Reading Prada short stories after 80 blood tests at Quest Diagnostics

and other consumer news

Happy Valentine’s day! I celebrated love and cupids at Raoul’s.

In today’s Assemblage: Hinge’s dark secret, everybody really hates Soho House, the adorable new essential worker who raised a lot of money, an interactive upstate hotel, + more.

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• Soho House is a prime example of a company that never should have gone public. The international private members’ club logged only its second ever quarterly profit as a public company: a net income of a whopping $175k, or slightly more than 84 cents per Soho House member.

  • Feuding billionaires and shareholders Dan Loeb and Ron Burkle are in a tug-of-war over Soho House’s future: Loeb, one of Wall Street’s fiercest activist investors, is pushing for new leadership and a high takeover bid, while Burkle, SH’s top shareholder, is supporting a $1.7B take-private buyout offer that would require him to roll over his company’s stakes. The company has been reportedly considering the take-private bid since December.

  • Like I said in NPCs and Analogs - scaled luxury is an oxymoron! You literally can’t scale exclusivity. Public companies face constant investor and market pressure to grow, while private members’ clubs need to remain exclusive. In other words, Soho House cannot both focus on growth AND remain exclusive - these are dueling and incompatible metrics. No matter what they do, either their investors or their members will be unhappy.