👀 PREVIEW: 2024 Brand Launches

a review of thingstesting's list of upcoming products

GM all. Currently sipping on a delish smoothie from my neighborhood staple, Butterfield Market. Last night I had an excellent crab fried rice at Soothr and saw Napoleon (super late to the party I know) I thought the movie was fine, but I’ve a gripe with modern biopics—

Mini-Napoleon Review

Just as I thought about Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, these modern biopics seem to give their main characters a significant lack of agency, and rely to heavily on the historical figures name recognition to drive the story. The reality is, these films are self-container narrative arcs, and without driving forces, agency, and real conflict, these biopics come across as lukewarm, paint by numbers stories. I’d rather have read a book. And I felt bad for how DOWN BAD Napoleon was…

Anyway, let’s jump into today’s newsletter topics: Thingstesting.com’s 2024 brand launch list—

🚀 2024’s Upcoming Brand Launches

I love Things Testing, they are a fantastic resource for discovering new brands and products and provides a great platform to bookmark things for later. From a brand owner perspective, they are a necessary platform for spreading the word on your new DTC product. Their end of year list, compiled by Emma Apple Chozik (love her TikTok’s) looks ahead to brands launching next year. Many of these just link to a vague landing page, but I wanted to break down some of the upcoming products I am intrigued by based on their value proposition and branding. Then I will obviously break down the products I think are dumb.

❤️ Interested

Orka Energy Drink

This new energy drink tastes like water, has no calories, no preservatives, and a decent 150mg of caffeine. I first heard about Orka after seeing the transparent packaging on Twitter. The transparency not only communicates the purity of the beverage, but it will surely stand out on shelves and in consumer’s hands, leading to word of mouth advertising, which is critical when a brand is just beginning. As someone who has picked up a nasty Celsius habit, I will be sure to try Orka when it launches, as I really just want to drink water. Pure LaCroix gang stand up.

Giants Protein Coffee

This new high-protein coffee promises to help us cut back on the amount of beverages we need to drink to 1. Stay Energized and 2. Catch These Gains. It also boasts adaptogenic mushrooms and electrolytes. This incredible blend is really intriguing to me, and they have a nice landing page that isn’t as vague as some of the others on the list.

Rompy

DTC sexual wellness products have exploded in popularity over the last few years. The incredible business model of Tabs comes to mind. Rompy is a new brand putting a refreshing, Gen Z twist on this product category. No word on what the product is exactly, but the branding is nice and I like their Instagram content.

💔 Dumb

LookUp

It’s common knowledge we all spend too much time on our phones. This new brand promises to make ‘devices’ to help distract us from our phones. The landing page has no indication of what these products will be, but I can imagine they are going to look dumb and feel like an gimmicky adult toy. If you’re using your phone the right way you can actually make money, people should dedicate more screen time to that and less to stalking.

Smoosh

When showering, aren’t you constantly thinking, “Wow, love this soap, hate that in came in a bottle” Yeah me either. But Smoosh is apparently making a soap that comes without a bottle. The landing page gives no indication on how this is going to work, and I think they’re missing a key point on why people purchase the soap they do.

We are all purchasing soap based on the BOTTLE. Like it’s obviously basic but when I see the Aesop bottle at someone’s home, I feel pleased. When you dive deeper and see a Nécessaire bottle in the shower, I think this person has taste. I’ve tried many brands based off seeing the bottle in someone’s home I know has good taste. Without a bottle, this won’t happen.

Closing Thoughts

These upcoming products are all very polished thus far, implying they are all VC backed before even having a first product developed. I’d love to see the pitch decks for a few of these. While some are intriguing, I would bet only a few make it to 2025.

Okay have a lovely day, I hope something unexpected and fun happens to you. BYE.

About Jake

Jake Bell is a content marketing strategist based in NYC. He specializes in branding, art direction, creative strategy, content creation, and making things cool.

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