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This store may be gone next time you hit Cinnabon

After trudging through years of tanking sales that screamed “who want me?,” clothing company Express, which also owns Bonobos and UpWest, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday and announced it’s slimming its in-person presence.

Closing sales begin today at 95 of the 500+ US Express locations and at all 10 UpWest stores. Express will continue to sell online as usual while it prepares for a potential sale to a group of property investment firms led by brand manager WHP Global.

Express had almost $1.2 billion in debt and $1.3 billion in assets as of March 2 after sustaining multimillion-dollar operating losses from 2020 through 2022.
Revenue is down ~10% from 2019.

What went wrong? Ever since WFH came to stay, consumers haven’t bought as much of the office formalwear that fills Express racks. The retailer didn’t adapt to the broader “casualization” of fashion, while its competitors did, GlobalData managing director Neil Saunders said. Plus, its clothes just kind of look like…clothes, and fail to stand out, he argued.

Zoom out: A few other retailers have already declared bankruptcy this year, including another Ohio-based store, fabric seller Joann.—ML

LA-Vegas high-speed rail construction gets rolling

Good news for SoCal lovebirds impatient to reach the spontaneous marriage capital ASAP: Construction on a high-speed rail line connecting the LA area and Vegas kicked off yesterday.

Brightline West, a subsidiary of the company behind the Brightline Miami-Orlando rail link, is undertaking the $12 billion project, hoping to launch service in time for the LA Olympics in 2028.

Billed as “America’s first true high-speed passenger rail system,” Brightline West expects its electric trains to:

Dash between the LA metro area and Vegas in just over 2 hours, compared with a 4-hour-minimum traffic-troubled drive.
Carry at least 11 million passengers on the 218-mile journey per year, with 25 trains each way daily.

It’ll be quick: Reaching 186 mph, its locomotives will be the fastest in the country, outspeeding the Amtrak Acela, which maxes out at just over 150 mph on parts of the Northeast Corridor between Boston and DC.

The US plays catch-up

The US has been a slow coach in the high-speed rail department, with just a few hundred miles of tracks that allow for speeds above 100 mph. Meanwhile, in China:

About 26,000 miles of high-speed rail have been built since 2008, connecting major population centers and remote parts of the country.
The speed on a 1,050-mile train ride from Beijing to Harbin averaged 211 miles per hour as of 2022, per CNN.

Other countries such as Spain, France, and Japan also have extensive high-speed rail networks that cover much of their territory.

Big picture: Brightline West isn’t the only high-speed train on the way in the US—there are multiple rail projects in the works across the country, including an effort to speed up the Acela and a proposed Houston-Dallas link. But many plans don’t get beyond the blueprint stage, derailed by cost overruns and legal challenges.—SK

Why, though? The sprayable pancake batter that ultimately ran empty

Love pancakes but hate the mess? Then Batter Blaster was the product for you.

Batter Blaster inventor Sean O’Connor told PBS that he enjoyed making waffles for his wife, but always made a mess of the kitchen. The whipped cream he topped them with came in a convenient spray can, so why not pancake batter?

His invention put batter in a pressurized can, meaning home cooks could squirt it right into a pan or iron for no-fuss pancakes and waffles.

Batter Blaster…

… launched in 2007, and was sold in prominent stores including Costco and Whole Foods.

Though it received some criticism for its plastic packaging — and from people who felt like preparing traditional batter wasn’t that hard — people generally liked it.

Unlike Cheez Whiz and other convenience products, Batter Blaster was certified organic, and the can’s carbon dioxide helped make the batter light and fluffy. By 2008, it had turned $15m in revenue.

So, what went wrong?

In 2009, Batter Blaster chefs served up 76.3k+ pancakes in eight hours to achieve a Guinness World Record. But cool PR stunts aside, the company struggled to educate customers about the product, given that it was the only refrigerated pancake mix on the market.

The company then ran into financial issues, lost its manufacturer, and went under in 2012.

In 2014, O’Connor’s business partner Nate Steck gave it another whirl with Nate’s Pancakes, but that’s no more either.

Fans across the internet still leave comments singing its praises and lamenting its disappearance — going to show that even products people love don’t always make it in this cruel, cruel world.

Why the ‘Blair Witch’ actors want their due

When The Blair Witch Project came out in 1999, it was a phenomenon.

Uniquely, its stars — Rei Hance (who then went by Heather Donahue), Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams — used their real names for character names and heavily improvised their dialogue. Marketing surrounding the film’s Sundance Film Festival premiere suggested they’d really gone missing.

Despite the film’s meager budget of $35k-$60k (not including marketing or postproduction), that buzz drummed up $248m+ at the box office and a Blair Witch franchise including sequels, video games, an escape room attraction, and more.

You’d think the movie’s stars would be set for life and happy about Lionsgate and Blumhouse’s recent announcement that they’d relaunch the franchise with a “new vision.”

But that’s not what happened

Artisan Entertainment bought distribution rights to The Blair Witch Project for $1.1m. Lionsgate acquired the franchise in 2003.

Leonard wrote that each actor received $300k from a buyout for the first film and nothing else, having “signed contracts when we were kids, with no legal or union support.”

This weekend, the actors published a letter to Lionsgate requesting retroactive and future compensation for the 1999 film — equivalent to what the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA would require — plus:

Consultation on any future projects using their likeness.
The creation of a $60k grant for indie filmmakers.

Why it matters

As the actors pointed out, subsequent reboots have been critical and commercial disappointments — something that’s often true of franchises that lose original creators.

But more broadly, Hollywood saw two major strikes last year advocating for fair streaming residuals and AI protections. The actors are asking for what union representation would have provided, had they not been “starry-eyed” unknowns.

It also serves as a cautionary tale for any creator about the importance of protecting their IP, inventions, and contributions. Here are some more:

Daisuke Inoue invented the karaoke machine, but never patented it.
George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead infamously entered the public domain due to a titling error, meaning anyone can rip it off or distribute it sans royalties.
The inventor of the troll doll saw only a fraction of the toy’s $4.5B in sales.