A Toronto nightclub is cracking down on phone thefts
+ Aritzia is acquiring LA-based Fred Segal, The Globe redesigned its website.
Good afternoon everyone.
Not a coincidence: My deadline for today’s edition happens to align with the start time for the battle for gold in women’s figure skating. The only person I know who is as deeply obsessed with the Olympics as I am is Tatum Dooley, which is such a fun way to be.
In today’s edition: Aritzia will acquire Fred Segal as part of its U.S. expansion, a Toronto nightclub is cracking down on phone thieves, and people are finding love in the Toronto Star’s Better Love column.
Reader tip: The listening party for Harry Styles’ new album happened at Rhythm last night. The organizers kept the venue under wraps until the day of, which ended up being Chloe Janicki’s listening room at 141 Bathurst.
Women’s Wear Daily broke that Aritzia is acquiring Fred Segal as part of its U.S. expansion. In 2024, the Segal family shut down its LA flagship store on Melrose Avenue and said it was looking for an operator to revive the brand. I’m looking forward to some analyst commentary on whether this may or may not make sense. Aritzia made its first push for growth outside of its in-house portfolio of brands in 2021, with a $63 million deal for Reigning Champ.
Mark Zuckerberg overruled 18 wellbeing experts to keep beauty filters on Instagram. A case that’s playing out in an LA court will decide whether Meta will suffer legal consequences from claims their products harm young people.
Darryl White, Mike Katchen, and Arlene Dickinson have signed an open letter in support of employee ownership. Jon Shell, chair of Social Capital Partners and Milk Bag reader, confirmed more than thirty business leaders signed a letter in support of extending a $10 million exemption on capital gains taxes from selling a business to an employee ownership trust (which holds interest in a company on behalf of employees) beyond 2026. In 2023, Taylor Scollon and I sat down with Dan Skilleter, who works with Jon, to break down the argument for this arrangement, including an example of a Publix employee that cashed in over $1 million of their stock to retire early.
Three people have found love through the Star’s Better Love column. They do mention they’re all seniors (which is great!) but I think Daniella Atkinson is onto something for a younger audience with her Vancouver singles series.
Dealbodies founder and CEO Krys Lunardo posted a video claiming Salt & Stone copied her creative concepts. These types of claims surface all the time from smaller brands with varying levels of merit (when is something copied vs. inspired vs. purely a coincidence) but you can’t deny that this is a growing problem in the creative brand space and that, yeah, this looks like Dealbodies.
I would watch a Netflix series documenting the year of meetings that go into creating a Super Bowl ad that backfires. That’s the situation Amazon-owned Ring has found itself in after promoting its new surveillance features.
In related news, home security is becoming a premium selling feature of multi-million dollar homes. One entrepreneur told The Wall Street Journal he has “32 casino-grade cameras with AI-powered facial and vehicle recognition capabilities” in his Scottsdale home, an extreme example of the measures that people are taking to protect their home from intruders. In north Toronto, I’ve heard from people who say nearly every house on their block has been broken into at some point, and feel like they have no choice but to install alarms that blare louder than legal limits, or hire private security to monitor their homes.
This made another headline about a return to “dumb homes” funny, though I agree with keeping your phone and home as separate as possible.
Rebel nightclub coordinated a “planned internal effort” to catch two people making away with stolen phones over the weekend. Last summer, a Milk Bag reader suggested I should write a piece about the phone thefts happening at Budweiser Stage (and how little help the venue offers when this happens), but since then professional pickpockets seem to have expanded their coverage to street festivals like the Taste of Little Italy and Do West Fest. Charles Khabouth has had it, and is investing in security and systems to catch thieves.
Please enjoy this delightful feature from the New York Times about maple syrup season. They link a map of the Québec maple syrup producers you can visit and shout out Érabliere Charbonneau, which is just outside Montréal.
Pizzeria Libretto on Ossington is re-opening as Bar Libretto, which it says will have a “late-night energy.” On College Street, Adam Pereira took over and re-opened Vivoli as Osteria Albra with Extreme Home Renovation-speed.
The Globe and Mail’s website redesign sparked some passionate debates in my DMs last night. Out of nearly 100 respondents, 35% said they thought it was ‘good’ and 65% said ‘meh.’ I would note that every media person who is not currently working at The Globe fell into the meh category, with all of us acknowledging that we’re starting from a place of wanting to love it. My own opinion was that it felt inspired by the New York Times homepage, their largest competitor, but their over-reliance on images (the NYT, WSJ, and FT let more of their headlines speak for themselves) and weaker curation make it feel messy, and so it’s difficult to take in. What others had to say:
“I’m over stimulated and yet under-stimulated.”
“Chaos. Like the Substack template, but worse.”
“I expect most people will use the app anyway.”
Very curious to see what Aritzia does with Fred Segal. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the brand revival 👀
So many good nuggets in your newsie (as always). Thanks for your coverage on Aritzia and the iconic Fred Segal, which was my absolute fav place when I was living in SoCal back in the day. Never would've dreamed up that partnership.
Also, so glad you covered what Dealbodies is going through. Something very similar happened to me several years ago, but I didn't have the kahunas to post about it on social. After meeting with the buyer at a celebrity brand (hint: with the initials GP), they launched an almost identical looking product with the same actives about 9 months later.
This was an extremely distressing experience, but I chose to let it go. As they say, there's not much one can really do except remember that imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery. Thinking of you, Krys, if you're reading this.