Amazon is revamping its grocery business across brick and mortar and e-commerce, Bloomberg reported.

Tony Hoggett, a former Tesco exec who is Amazon’s SVP of worldwide grocery stores, is leading the effort. “We’re serious about grocery,” he told Bloomberg.

Amazon is merging its e-commerce experience across Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, and Amazon.com into one online checkout experience. Yesterday, the company started allowing people without Prime subscriptions in certain US metro areas like Boston and Dallas to place online Amazon Fresh orders, and plans to expand the offer nationwide by the end of the year.

• It’s also adding more Whole Foods products in Amazon warehouses.

The e-commerce giant’s brick-and-mortar Amazon Fresh locations are also getting a refresh, offering a “bright and airy and light experience,” Hoggett said. Yesterday, it shared a “first look” at a redesigned Chicago store, featuring 1,500+ new products, lower prices, and new checkout options including self-checkout and updated Dash Carts. In addition to two in the Chicago area, Amazon is currently renovating three stores in Southern California.

• Amazon Fresh has been struggling: Last week, it cut hundreds of lower-level management positions across its stores, and is also facing several lease lawsuits.

Keep reading here.—EC

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Thanks for joining us again as we highlight a handful of startups looking to make it big. Not-so-fun fact: Nine in 10 startups fail, according to policy advisory and research firm Startup Genome. Here’s why these three believe they’re in the 10% that make it.

Time to show off: DTC period care startup August has had a busy 2023, which continued last week with the hiring of its first VP of marketing. The company bills itself as a gender-inclusive and sustainable period care brand and has brought on Diane Lewis to expand August’s retail channels and presence.

• Lewis has experience operating retail marketing for legacy and startup personal care companies, including Evereden, La Roche-Posay, and Aveeno.
• Earlier this year, August started placing its products on Target’s store shelves. With Lewis in the fold, August plans to do more of the same for the rest of the year, expanding its distribution in retail.

“We launched August at a time when people were realizing that the classic direct-to-consumer business model of relying on paid acquisition wasn’t creating sustainable businesses, and venture capital money was beginning to prioritize organic growth and profitability, two trends which are only more true today,” Nick Jain, co-founder of August, said in a statement.

Keep reading here.—KM

When students start their history classes again soon, chances are their clothes and backpacks will have some history, too. As interest in resale grows, and inflation continues to steal our lunch money, parents are saying they’ll be buying more secondhand items for the back-to-school shopping season.

According to a survey by decision intelligence company Morning Consult compared to last year, parents will be purchasing more resale items in several categories:

• Among 1,866 respondents, 8% plan to purchase used school supplies (like backpacks and binders), compared to 4% in 2022.
• This year, 14% plan to purchase used books, compared to 11% last year.
• Also, 12% plan to purchase used home goods, compared to 6% last year.

A survey for National Retail Federation from Prosper Insights & Analytics seconds the notion, with 39% of back-to-school and 35% of back-to-college shoppers saying that they’d consider buying used clothing and accessories this year.

Extra credit: Retailers, meanwhile, are getting out the pom-poms for resale.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Today’s top retail reads.

Good sports: Move over Adidas, Nike, et al.—luxury brands, including Burberry, Prada, and LVMH, are increasingly carving out space in the sports sponsorship landscape. (Modern Retail)

Tied up: Transportation company Yellow is no more and for the company’s truck drivers, finding work with similar advantages could prove challenging. (CNN)

Not taking a chance: When Trader Joe’s voluntarily recalled three of its products, it opened up a bigger conversation about how the government regulates food safety and how private companies regulate themselves. (Vox)

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The numbers you need to know.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but then again, numbers don’t lie.

While some retailers such as Kohl’s and Target report struggling in apparel and home goods, beauty is not only holding its own, but also holding up these companies’ financial outlooks.

• For example, beauty sales at Kohl’s jumped 150% YoY during the company’s first fiscal quarter.
• Beauty sales for Target grew in the mid-teens and was the company’s most profitable category.

A survey of 26,000 beauty shoppers found that 29% of consumers are spending more than $200 per month on beauty, up from 15% a year ago, according to Power Reviews.

• In the online and physical spaces, beauty shoppers are very willing to experiment: 35% say up to half of their digital purchases in the last year were for products they have never tried. That same figure was 40% for in-store shoppers.
• Nearly a third (31%) say new items are more than half of their online purchases in the past 12 months and 29% for brick-and-mortar consumers.

“Because of this evolution, marketing strategies and tactics that were effective in the past may not cut it for today’s beauty shoppers,” Power Reviews’s report reads. “Instead, beauty brands and retailers must adapt their strategies in order to attract, convert, and retain shoppers in a crowded marketplace.”