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Many roll-up businesses promised to buy successful Amazon businesses and flip them to make an updated e-commerce portfolio strategy. But then, some of the biggest players that had raised hundreds of millions of dollars reportedly had layoffs and stopped scooping up new brands. Forum Brands' Brenton Howland spoke about the current state of aggregators and why his business is still acquiring Amazon brands.
OpenStore launched in 2021, with the idea to use proprietary technology to suss out which online brands have the most upside. It's raised over $130 million both in venture capital and debt. E-commerce brands can go to OpenStore's website and share their Shopify data with the portfolio company. Co-founder Michael Rubenstein joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the current state of e-commerce portfolio companies and why he thinks OpenStore is poised for success.
At Digiday Media's Commerce Week -- held both virtually and in New York City -- business leaders from many different industries came together to talk shop. Some had solutions, others problems that needed to be fixed. We kept our ear to the ground to hear some of the biggest pain-points executives said and compiled it here.
According to new research, more people in the United States seem to be comfortable with watching digital livestreams and making purchases from them.
As e-commerce growth begins to sputter, Amazon is starting to refine its fulfillment strategy. In the past two weeks, the company made two big announcements, which, in some ways, may seem at odds with each other.
The key to DTC towel brand Weezie's success is staying in its lane -- or, bathroom. That's according to co-founder Lindsey Johnson who joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast. The company, which makes luxury bath towels along with other bathroom-related products like bathrobes and bathmats, has seen year-over-year growth and said late last year that it was on track to hit eight figures in revenue in 2021.
Called Shopify Audiences, this tool lets brands choose products in their catalogs that they want to put in front of shoppers that are more likely to make a purchase. Using machine learning, the Audiences tool creates essentially a lookalike audience for that product that can then be deployed on advertising platforms.
Less than a year ago, a number of businesses made headlines by raising astronomical amounts of capital under the promise that they would find the best Amazon brands, buy them out and add them to their own portfolios. Some claimed to be the next Procter & Gamble -- and touted sophisticated data analysis as a way to assess which brands would be the best to scoop up and grow. But things have changed over the last few months.
At the Modern Retail DTC Summit, held last week in New Orleans, General Mills' global e-commerce lead of DTC Carter Jensen took to the stage to talk about how he approaches his role. That conversation was recorded for this week's Modern Retail Podcast.
Amazon has transformed from anathema to DTC brands to an integral part of their playbooks. This was apparent at the Modern Retail DTC Summit, held this week in New Orleans.
Bokksu, which connects U.S. customers with Japanese snacks, is still bullish on subscription boxes, according to its founder and CEO Danny Taing. The company, which first launched in 2016, began by offering a subscription box that featured Japanese snacks that were never before available in the U.S.
For the kitchen brand W&P, it's been a good time to home products space. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, W&P president Kate Lubenesky spoke about how the company has evolved and grown. "We had great growth in 2020 and 2021," she said.
The grocery delivery wars are in full force, and platforms like Gopuff are trying to differentiate themselves with both customers and brands. With that, Gopuff has been trying to businesses to include the delivery platform in more of their marketing campaigns. A Gopuff pitch deck sent to brands last year, which Modern Retail recently obtained, showcases these efforts.
Modern Retail surveyed brands and retailers about their financial performances over the last year along with what they expect to see in the year to come. More than two-thirds of the self-described traditional brands, as opposed to those that consider themselves primarily direct, said they saw increased revenue from a variety of channels.
Vitruvi rebranded last month with new packaging centered on helping consumers better understand scent profiles in store. Now, Vitruvi's plans to center customer acquisition in store: the brand is inking new retailer partnership deals and launching new products to appeal to a broader array of retailers.
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