When it comes to new CPG products, it’s survival of the fittest. About 30,000 new items—enough to fill an entire grocery store—debut every year, but just 30% actually notch growth two years post-launch (or just keep them steady), per NielsenIQ.

Bold Strategies, an e-commerce strategy and services firm, wants to help companies beat the odds with BoldLabs, a new division that it debuted in May.

• Its Digital Test Market service does what the name suggests: It tests a brand’s new products online first—be it on Amazon’s or Walmart’s marketplaces, or a custom Shopify site—tweaking prices and marketing over several weeks to six months to find the perfect formula for a wider launch.
• It already works with 30+ brands to help introduce new items to shoppers.

“At the end of the day, what you’re trying to do is, you’re trying to delight consumers, right? And you’re trying to give them something that they like better,” said Horacio Trevino, the CPG industry vet heading up BoldLabs.

But there’s a lot of potential risk associated with a wide launch of new products—the cost of manufacturing, the marketing dollars, and the bad taste (literal or metaphorical) left in the consumers’ mouths by a not-so-great product.

• Trevino understands the process, having spent 20+ years at Procter & Gamble, including leading marketing for the $9 billion biz at its US Walmart stores.

“You can also affect your retail relationships,” he told Retail Brew. “If it doesn’t go well, the Walmarts of the world could be like, ‘Hey, your brand is not working.’”

Trial run

There are two “old ways” of testing products:

• Quantitative simulations using claimed purchase data—basically, asking consumers if they’d pay $34.99 for X product—or…
• Testing in secondary in-store placements, a move that’s costly, slow, or could have geographical bias based on where you choose to test, Trevino noted.

BoldLabs is taking a slightly different approach, with a playbook that includes three steps: “assess, build, and grow,” according to Trevino.

First, it takes a company’s product and evaluates factors like category, size, competitors, and pricing. Then, it offers “recommendation for differentiation,” he explained—be it another flavor or price point—to create a product listing.

“We become your e-commerce department or, in this case, e-commerce innovation department,” he said.

Click here to keep reading.—EC

Milk has quite the journey from the farm to your cereal bowl, and with the help of new funding, one (aptly named) company is hoping to make it as smooth as possible.

Milk Moovement, a cloud-based dairy supply-chain software platform, today announced it secured $20 million in Series A funding, led by VMG Catalyst.

• The company closed a $3.1 million seed round in April 2021.

CEO and co-founder Robert Forsythe told Retail Brew the company is working to streamline the “bare bones” dairy-supply chain, where stakeholders across farming, trucking, lab testing, and processing plants each use their own systems (which, in some cases, is “pen and paper”).

“No one can actually really agree on how much milk is in transit at any given time, or what’s the value of that milk, or how many trucks are on the way to one plant because everyone’s using a different software,” Forsythe said.

• With experience in gas and oil supply chain, he teamed up with Milk Moovement’s co-founder and chief product officer, Jon King, previously a technical support analyst for a Canadian dairy co-op, to start the company in 2018.

Moo-ving forward: Milk Moovement offers tools from route tracking and quality monitoring to producer payment. It currently works with 2,500 dairy farms, like United Dairymen of Arizona and California Dairies, and manages 30 billion pounds of raw milk—that’s 15% of the US dairy market—annually, it noted in a release. It’s seen its revenue grow 10x over the past year, Forsythe said, but declined to share specific figures.

• The startup will use new funding to add 20+ new employees to its 55-person team, particularly in engineering, Forsythe noted.
• He added he hopes to hit 5,000 dairy farm users and 50 billion pounds of raw milk managed this year.

Spilled milk: The company also aims to limit food waste and profit loss, he said. Milk has about 72 hours to go from cow to a CPG company’s processing plant, so if there’s change in demand or a back-up at a plant, the supply chain can be flexible, Forsythe noted.

“These CPG companies have the data—they know whether Greek yogurt is going to spike in three months,” he said. “But unfortunately, the supply chain isn’t able, at this point, to meet that changing demand quickly. And that’s what we believe we can do.”—EC

Remember when out-of-stock messages were the norm as retailers struggled to get products due to supply-chain challenges? Well, companies big and small are now tackling a different issue: excess inventory.

From Walmart to Target to Gap, retailers are hard pressed to find a solution, as consumer spending has dropped due to inflation and shopping habits have shifted as people go back to the Before Times.

Enter: Liquidity Services, a B2B online marketplace for returned and overstocked goods. With seven distribution facilities across North America, the company today opened its eighth in Hebron, Kentucky, as it sees an uptick in surplus stuff and e-comm returns since the pandemic.

• Liquidity’s stock ranges from clothing to furniture to electronics, and more.
• It currently handles and resells five to 10 million units a month—its buyers are mostly discount retailers and eBay resellers—with its peak season being post-holiday returns.

“Usually our facilities are maxed out during the winter,” Jeff Rechtzigel, VP of retail at Liquidity Services, told Retail Brew. “Then this time of year, they slow down a bit until the holiday season kicks back in. We haven’t seen that slowdown this year; we’ve been running very high output all the way through the holidays until now.”—JS

Today’s top retail reads.

Mixed bag: How self-checkout became so ubiquitous even though it has so few fans. “The rationale was economics-based, and not focused on the customer,” said Sylvain Charlebois of Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University. “From the get-go, customers detested them.” (CNN)

Jean mapping: American Eagle steps up its logistics operations, which may eclipse its clothing business someday. (Business of Fashion)

Tossing and returning: The challenge of finding sustainable solutions when it comes to returning big, bulky mattresses. (Retail Dive)

to brand loyalty: Building trust with consumers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond starts with honesty and authenticity. Wunderkind’s Market Outlook Report breaks down ways to drive customer loyalty and increase revenue. Get the insights here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Introducing Retail Brew’s newest debut ::drumroll:: The Sku: A Retail Brew Summit. FOMO is real, friends.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

• Meeting demand and maximizing profit
• Managing your organization across channels
• Creating omni-channel engagement with customer journeys
• Sustainability: who is doing what and how?
• Using technology to drive sales

Early-bird pricing ends soon! Register now to save your seat (and some $$). Only $499 for a limited time!

What happened in the world of retail this week in…1937 and beyond? Retail Brew takes you way, way, way back.

Are you primed for all the retail history we’re about to drop?

• On July 12, 1976, Sol and Robert Price opened the first Price Club—the warehouse chain that would would merge with Costco in 1993—in a remodeled San Diego airplane hangar, which is now Costco warehouse #401.
• On July 13, 1937, Krispy Kreme began selling its donuts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
• On July 15, 1997, Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace was shot and killed outside his mansion in Miami Beach, Florida. He was 50 years old.
• Also on July 15, but in 2015, Amazon held its first Prime Day, which, back then, was just one day, across nine countries. Among the most popular items sold (that will really bring you back)? Unrated edition Blu-rays of Fifty Shades of Grey, of which 12,000 were snapped up.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• A look back at the Great Recession and how it changed the retail landscape
• See ya, sweatpants: sales of dressy clothing are surging
• What does it mean for a company to use a ‘Made in USA’ label?