All about wearables.
Hi, and welcome back to CPGD: your weekly guide to emerging brands and industry trends! It’s Zoya, Head of Growth.
This week, I’m especially excited to dig into wearable tech, a category that sits right at the intersection of two worlds I spend a lot of time thinking about: tech and consumer.
With Oura filing to go public, it has become the category’s golden child and mega-success story. More than 5.5 million rings have been sold, and Gen Z women are now its fastest-growing consumer cohort. Proof that a wearable can be as much a cultural product as a piece of technology. The design, the form factor, and how naturally it fits into the way humans actually live matter arguably more than the technology itself.
And this is exactly why TAYA caught our attention at CPGD.
TAYA is a stainless steel pendant on a 14K gold-plated chain that lets you capture a thought with the press of a button (see photo above).
This week, I’m talking with founder Elena Wagenmans about how she’s thinking about building TAYA, and what it actually takes to build a wearable people want to make part of their everyday lives.
Here’s the highlight reel from this week’s newsletter:
💬 TAYA founder Elena Wagenmans on building wearable tech people actually want to wear
🍝 Goodles is to be acquired by Barilla
🥄 Bezi drops its new Dippers
5 Brands Added This Week:
Every week, we add five emerging brands to the CPGD Directory. Here’s what caught our attention this week.
Stellar Eats - Grain-free baking mixes made with simple, better-for-you ingredients
ILÉM - Infused olive oils inspired by origin, tradition, and local collaboration
LAV - Armenian-inspired, single-serve salad dressings made with clean, whole-food ingredients
Majama - Dairy-free frozen desserts handcrafted with clean ingredients and bold, flavor-forward recipes
Biche - Clean, veterinary-developed pet grooming essentials for healthier coats
Also! If you’re a CPG founder looking for in-person activation in NYC with an engaged audience, Dance Social Club is worth knowing about.
DSC is a beginner-friendly dance community with 800+ members and 1,000+ Instagram followers, founded by Nina Cheng, a former pricing strategist whose work experience spans Big Tech, startups, and finance. Over the past year, DSC has partnered with Red Bull, 50Hertz Tingly Foods, and Undercurrent to create branded dance experiences, including events where the brand is woven into the choreography, the song choice, and the cultural moment rather than sitting behind a sampling table.
“Nina is hosting a Next Move-sponsored event on September 17 in NYC and is offering complimentary spots for CPG founders who want to experience the format firsthand before committing. Meet a local founder, sample the breath spray product, and dance to Destiny Child’s “Lose My Breath.”
DM @dancesocialclub_ on Instagram or email notedbyneen@gmail.com to learn more.
Tips and tools
Most D2C brands didn’t get into influencer marketing to run a fulfillment operation. But between spreadsheets, DMs, manual Shopify orders, and a separate tool for tracking, gifting eats up the time you meant to spend on creators.
Superfiliate brings the entire gifting workflow into one place. Find creators already talking about your brand, automate gifting and fulfillment through Shopify, keep communication in one thread, and see who posts, who converts, and who’s earned a bigger partnership.
Less time managing logistics. More time scaling the creators actually working.
In Conversation with Elena Wagenmans of TAYA
TAYA is jewelry-grade wearable technology that lets you capture the thoughts that come up as you move through your day. Founded by Elena Wagenmans, a former Stanford and Apple product designer and mechanical engineer, TAYA is built around the idea that great technology only works if it is there when you need it. Its first design is a stainless steel pendant held by a 14K gold-plated chain: press the button, speak into the pendant, and revisit in TAYA’s curated app when you’re ready.
Who is TAYA for, and what did you set out to create?
TAYA is for the person whose thoughts tend to get lost in the pace of everyday life. The friend who wants to remember a birthday, the mother who is constantly code-switching between work and home life, the creative whose best ideas show up when they’re out in the world instead of staring at a screen. It is designed with intentional capture and privacy in mind, while having the look and feel of something you’ll want to wear every day.
What inspired you to start TAYA?
I’ve always been interested in the intersection between hardware and software. I did both my undergrad and master’s in product design and mechanical engineering at Stanford, and worked on the iPad Pro. Throughout these years I couldn’t help but notice how many “gadgets” feel like they were built for a very male, tech-centric audience, and I couldn’t see myself wearing any of them. They also felt intrusive: always collecting more data, tracking my metrics and making me feel like my life is reduced to some sort of scoreboard.
With technology becoming more capable every day, I wanted to build a brand that begins with what matters to you rather than asking you to orient your life around it. And that’s what TAYA is: technology built around intention and designed with the care of something you choose to wear every day.
When did TAYA launch, and what milestones have stood out so far?
Our first pre-order batch sold out; Batch 2 is open now, shipping this fall!
What are you currently obsessed with as a founder?
Not typing.
The moment I start typing, I’m already editing and even though I can type pretty fast, I always feel like I’m catching up to the thought. I send a lot of voice notes now and even administrative stuff is done with voice input, from my phone or computer.
What do you think most people misunderstand about wearable technology?
A lot of wearables are always listening, always measuring, giving you a dashboard at the end of the day. TAYA is for your thoughts only. It captures a moment only when you press the button, and it’s built to keep your voice and filter out everyone else’s before anything is transcribed.
How do you hope people feel when they use TAYA?
Calm. I hope they feel like they can offload the to-dos and half-formed ideas rattling around their head and trust that TAYA has them. You shouldn’t have to work to keep up with your own thoughts. TAYA should work for you.
What’s next for TAYA?
Our first pre-order batch sold out; Batch 2 is open now, shipping this fall!
Follow TAYA along: tayanecklace.com | Instagram: @tayanecklace
News to Know
💰 Funding & Acquisitions – raises, venture news, and M&A
Oura filed to go public after a year of major growth for the smart ring company.
Goodles is being acquired by Barilla, bringing the better-for-you mac and cheese brand into the global pasta giant’s portfolio.
🚀 Launches & New Products – new brands, product drops, and line extensions
DedCool is keeping busy. In addition to its Erewhon collaboration, the fragrance brand is teaming up with NYC coffee shop The Elk, launching September 8.
Bezi launched Dippers, a new portable take on its labneh paired with crackers.
Hero Bread and Auntie Anne’s launched a better-for-you take on pretzel bites with 16g protein, 18g fiber, and 3g net carbs.
🛒 Retail & Distribution – brands entering retailers, door count expansions, and partnerships
Sababa Foods’ Saturday Sauce is expanding into supermarkets across the Northeast.
Viv Cotton Lock Tampons launched in Whole Foods, expanding the brand’s retail footprint.
Brand Experience Corner with VeraiNewtopia Now | What Buyers Told Us
We spent two days at Newtopia Now asking buyers one question that had nothing to do with our product: why are you here? It’s 2026. Every brand in this hall has a website and a line sheet. They said some version of the same four things.
Photography doesn’t answer what the product is in your hand. How it ships isn’t on the page; case counts, pallet size and weight. Neither are the certifications she needs before she can shelve you at all. Every gap becomes an email, and one buyer keeps a full-time employee on staff just to chase those threads. Sample requests go unanswered. The brand that replies fastest gets the slot. So they came to the samples and to see in-person.
None of that is about anyone’s product. It’s the distance between a product and a decision, and that distance is the part a founder controls. Show the product at scale, not floating on white. Put every spec and cert where a buyer can reach them alone. Answer the question before it becomes an email.
That’s what we built Verai to do. A Brand Portal is one link holding current pricing, specs and certs, so a buyer answers her own questions at eleven at night without waiting on you. AI Image Studio turns your studio shot into a lifestyle or lay-flat that shows scale.
Sample requests come off the page into one inbox with a status. Insights show which products she opened and came back to, so you follow up while she’s still deciding, not a week after she’s chosen someone else.
See you next week.
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