01 — THE MOOD
Hi divas 🤍
Can you believe it’s November? Silly season is officially on, the RBA is almost certainly hiking tomorrow, and I have somehow already got a Christmas-party invitation. Deep breath.
If you know me, you know I am permanently in the wars. There is a Band-Aid in every handbag I own and usually one on my heel, so when the best brand content I saw this week turned out to be theirs, I took it personally. A carb-load dinner in New York for a five-day blister plaster, co-hosted by a sourdough baker who runs through the city, lasagne noodles as name tags, a butter station, a loaf of bread to take home. It stopped my scroll dead. Then it turned out one of the girls in the chat ran the influencer gift-outs, which is the most MOODY thing that’s happened to me all month. Band-Aid, if you’re reading, I am ride or die, put me on the press list. A plaster with no celebrity attached made the best thing I saw all week, and that’s the point of everything below.
The same week, Jennifer Lawrence launched a haircare brand. Three products, US$34 to US$52, built with a biotech firm that’s raised US$78 million, a story about a decade of other people controlling her hair, and a cinema screening at 10am to launch it. Instead the internet spent the week on her Cut cover and the surgery she talked about in it, and the brand got maybe a day. She called it a “forced manifestation”, the most honest line anyone in celebrity beauty has given us in years. Here’s mine: I would not be caught dead buying a celebrity haircare brand. I’ll go to a colourist for that. Scarlett Johansson’s skincare line closed in September after four years, and Gaga just made herself CEO of Haus Labs after a shade-range backlash and her CEO walking. Full disclosure, I’m on Gaga’s side here, because the Haus Labs foundation is the best in the game and it’s the one on my face right now. That’s the difference. The celebrity beauty brand still has a pulse when the product is the point. The version where the face is the strategy doesn’t, and Lawrence launching into that week is the test case.
Then on Sunday I opened Phia, the shopping app with the famous cap table and the summer it spent explaining how its referral codes ended up on sales it didn’t drive (it says that’s fixed), and the app’s feed was celebrity outfit breakdowns. I thought it was a shopping app, not TMZ. Levina made the investors’ point in the chat: if you’d written a cheque into a shopping app and it came back as a style account, you’d want a call. Turning into a media brand after a trust wobble means asking for people’s attention at the exact moment you’ve lost their benefit of the doubt.
Fame isn’t a strategy. A plaster proved it, a movie star is finding out, and the deep dive is about the only person whose opinion counts this month, the woman with the basket.
Love Brooke x
02 — THE ROOM
The girls are getting things done. What 1,000 women in one group chat did for each other this week.
THE WINS
→ My stylist launched a Substack and it reads like a retail strategy memo. Shannon has run Désordre since 2009, built it to eight figures without outside money (her words, in the chat), and her first piece is on reading a person, selling out styles, and why ten clients matter more than ten thousand followers. Experiential retail, one woman at a time. Read it →
→ Bec’s fragrance brand, only just out of the gate, was named Emerging Innovator by Cosmetic Executive Women. Fleurac makes perfume oils and balms in Australia to the standard she’d hold skincare to, and I can confirm the hype: she sent me Woodpetal and it’s unreal. The awards night is in New York on 18 November and she can’t fly over, so if you’re there and own a good outfit, she needs someone to accept it for her (see CLASSIFIEDS). @fleurac_fragrance
→ More from the room: a Melbourne podcaster’s episode with our brand strategist went live, the one where she quits her job on impulse and is booked out in under a week (listen); a Sydney founder published her first essay on what startup programs are actually for (read); a Sydney creative is a finalist in the RUSSH Creative Showcase, the prize a spread in the March issue (vote in THE DIARY); and our Brisbane city lead came back from her wedding, flooded in at the homestead, which is the most romantic way to be trapped, and co-hosted drinks at Wild Legs with Jen the same week. 🤍
THE INTRODUCTIONS
→ The week’s asks, timed: an event photographer for a Sydney brand launch, two names in three minutes and a 35mm film specialist by the next morning. A mid-level AI engineer for an early-stage product, an agency intro in a minute. A Shopify developer, a recruiter within the half hour. Emerging Australian brands for event raffles, a Sydney planner and a Brisbane host in her DMs inside 25 minutes.
The one I loved: a creator-industry contractor with six years’ experience was offered a day rate in the mid-$500s and asked the room if that sounded right. A recruiter who runs a creative division answered inside two minutes with the market rate, $800 to $900. No salary guide required, just the girls.
Also new in the room this week: seventeen women, a dozen of them on Tuesday, including a recruiter with a creative division, a packaging-design platform, a hospital-parking startup, a dating-reflection app, a branding agency split between Melbourne and Berlin, and the woman building what she calls Australia’s first female pleasure experience. Say hi, they’re in General and Melbourne. That’s the room working.
03 — MOODY SPOTLIGHT
She hand-delivered samples across Sydney on a Friday night. If you missed last week’s Spotlight, it’s a PR 101 with Pardis Mahdavi of BYOND, the Sydney agency behind ghd, Ole Henriksen, Crown Sydney and VEGAMOUR’s Australian launch. Her first question to any founder is “Who, specifically?”, because “awareness on its own is a very expensive way to feel busy.” Her pitch method starts with the angle only you can tell and the person, not the list. Her red flag is any agency that guarantees coverage, since editorial can’t be bought. Her honest line for the room: not every brand needs PR, or is ready for it yet, and if you need sales this month, paid is the better spend. The Friday-night sample run was so an editor had them for a Saturday shoot. “My client wasn’t missing out on that coverage.” Read it →
she hand-delivered samples across sydney on a friday night
MOODY SPOTLIGHT, the interview edition. You know girl of the week, where you meet the girl. This is where we open the books: one woman, one real business decision, and the actual mechanics of how she made it. This week: Pardis Mahdavi, Founder of BYOND.
Up next, Thursday: Amy Ross, ex-Tesla, who built By Limen in 30 days with $5,000 and nine AI agents set up to disagree with her.
04 — THE READ
Inflation hit 4.3% and all four banks now expect a hike tomorrow. Fuel up 23.6% and electricity up 12.8% over the year, trimmed mean 3.6%, cash rate 4.60% going to 4.85% at 2:30pm AEDT, the fifth rise this year. Pricing anything this month? Budget as if it happens. ABC · ABS · The Adviser
Woolworths comps grew 6.1%. Coles grew 2.7% and lost 8% in a day. Eleven straight quarters of lower prices and a Disney collectables campaign on one side, a flat profit warning on the other. Leah Weckert: “we are seeing a lot more splitting of baskets.” Specials in one place, the rest in another, and discretionary feels it next. Woolworths ASX · Coles call
David Jones borrowed $10 million to buy Christmas stock. From Hilco, the lender behind Cue’s receivership, after missed payments to concession holders; the new CEO is reportedly weighing cutting 38 stores by more than half, and Country Road Group is pulling nearly 100 concessions. Department stores fell 6.5% in Vicinity’s centres while jewellery grew 9.4%. If a department store is your biggest account, it’s also your biggest credit risk. Zimmermann, same week: $38 million profit, wholesale down to 29%. Inside Retail · Vicinity ASX · Ragtrader, Zimmermann
Canva’s founders lost $6 billion and a brand that started on eBay is fifth on the Young Rich List. Perkins and Obrecht still top it at $12.5 billion; Georgia and Daniel Contos of White Fox jumped twelve places to $1.38 billion between them. Rachel Dillon debuted at 74. Women are still the exception on it. Mumbrella
October’s raises: $64 million for a brain-cancer startup, $23 million for spacecraft power, and three women founders in twenty-odd rounds. Coherence Neuro (co-founder Elise Jenkins) led the month, then MP Space, Cuttable’s $20 million and Skopos Bio’s $12 million. Cut Through’s last quarter had women and mixed teams at 32% of deals and 2.7% of the $4.2 billion. The bright spot: Victoria doubled the Alice Anderson Fund for women-led companies with another $10 million, after $9 million into 46 of them pulled $64 million of co-investment. Syncrowin’s Aisshwarya Kansakaar, on her $3 million: “A significant portion of what we need already exists, it’s just not running intelligently.” Overnight Success · Cut Through Q3 · SmartCompany, Alice Anderson Fund
Louis Vuitton now has a Chief Brand Creative Officer, and he isn’t the designer. Hector Muelas, ex Tiffany and Apple, started yesterday running campaigns, content and the “content factory”. The biggest luxury brand in the world just made content a C-suite job separate from the clothes. You’ve been running that org chart alone on your phone. The Impression
adidas had a record quarter, Puma shrank 6%, both stocks went up. €1 billion of operating profit and raised guidance on one side; inventory cut by a quarter and a smaller loss on the other. Same consumer, same week. The gap is heat and discipline, not demand. adidas · Puma
Meta launched an AI stylist that builds a wardrobe from your Instagram. Style Sketch suggests outfits, plans trip wardrobes and tries clothes on a model matched to your body, live in Southeast Asia first. Your grid was always a wardrobe archive. Meta now treats it as a shopping signal. Engadget
Fashion brands are writing AI face-swaps and digital clones into model contracts. Reuters read a dozen of them: swap the face, clone the body, no extra pay. One AI studio generated 190,000 outfits last month. If you sign a talent release, the AI clause is the contract now. Reuters via Inside Retail Asia
Anthropic’s IPO is now a Queensland story. A two-gigawatt data park outside Dalby with Anthropic as first tenant, 23,000 signatures against it, and the company confirming it will run Claude queries here but not train models, because of Australian copyright law. The AFR says Labor is drafting a ban on suburban data centres. Australians hold close to a trillion dollars of US shares through super, so most of us will own a piece of ANT whether we buy it or not. CNN · Capital Brief, AFR · Startup Daily
Instagram is paying YouTubers up to US$500,000 to post long videos as Features. Non-exclusive, from US$50,000, days after Mosseri said creators “primarily get paid by brands”. No revenue share, so it’s buying supply with cheques. In our chat: I asked where it fits. A podcaster won’t watch 90 minutes on a phone; a strategist pointed out you can cut it into Reels that link back, a free repurposing engine for the YouTube you already have. PetaPixel · TechCrunch
AI agents have placed “several hundred” DoorDash orders. In total. Against three million deliveries a day. Same week: DoorDash buys Instacart for US$17 billion, and Google takes ads inside AI Mode to ten more countries, Australia included, with click-through comparable to organic. The agent economy is a demo. The ad business inside AI answers is open. Be the answer she reads before you worry about the store an agent buys from. TechCrunch · CNBC · Google
Canva shipped its second homegrown model in a week. Brush edits a design in steps and keeps it editable, 69% faster and 46% cheaper than its last agent by Canva’s count. Owning the model is how 265 million users stop paying rent on every image. Pro only, so Pro is the tier now. Fast Company · Startup Daily, Craft
AI chatbot dependence is now in the digital duty of care bill, penalties to $109.2 million. Passed the lower house Wednesday with Kate Chaney’s amendments; the Senate inquiry reports late November. If your product has a chatbot that talks to young people, design just became compliance. Startup Daily
05 — THE DEEP DIVE
Silly season starts this week, and it’s going to be a sorted one
Here is the only thing you need to know about Christmas 2026, whether you sell a product, sell your time, run a team or get paid by someone who does: it’s happening in November. The deepest discount won’t win it. The brands and the women who know exactly who their committed customer is, and give her a reason to say yes before the crowd turns up, will.
The season has moved forward a month. The most useful line I heard at Retail Doctor Group’s State of the Nation breakfast this week was this one: “Black November rather than Black Friday, it can be called.” The keynote analyst expected Myer and Peter Alexander to start heavy promotions by around 5 November. Most retailers will wait until the 13th or 14th, still a full fortnight before Black Friday itself on 27 November. The forecast was better sales growth in November than in December, with Boxing Day “more about clearance activity”. Or, more bluntly: “Consumers are certainly trained for the promotion.” Last year’s four-day Black Friday weekend was tipped to hit a record $6.8 billion by the retail council and Roy Morgan. This year the weekend becomes the finale of a month-long sale rather than the main event.
We have seen this shape before. The last time the RBA hiked in the first week of November, in 2023, retail sales rose 1.6% in November and fell 2.7% in December, household goods down 8.5% in a month and department stores down 8.1%. The ABS said it in one line: people brought December forward to catch Black Friday. The sale didn’t add spending, it moved it, and December paid the bill. If your plan has December doing the heavy lifting, this is your warning.
The backdrop. Silly season lands in a strange week. CPI hit 4.3%, a rate rise is expected on Tuesday, and AGM season brought a run of soft warnings: JB Hi-Fi’s Australian sales went backwards from July to September and slowed again in October, and Wesfarmers said Bunnings has slowed too. Yet the same breakfast heard retail sales described as “remarkably resilient”, trending above 5% and easing toward 4% next year. “It’s not a recession, but it is a slowdown.” Both things are true because the average is hiding two shoppers. One is cutting back. The other, cushioned by income growth and the household wealth built over the past few years, is still spending, but only on things she has decided matter. Halloween was the dress rehearsal: Australians spent $510 million, up 2%, which is less than inflation, because fewer people turned up, 4.4 million, 400,000 down on last year, yet the ones who did planned to spend $117 each, up 13.6%. The casual shopper dropped out and the committed one leaned in. Pureprofile’s Christmas survey says the same thing from the other side: 79% of us are adjusting Christmas spend, the average gift budget fell for the first time since 2023 to $487, and 58% will use the sales to fund it.
Here is the bit most operators will miss. The real risk this Christmas is pricing, more than demand. Research presented at the breakfast found that 77% of retail leaders plan to raise prices over the next 12 months, while 33% of consumers have already stopped shopping with a retailer because it no longer offered great value. The committed shopper will pay more, but only where the value is obvious to her, and everyone else leaves without telling you. The same research measured the AI gap: around 31% of Australians already use AI somewhere in their shopping, but only 10% would let it complete the purchase. AI is “trusted to help, just not yet to actually make that purchasing decision”. This Christmas, AI helps her build the shortlist, and the brand on that shortlist still has to close the sale.
What this means for the room. The founders with a product are the obvious ones. The fragrance, the gift edit, the pillowcase, the hydration soda landing at the end of the month: every one of them is competing for a $487 gift budget that gets spent in the four weeks before the 27th and barely at all after. The move is one offer, one window, and a reason to buy at full price before it, because a brand with 2,000 customers can know them by name in a way Myer never will. Ten clients over ten thousand followers is the same argument from the service side. If you sell your time, your December is already decided by who books in November, so the sale you run this month is on January, and the “gift” is the slot. The corporate girls have a different job: you’re the one standing in front of the trading update in February explaining a soft December, so start saying “November and December together” out loud now and get the value message onto the shelf and the homepage before the 13th. The creators have the best month of the year ahead of them, because every brand marketing budget in the country just moved into November and Instagram is literally writing cheques for long-form. Pitch the Christmas campaigns this week, hold your rate (the chat priced the market at $800 to $900 a day for a reason), and don’t take the deal that lands on the 20th at half the fee because they panicked.
My read. I love a promotion as much as the next girl with a basket open at 11pm. What I don’t love is a brand that trains me to wait for 40% off and then wonders why I never pay full price. The brands that win this season will give the committed shopper a reason (early access, a gift-with-purchase that makes sense, a drop that never goes on sale) instead of handing everyone a blanket discount. My call, with dates. First, the ABS household spending data for November, out in early January, will show November beating December, just as the room predicted. Second, the Black Friday weekend will come in under $7.1 billion, which is last year’s $6.8 billion forecast plus inflation, so it shrinks in real terms. Third, by the time half-year results land in February, the retailers that held prices and sold through at full price will report healthier margins than the ones that ran the earliest, deepest promotions.
MONDAY
Lock your November now. Decide which week you go live and what you won’t discount. Early access for your best customers beats a sitewide code, and if you sell a service, sell January this month.
Find your committed few. Pull your top repeat customers, clients or brand partners and give them something before the crowd: a preview, a bundle, a reason to buy at full price.
Make the value obvious. If you’re raising prices, show what got better. If you’re the one presenting the numbers, present November and December as one season. A third of shoppers will leave quietly if you don’t.
Sources: Roy Morgan, Black Friday 2025 forecast · ABS Monthly CPI, September 2026 · The Adviser, big four forecasts · Inside Retail, AGM season · JB Hi-Fi Q1 ASX · Roy Morgan, Halloween 2026 · Pureprofile Christmas Report · ABS Retail Trade, December 2023 · Retail Doctor Group State of the Nation breakfast, this week (attended)
06 — THE DIARY
No link means she’s in the chat; ask and someone will introduce you.
→ Today · Sydney. Mel swaps her day job for OzHarvest’s CEO CookOff, cooking alongside the chefs for people doing it tough. Every dollar is two meals and she’s chasing $5,000. Donate →
→ Thu 5 Nov · Sydney. Techella, Australia’s first tech festival built by women, UTS Underground. Ticket sales have closed, so if you’re going, find the MOODY girls there. techellafest.com
→ Sun 8 Nov. Voting closes at midnight for RUSSH’s Creative Showcase, where one of our own is behind “Seeing”, a finalist. Thirty seconds. Vote →
→ Thu 12 Nov · Sydney, 5pm. The New Trust Economy, a WOW panel on winning attention and trust now AI has made attention cheap, with Tora from Uber, plus Eftsure and Canva, WorkClub Lounge, Chifley Square, hosted by a recruitment founder in the room. Register
→ Thu 12 Nov · Melbourne, 6pm. The Edit by Kit Media Lab, StandardX, Fitzroy: editing, content systems and the why behind growth, hosted by Kim. Tickets
→ Thu 19 Nov · Sydney, 8am. Konnectile’s Women in Business Circle breakfast at Vogue Café, Darling Harbour. Free with the code VOGUE, $35 if you want the breakfast. RSVP
→ Tue 24 Nov · Sydney, 9am to 7pm. EDGE by Ampere, a full day of leadership training for startup operators with special forces, elite sport and exec coaching on the bill, Establishment Ballroom. $20 off with gracie20, approval required. Tickets
→ Tue 24 Nov · North Parramatta, plus watch parties in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. Tech Ready Women’s FoundHER Summit, from first build to first raise, with Emily Swaffield and Mia Bowyer speaking. MOODY gets 10% off, ask Renate. Tickets
→ Wed 25 Nov · Sydney, 6pm. From AI User to AI Builder, a free hands-on workshop where you build an assistant that answers questions from your own PDFs. No coding experience needed, food and drinks on them, hosted by a Sydney founder in the chat. Register
→ Fri 27 Nov · Brisbane, 6pm. The Design Party by PEDRATOPIA Collective, Vacant Assembly, West End. “Less screen, more touch”: art, vinyl and conversation, BYO. B&T wrote it up this week. pedratopia.com
→ Fri 4 Dec · Gold Coast. The REAL Perspective supper club: Conscious Agency in the Era of Agentic Intelligence, with Lisa. Past tables
07 — CLASSIFIEDS
What a girl wants. What a girl needs.
→ Hiring: a hydration brand that sponsors the Australian Open is building its roster of event and campaign photographers and videographers, email holly.chapman.ext@waterdrop.com. A founder taking an AI product for comms and PR professionals to beta wants a mid-level Python and LLM engineer, part-time contract, remote, Australia-based, working alongside a senior reviewer (DM Paige in Tech + AI). A Sydney brand launch in late November needs an event photographer, portfolios to krishaa@goodtimes.site.
→ Available: content, sorted. Our own Georgia, MOODY’s head of content, is taking The Content Files to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane from mid-November, shoot days or full social management, spots limited (DM Georgia). Serena is taking two or three more founders at $500k-plus revenue who are tired and want to scale, intake fee waived for the chat; she’s also looking for podcasts to talk about her book [FE]MALE-CENTRED, out next year (DM Serena).
→ Brands wanted: Australian jewellery, fragrance, leather and fashion brands for The Pillars’ Christmas gift guide, and event hosts open to running raffles of emerging local brands (send Orsika your site and story, for both); small-batch, upcycled or handmade Australian designers for upcoming opportunities (DM Huda); small Melbourne and Australian brands for a feature on @melodyetcetera (DM Melody); a non-alcoholic drinks brand for Vee’s FoundHER night in Melbourne (DM Vee).
→ Wanted: a New York diva in a great outfit to accept a CEW award on 18 November for an Australian fragrance founder who can’t fly over (DM Bec). Six to eight women for free, honest, structured conversations about this chapter, run by a sexologist in the chat (DM Paige L).
→ Vote: Soph of Nice One is a Female Founder Awards finalist in the London city category, public vote, open until January. Vote →
Don’t know her yet? Ask in your city chat or General; the girls in there do.
Forward this to one girl who’d get it.
Then bring her in: the chat is here, and I’ll add her to her city.
Love Brooke x
MOODY is the intelligence, culture and network for ambitious women. Founders, operators, investors, corporates and creatives in the same group chat. These are the girls who get it, and we are in a MOOD.
@get__moody · getmoody.co · est. 2026