Investment dollars flow to water brands

Author

Stephen Babcock
October 04, 2022

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There are plenty of notable deals in this week’s roundup of funding and M&A news. To name a few: Poshmark is set to be acquired for $1.2 billion, canned water brand Liquid Death is valued at $700 million and there’s a notable resurgence of activity among ecommerce rollups as they bring on DTC brands in skincare, home goods and sustainability.

At a time when rising prices are putting a strain on consumers, Amazon is looking to showcase how it offers options such as payment with SNAP EBT, a layaway program and coupons. This will all live in one place at Amazon Access. Monday’s launch included a rebrand for its discounted Prime membership, which is now called Prime Access.

Macy’s joined a number of longtime retailers in launching a digital marketplace last week. For analysis on why a marketplace is an appealing move and its prospects for success, The Current caught up with Riverbend Consulting’s Joe Zalta. With more products being added, one challenge will be to keep it simple for consumers.

Brands have to produce lots of content. Can AI help take off some of the workload? Adore Me worked with a tech firm to use natural language generation technology for writing content. The sweet spot? “Anything that is repetitive and highly structured such as the hundreds of Google search ads, press releases, and product descriptions the company outputs per month,” writes RIS News.

The rise of NFTs in recent years has opened up possibilities to create markets around digital goods that are owned and exchanged entirely over the internet. Now, ecommerce hubs are launching new tools for digital collectibles such as art and sports memorabilia. A Monday announcement from Walmart detailing the creation of a new platform called AutoT followed moves from eBay and Meta. One question for the near future: Will collectibles cross digital and physical forms?

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