052 - What I'm Reading: Week of July 15th.
👋 Hello everyone.
🔗 Links in this newsletter route back to my blog or directly to the original content.
⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
💭 The future of subscription models coming for your car, the startups rethinking battery recycling and mining, the challenges of data and Roe v. Wade, Amazon’s interest in cancer, Gen Z’s search engine preference, tracking brand boycotts in China, & the future of inclusion a great report from Wunderman Thompson.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
🇮🇳 India is expected to surpass China as the most populous country in 2023.
Retail Brew dives into BoldLabs and how they are de-risking CPG through their digital test market approach.
🚗 BMW’s new subscription services including one for your seat heaters raised some eyebrows. Here is a look at other car-related subscriptions currently on the market.
⭐️ According to an executive at Google, ~40% of Gen Z prefer using TikTok and Instagram for search instead of Google Search or Maps.
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
🇨🇳 Jing Daily on the new beauty trends and the brands leading the way in China.
Reset is a cosmeceutical grade skincare line, with topical products and tools. The topicals must be mixed prior to activation, and are using a similar premise that other brands are tapping into — efficacy degrades over time.
🇯🇵 ☀️ mgb skin is a Japanese brand from megbaby, one of their products is a unique sunscreen cushion format for easy reapplication over make-up.
Sood a UK based startup selling waterless (powder based) body wash.
💊 Supplements:
♀ Looni, a period care startup, founded by Tatiana Steele & Chelsea Leyland launched earlier this week with their first product Balance Beam Mood Complex, a hormone balancing supplement.
Kion offers aminos to support muscle recovery through research backed supplements.
🇯🇵 Unomi is a Japanese supplement startup offering capsules to enhance beauty from within - the supplements include anti-aging, whitening, and women’s health.
🇳🇿 Manukora, a New Zealand based honey brands, is focused on honey as a supplement. They offer herbal immunity supplements which are a blend of adaptogens and honey with increased immunity benefits.
👩🔬 Femtech:
⭐️ ProPublica dives into how U.S. HIPAA laws have not kept up with technology & innovation including home paternity tests, fitness trackers or health apps - which is why period tracking apps are falling through the cracks when it comes to medical privacy.
⭐️ The impact Roe V. Wade will have on innovation for wearables and women’s health.
💊 The FDA in the U.S. is considering a Paris pharmaceutical firms application for an OTC birth control pill. Birth control pills in the US require a prescription, if approved, this would be a step forward easing access to the pill.
🛍 Retail:
A call for luxury brands to take Web3 more seriously, thinking beyond NFTs and short term hype, with a focus on strategizing around what it means when the internet is closed.
⎍ Amazon Prime is reportedly not growing due to price increases.
⭐️ Despite recent reports citing US e-commerce sales will exceed $1 Trillion dollars, three-quarters of most retail sales are still estimated to take place in-store until 2024. An article in Fast Company discusses why physical retail stores are more important than ever for consumer connections.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and More...Arise is a virtual eating disorder clinic focused on mental health, with the goal to serve those who are often overlooked or do not have access to care. Read more about the founders and their approach here.
⭐️ 💉 Amazon is reportedly partnering with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer center to discover vaccines for skin and breast cancer.
A team of researchers at the University of California Irvine have developed a self-charging, battery free wearable capable of monitoring heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure.
⭐️ LabCorp announced they are launching a new type of blood test called Neurofilament Light Chain (NfL), which will identify a key biomarker for neuronal damage, and help in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and concussions.
♻️ Sustainability: Sustainable Design🔋 The startups betting on battery recycling, as we gear up for an EV future. Mercedes Benz just invested in a Canadian startup, Moment Energy, who is repurposing EV batteries to provide rechargeable power to commercial and industrial buildings.
🔋 ♻️ ⚡️The Atlantic on mineral mining for batteries and the startups retrieving minerals from batteries to make clean energy infinitely recyclable.
🔬RESEARCH
🦷 🤖 University of Pennsylvania researchers developed a microrobot system to efficiently clean teeth and kill harmful bacteria.
🥶 An implant capable of sending cooling signals to block peripheral nerve pain, could be the future of a non-opioid alternative to pain management.
🧠 💭 Researchers at Rockefeller University published findings in Nature findings showing how memory storage/formation and memory recall are two distinct pathways, where information is stored differently, an unlock for potentially better understanding memory recall disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease.
⭐️ 🇯🇵 Researchers in Japan discovered the protein Piezo1 is linked to skin stiffening and the preservation of interfollicular epidermal stem cells— the loss of which is associated with aging. Removal of the protein slowed the aging of the skin, potentially leading to new forms of therapies to reduce skin-aging.
🧐 REPORTS
⭐️ Wunderman Thompson: Inclusion’s Next Wave.
🇨🇳 Daxue Consulting: China’s Gen Z Hair Loss Market.
McKinsey: The State of Customer Care in 2022.
CB Insights: State of Venture Q2 2022.
Wunderkind: Market Outlook for Holiday 2022.
⭐️ 🇨🇳 Swedish National China Center: Purchasing with the Party - Chinese consumer boycotts of foreign companies, 2008–2021. Findings from this study reveal that 78 companies have been boycotted in China since 2016 a 6X increase compared to the prior eight years, largely due to increased nationalism and political tension.
💡Enjoy,
-Anne