Express Checkout #4

Welcome to Express Checkout, a weekly newsletter keeping you up to date with all things commerce!

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I don't know what could beat this news, but IKEA is now making deliveries by boat via the Seine with electric vehicles for final delivery for its Parisian customers. Yes you read that right. So if you live in Paris, your Poäng chair and Malm Bed Frame may be floating down the river as we speak!

Big News of the week

• Heavy metals found in dark chocolate including Hershey's and Trader Joe's

• NotCo raises $70M to make its AI available to other companies

• Prebiotic Soda Brand Poppi Raises $25 Million Series B

• Grill maker Weber to go private with BDT Capital in $3.7 bln deal

• Uncrustables sales top $500 million

• Serta Simmons Plans Bankruptcy Filing as Soon as January

Now to the rest of the news! 👇👇👇

CPG/Consumer News from the week  (12/12 - 12/18)

🛍 Retail

• Lush Cosmetics has sold a 19.8% stake in the business to Silverwood Brands.

• Inflation is hitting consumers, and retailers are taking advantage. Dollar General is ramping up the expansion of its Popshelf stores, bringing items priced at $5 or less to suburbanites with higher incomes. They plan to double locations to approximately 300 stores next year and over 1,000 over the next 3 years.

• Based on new research from the international research firm YouGov, the country's favorite grocery store is not Trader Joe’s or Walmart… it’s 7-Eleven! The c-store scored a 62% popularity rating, more than Aldi, Kroger, and Trader Joe’s!

• Another retailer enters the metaverse. Build-a-bear workshop releases its new virtual community space, Build-A-Bear Tycoon, on Roblox.

• Walmart has hit GO on drone delivery in Arizona, Florida and Texas. Consumers can order goods up to 10 pounds online at www.droneupdelivery.com and expect them near their door in as little as 30 minutes.

• Uber Eats has taken to the sidewalks with Cartken robots to make food deliveries in Miami. Uber is investing heavily in these robots; they have partnerships with Nuro and Serve Robotics.

• H&M’s partners with Good American. Their new initiative, "H&M with Friends," brings popular outside brands to their online store.

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🏭 Supply Chain

• FedEx has rolled out an all-new electric cart delivery pilot program across New York City. The tech is from BrightDrop, a startup from GM. The tech is pretty cool, making last-mile deliveries more efficient by reducing the use of idling trucks.

• According to a leading consultant, Amazon is struggling to hit the 2-day delivery commitments they’re so well known for. Uh oh.

• Hormel Foods has collaborated with Crisp, an open-data retail platform for the CPG space, along with Google Cloud in order to gain better access and insights into real-time delivery, retail, supply chain, manufacturing, and inventory data.

• Meijer is leading the charge by deploying two of the first all-electric semitrucks outside of California. The retailer currently operates one of the largest fleets in Michigan with 250 semitrucks and was the first in the States to implement the EPA’s 2010 near-zero emissions standards in 2009.

• Nestlé is investing around $110M by 2030 in logistics to reduce emissions for its water brands (S. Pellegrino, Acqua Panna and Perrier). They plant on optimizing routes, utilizing more train transport, increasing the use of alternative fuels, and testing innovative transportation options.

• New Balance is doubling down on its commitment to manufacturing in America with a proposed $65M expansion of its facility in Maine, which was originally purchased in 1981 and produced 500,000 pairs of shoes in 2022 alone.

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🛒 CPG

• Barilla has purchased Back to Nature from B&G Foods. The pasta maker is seeking to beef up its bakery platform in the US. Back to Nature makes plant-based cookies, granola, crackers, and trail-mix.

• Wellness has never been hotter. Heyday has raised $12 million as a follow-on investment by their investor Level 5 Capital Partners. They currently operate 13 locations across the U.S. and plan to use the capital to open more. Makes sense too, the stores work. Heyday is estimating $100 million in gross sales by EOY 2023. According to their franchise brochure, the cost of its franchisees is around $574,000 with the average 1st year revenue ~$1.6 million, with $80,360 EBITDA. Not too shabby!

• The former head of the Yeezy-Adidas Innovation Lab, Omar Bailey, has raised an initial $6 million tranche round of financing for a new footwear prototyping lab and venture studio called FCTRY LAb. Bailey has over 20 years of product development and manufacturing experience, developing footwear for the likes of Jay-Z and Lady Gaga, and brands like Supreme and New Balance.

• Cabinet health has closed a $17 Million round of funding to further its mission of building a sustainable healthcare company. Global Impact Fund led the round, with Natureza and Unreasonable Group participating as well.

• The Nothing Phone is coming to the US in a beta program. The Nothing Company is known for it's minimalistic consumer tech products.

• According to a survey from the USDA released this week, sales of organic products in the US were up 13% in 2021 compared with 2019. The full 193 page report can be found here.

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💻 eCommerce

• Walmart has launched a new text-to-shop functionality after initially testing the service last year.

• The Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) has invested in the alcohol eComm platform Thirstie. While digital alcohol sales slowed in 2022, Thirstie expects online alcohol sales to scale in the coming years. A similar deal was made last year by Southern Glazer’s, the biggest alcohol distributor in the US, which acquired a stake in alcohol e-commerce platform Reserve Bar.

• An AI-based market research platform called Zappi has raised $170M from Sumeru Equity Partners and other investors. The platform today has around 350 clients including massive CPG companies like PepsiCo, McDonald’s, Heineken, and Reckitt Benckiser.

• Re-commerce continues to rake in investments. Beni, a free browser extension meant to assist shoppers in finding resale listings, announced $4 million in new seed funding led by Buoyant Ventures.

• A former Prime Video executive has launched Trendio, a video shopping app aiming to enhance the online beauty shopping experience.

• Kuona, a Mexico-based SaaS company, has just closed a $6M round of funding. The company is utilizing machine learning to help CPG brands and retailers optimize their promotions.

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🧐 Interesting reads and research

• How Coca-Cola turns to its Freestyle machine to create shelf-ready flavors (via Food Dive)

• Inside Sir James Dyson's Dyson-land (via WWD)

• Online grocery sales tumble in November (via Grocery Dive)

• How DTC CPG pantry startups are trying to hit the mainstream (via Modern Retail)

• How Ear Piercing And Earrings Brand Studs Found Success With Experiential Retail (via Forbes)

• Internal Study Slammed Amazon for Stress, Churn, Cut-Throat Atmosphere (via Business Insider)

• Fastest-Growing Emerging Brands on Instacart in 2022 (via Instacart)

  • Featuring some amazing brands like Slate Milk, Dream Pops, Belgian Boys, and Spudsy!

• Snaxshot #55: Market Your Sauce (via Snaxshot on the state of restaurant created CPG brands)

• Brands Are The New Media Companies and vice versa (via Kiva Dickinson)

• How to Take the Friction Out of Commerce | Case Study (via BOF)

• Dissociating at Costco by Brian Lange (via Archetypes Journal)

• Beauty’s Irresistible Allure (report via Placer.ai)

  • Some key findings

    • foot traffic remained between 13.4% and 30.9% higher than it was 3 years prior

    • Gen-Z has become a major driver of the segment’s growth

• 2022 Consumer Returns in the Retail Industry (via NRF)

  • Some key findings:

    • consumers are expected to return more than $816 billion worth of retail merchandise in 2022

    • for every $1 billion in sales, the average retailer incurs $165 million in merchandise returns

    • On average, retailers expect 17.9% of merchandise sold during the 2022 holiday season to be returned (around $171bn worth)

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🐦 Interesting Tweets

• Dave Greenfeld’s (founder of Dream Pops) thread on the current state of CPG.

• Matthew Bertulli (founder of Pela and Lomi) thread on the magic of Nespresso.

• Noah Friedman's thread on the history of prohibition 

• Le Labo at Costco

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Thanks for reading! I'll be back next week with more commerce news straight to your inbox. If you have any suggestions, feedback, or stories I missed, let me know! 

Nate :)