Retail Brew // Morning Brew // Update

May 26, 2026

It’s Tuesday, and we bring news of a Dior pop-up store in Nanjing, China, that looks like three slices of layer cake topped with cherries and a strawberry. Seems like a complicated architectural feat, but apparently it was—you guessed it—a piece of cake.

In today’s edition:

—Erin Cabrey, Alex Vuocolo, Vidhi Choudhary

MARKETING

All aboard

Banana Boat

Banana Boat, the sunscreen brand whose brightly colored bottles have filled beach bags since its founding in Miami in 1976, is known for its playful and fun persona. But in the last five years, it’s gone quiet.

Over that time, it’s hardly faded from public consciousness—the brand sold 29 million units last year and has 84% brand awareness—but consumers were largely buying the brand “on autopilot” and its retailers were looking for the brand to “find our voice,” Jennifer Campbell, its senior brand manager of strategy, told Retail Brew.

It’s a common pitfall for legacy CPG brands (or as Campbell likes to call them, “iconic brands”) owned by large conglomerates. Banana Boat’s parent is Edgewell Personal Care, whose portfolio also includes Hawaiian Tropic and Schick.

“You’ve been given this tremendous voice and power and knowledge and ability to speak to people because they know you, and we really weren’t doing anything with the voice,” Campbell said.

Now, the slightly sleepy sun care staple is getting back on board with its marketing, introducing its first campaign in five years, “Get Outside Stat,” and debuting a new line of sunscreen it hopes will appeal to consumers even when the weather cools down.

Keep reading here.—EC

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STORES

Going on the offense

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

TJX Companies’s winning streak continued in Q1 with big sales gains across its off-price banners, including TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods. Comparable sales jumped 6% for the quarter, up from 3% in the same quarter of last year.

The secret sauce of this success is a combination of strong demand for off-price goods, and a steady supply of off-price products to keep inventory fresh.

But the company isn’t resting on its laurels. Executives told shareholders the company will be proactive in the coming quarters to gain market share, and called out payroll increases and increased marketing as two pillars of its strategy.

Keep reading here.—AV

E-COMMERCE

Agent to cart

Google

Google is rolling out two new tools in Merchant Center—where retailers upload and manage their product listings so they appear across Google Search, Shopping, and now AI surfaces like Gemini—to help retailers and brands get discovered in AI conversations.

“Conversational attributes” let retailers update their product descriptions to match the more natural, conversational way people search in the AI era. The new tool is now available globally, the company said during its Google Marketing Live event on May 20.

“With this, merchants can now add richer details to their product listings, and with these details, they will be able to get discovered on conversational AI surfaces,” Ashish Gupta, VP and GM of merchant shopping at Google, told reporters on a press call.

Google is also introducing another new feature, the AI Performance Insights tool, which shows brands how they’re performing on Google’s AI surfaces.

Keep reading here.—VC

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SWAPPING SKUS

Today’s top retail reads.

Everslain? Everlane selling to Shein strikes some as “the final death rattle of an era.” (the Wall Street Journal)

Perking up: Drive-through coffee chain 7 Brew is growing with prices that are often cheaper than Starbucks and Dunkin’. (CNN)

Board meeting: Costco parking lots have attracted a new set of wheels: skateboards. (the New York Times)

The secret to supercharging your business? The platform built to power growth.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

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