Lessons on bootstrapping in beauty

Author

Stephen Babcock
December 06, 2022

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Shama Patel founded Clean Your Dirty Face as a facial bar franchise. In seven years, it has expanded not only by adding locations in more cities, but also through the launch of clean beauty products. In a Q&A with The Current, Patel shared how she’s grown the business without taking outside investment, the importance of customer research and three rules to live by.

At the world’s largest food and beverage company, digital transformation has taken ecommerce from 8% of overall sales in 2018 to 15% today. To reach 25% by 2025, Nestlé will draw on tools like e-content studios, personalization, a 50% boost in digital marketing and collaborative robots. – Digital Commerce 360

In this week’s look at investment and M&A news, a longtime Whole Foods tastemaker closes a new fund to invest in early-stage food and beverage brands, while logistics technology continues to pick up steam with investors and ecommerce unicorns are seeing valuations fly even higher. Plus, news from Everlane, Nestlé and Intermix.

Retail Dive offers a rangy and thought-provoking look at where Amazon might go next at a time of cost-cutting and social commerce. Among many takeaways, it’s worth taking a step back to note how much other retailers such as Walmart and Target have done to ramp up ecommerce in recent years – in many cases with pages from Amazon’s playbook. – Retail Dive

Here’s the view of inflationary shopper behavior from the country’s largest pure-play grocer. Consumers are “changing,” said Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, but that doesn’t mean they are shifting spend away from food. Rather, they are eating out less, trading down for savings in store brands and responding to promotions. 

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