s new effort to create standards and best practices around assessing the cost and value of AI. The Tokenomics Foundation’s debut comes after months of evolving business attitudes toward AI spending. Many companies were previously shelling out with abandon to spur adoption. But extravagant token bills have prompted more prudence. One problem, though, in the words of Tokenomics Foundation Executive Director J.R. Storment, is that “a token is not a token is not a token.” It’s difficult to pin down the value of a token—which technically means a discrete unit of data processed by AI—across different tasks and models. We spoke with Storment about how his experience heading up the similar cloud spending-focused FinOps Foundation prepared him for this role, how to plan an AI budget, and whether tokenomics is a long-term job in most companies. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Coming from the FinOps Foundation, what kind of lessons did you learnin terms of how you approach this? How is AI different? A lot of lessons. First of all, we found that in order to make this work, and we did this for FinOps for six or seven years…you’ve got to get a broad coalition of different players involved. You’ve got to get the suppliers of the technology, you’ve got to get the consumers of the technology, you’ve got to get all the people in the middle, the consultants and [system integrators] and the resellers, and the platforms, the software technology providers who are managing it, and involve them all in a conversation. Read on for whether there’s a timeline to enact these AI standards.—PK        Sponsored By Celigo Don’t wait ’til it breaks. A slow checkout or wrong stock count during peak season doesn’t just frustrate customers; it can send them to a competitor. Our latest article with Celigo breaks down how top brands protect revenue and loyalty by stress-testing infrastructure before Q4 hits. Read it here. STORES Staying the course Cole Haan After being in business for about a 100 years, Cole Haan is looking to more than heritage to stay relevant with consumers today.The footwear brand is focused on refreshing everything from its branding to its product assortment, while expanding beyond shoes into apparel and lifestyle categories. “We’ve been hard at work just looking at what the roadmap looks like leading up toward our 100 years,” Jeanine Farucci, VP of global brand marketing at Cole Haan, told Retail Brew. “When we look back on what we’ve built over the last 100 years, that’s very important. But it’s really the look forward that’s keeping us in the game.” The strategy comes as footwear retailers are faced with a consumer that has become increasingly value conscious amid years of inflation and economic uncertainty. Per Circana, while US footwear sales have largely stabilized following the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, shoppers remain selective, prioritizingquality, versatility, and products that can serve multiple purposes over trend-driven purchases. Cole Haan, long known for dress shoes, says sneakers now account for nearly 40% of its global business, as consumers dress for work and everyday life. “We’ve been looking at our product assortment and really designing and reshifting for how the customer’s life is continuously evolving,” Farucci said. “Even back when we pioneered the hybrid dress shoe, [it] was really in pursuit of eliminating trade-offs between style and performance.” This is in line with the company’s product innovation efforts, wherein instead of relying on flashy technology, it is looking to what Farucci describes as “invisible innovation”—features consumers may not notice immediately but experience throughout the day. Read about Cole Haan’s plans to become more of a lifestyle brand.—JS        active pipeline Stat: $10.2 billion. That’s the size of Alibaba’s placement of newly issued shares to non-US investors; the proceeds will be used to fund its AI push. (CNBC) Quote: “Our multiyear growth in e-commerce is evidence that customers are choosing Walmart because we deliver price, speed, and convenience across a broad assortment.”—Walmart President and CEO John Furner on its fiscal second quarter (Fox Business) Read: OpenAI’s chief economist says this is what it takes to work on his team at the ChatGPT maker. (Business Insider) Account for accountability: Are you seeing returns from your AI integrations? Strategy makes all the difference. PwC helps connect AI across your enterprise so it becomes a part of how your business runs, not another layered tool.* *A message from our sponsor. The frontier race upset (Tech Brew) TL;DR: Anthropic—not long ago seen as the underdog—has switched places with OpenAI on two fronts this week: revenue and safety. It goes to show how quickly the tides can turn in the AI race. What do Spotify and Depop have in common? A love for secondhand fashion (Retail Brew) Secondhand fashion may be going mainstream, but Depop is betting that music can give shoppers another reason to dig through someone else’s closet, especially when that closet belongs to an artist they love. This CFO helps companies grow and head for an exit (CFO Brew) Brian Barnum has a track record of helping numerous companies “realize their value potential,” which usually led to exits, including sales to strategic buyers or an IPO, and then “the excitement of moving on to something new and meeting new people.” Share the Brew Share the Brew, watch your referral count climb, and unlock brag-worthy swag. Your friends get smarter. You get rewarded. Win-win. Your referral count: 0 Click to Share Or copy & paste your referral link to others: revenuebrew.com/r/?kid=953893c8 Written by Layla Ilchi, Patrick Kulp, and Jeena Sharma Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. Get smarter in just 5 minutes Business News: Morning Brew Tech & AI News: Tech Brew Markets News: Brew Markets Real Estate News: The Playbook Money & Career: Bossy Take The Brew to work Marketing Brew CFO Brew HR Brew IT Brew Retail Brew Healthcare Brew Founder Brew Interested in podcasts? Check out ours here. ADVERTISE//CAREERS//SHOP//FAQ Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here. View our privacy policy here. Copyright © 2026 Morning Brew Inc. All rights reserved. 22 W 19th St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10011