Pashion Footwear, which sells flats that convert to high heels and vice versa, is known for its versatility, and founder and CEO Haley Pavone is used to navigating pivots beyond twist-off heels. As a first-time business owner, she’s faced everything from Covid supply-chain disruptions to threats of a ban on TikTok, which the brand leverages to reach new customers.

But because its products are manufactured in China and warehoused in Canada, tariffs present a new, considerable challenge for the brand. A loophole known as the de minimis exemption is set to be suspended for shipments of goods from China and Hong Kong tomorrow, meaning imports worth up to $800 will no longer be exempted from taxes and duties—a change that is expected to have a considerable effect on items shipped to the US.

“We’ve really been able to just be scrappy and resourceful and pivot in order to meet every single obstacle that’s been thrown our way,” Pavone said. “This basically stands to gut our entire business overnight.”

The difficult reality inspired Pavone to speak out. A TikTok video she posted in April about the impact of tariffs on small businesses went viral, with 4.5 million views and more than half a million likes, and a repost from Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban that got an additional 3.4 million views on X. Pavone, who turned down a deal on Shark Tank in 2021, has continued to post alongside a growing vocal group of small-business owners, including Jing Gao, founder and CEO of Chinese-food company Fly by Jing; Chitra Agrawal, founder of Indian American food brand Brooklyn Delhi; and Emily Ley, founder of stationery brand Simplified. Some of these founders are taking additional action: Ley, for instance, is suing the Trump administration, alleging that the use of emergency powers to enact tariffs is illegal.

The stakes for Pashion, which employs a US-based team of 12, most of whom are women, are high.

“We run a global supply chain, as do most D2C businesses coming up in this generation,” Pavone said. “It’s what the world’s economy has been set up to do.”

Continue reading here.—KH

Earlier this month, Best Buy rolled out a new creator program called Best Buy Creator that allows participants to create virtual storefronts featuring products from the electronics retailer and earn money from sales made through those storefronts.

Around the same time that the new program rolled out, though, Best Buy’s long-standing affiliate program hit some bumps in the road. Last month, the retailer delayed payouts to members and earlier this month, it slashed payout rates, according to emails sent to program partners.

Due to “broader economic factors, Best Buy will be temporarily adjusting affiliate payouts starting this month” through early May to a “temporary 0% baseline,” according to one email from April, which Marketing Brew reviewed. According to a March email seen by Marketing Brew, commission payments earned by affiliate partners that month were temporarily delayed.

“This slight delay in payment is just a one-time occurrence; we anticipate everything back on schedule next month,” the email read. Those payments have since been paid out, Best Buy confirmed.

A spokesperson for Best Buy declined to provide a comment on the record about the changes.

Read more here.—JS

Producing more than 200 new scents a year, Bath & Body Works’s fragrance development is nothing to sniff at.

Its latest, Sweetest Song, will buoy its second-largest holiday for sales, Mother’s Day, sold in a whopping 19 different forms, from perfume to body cream to hand sanitizer.

Some of its newest scents have proven powerful in driving new business, especially amid the recent fragrance boom. Last spring, the retailer went viral when it introduced Everyday Luxuries, a “prestige-inspired” line of fragrance mists, that many dubbed dupes for scents by luxury brands like Tom Ford and Le Labo. CEO Gina Boswell noted the line has been “attracting a new, younger, and more diverse customer base” and helping drive sales growth in the body care segment. In Piper Sandler’s latest Taking Stock With Teens survey published this month, Bath & Body Works was named the No. 3 beauty destination for teens, the first time it broke the top 10 since 2018.

But before consumers can spritz on the scents, they take a year, and many steps, to create, Lewis said.

“It’s really just meeting [consumers] where they are and making sure that we’re on top of the trends that they’re wanting from us, or that we see coming down the pipeline,” Kristie Lewis, SVP of merchandising at Bath & Body Works, told Retail Brew. “It’s a skill set and a balance of, ‘What do I know about you today and how does that kind of translate tomorrow?’”

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—EC

Tune in to this week's episode of The Refill, the AI-voiced audio recap of the Marketing Brew stories that drive your marketing career forward. Hear from your favorite industry reporters like never before. Listen every Thursday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your audio media.

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Money magazine wrote about the prevalence of recession-prep videos among TikTok creators.
• The Wall Street Journal wrote about how more big brands are pulling back on Pride marketing this year.
• The Atlantic wrote about how “generic” brands are thriving at grocery stores.