068 - What I'm Reading: Week of November 4th.
👋 Hello everyone.
🔗 Links in this newsletter route back to my blog or directly to the original content.
Thanks for reading The Juicy Byte! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
🚨 Exciting news, last week I launched the landing page for a startup I have been working on called Zaphouse read more below.
💭 This week: Discover Zaphouse, the Twitter shuffle, a personalized fragrance company launches, the broader consequences of changes to abortion law, palm payments come to China, monitoring water shortage from space, discoveries about Rheumatoid Arthritis & Huntington’s Disease, the female founder landscape and much more…
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
Since Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover last week users (& celebrities) have been leaving the platform, and joining Mastodon…Glossy is following how the beauty world is reacting…L’Oreal denies reports of suspending ads on the platform.
Somewhere Good is an audio-based social media meant to boost self-esteem and primarily serves people of color & queer individuals. It is based on inclusion and intention - values not engrained in other apps like Clubhouse [okayplayer]…and the one above.
TechCrunch: They’re not going to ban TikTok (but…)
🇨🇳 ⭐️ China released new regulations around celebrity endorsements to avoid scandal, making celebrities and entertainers responsible for the quality of products and services they choose to back.
Just for fun:
😵💫 This feels very relatable - A famous Mondrian piece has been hanging upside down for 75 years. In high school I gave a 45 minute presentation confidently mispronouncing the name of a drug (no one corrected me)…the memory lives rent-free in brain.
🐎 Less drama than last week’s sneaker news…sneakers for horses - hypebeast culture.
👩🎤 Celebrity BrandsIskra Lawrence’s personal care brand Saltair, incubated by The Center, launched into haircare [Instagram].
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
⭐️ 💥 Zaphouse - The acne/blemish opportunity is large - 80% of American experience acne, acne comes and goes throughout a lifetime, there are thousands of products marketed for acne/blemishes, yet navigating the world of acne is overwhelming. This is where Zaphouse comes in, it is the place for all things acne. Check out the short (3-question) survey, please share, and follow on social. ***Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to be involved [Instagram].
⭐️ 🇫🇷 Everyone is Jude - inclusive personal care & wellness products - offering bar soap, body lotion, fragrance, and ingestible supplements. This brand is just super cool 😎 [Instagram].
Element Eight, a premium skincare brand based on the power of oxygen, is selling three products - O2 Peptide, O2 Hyarulonic Acid, and O2 Squalane - each $250 (but you can sign up for a complimentary sample). One of the founders is the former president of Atelier Cologne [WWD].
🇨🇳 Jing Daily: Meet Ushopal -The Accelerator Bringing Niche Beauty Brands To China.
🇰🇷 The top ten trending skincare ingredients in Korea according to Spate.
💄 📉 BOF: ‘Lipstick Effect’ Starts Fading for Consumer Beauty Groups. Let’s just take a minute though to revisit how the ‘lipstick effect’ is a largely inflated myth.
🇬🇧 Clarins conducted a survey of 2,000 British Women to understand which products they would pass-on if money were tight.
👩🦱 HaircareNourie raised $2.5M for plant-based nutrient rich extensions for protective hairstyles that are better for the scalp [WWD].
Ulta is launching a private label hair brand called Nick Stenson - developed by Nick Stenson, Ulta’s current SVP of Store and Services Operations for Ulta Beauty. The line is launching online November 27th and includes shampoo, conditioner, oil, root lifter spray, leave-in conditioner, hair creme, dry shampoo, and hair sprays. According to the trademark filing, they intend on launching devices and potentially body products in the future.
👃 Fragrance:
🇨🇳 Jing Daily: Meet The Local Fragrance Brands Preparing To Go Global.
⭐️ 🕯 Scent Lab - a personalized fragrance startup launched this week starting with candles - check it out - and congratulations to Ariana!
💊 Supplements:
🇬🇧 Forever Full - a new gut-centric supplement startup, the powder contains your daily dose of probiotics, digestive enzymes, prebiotic fiber & plant extracts.
⭐️ 🍄 Alice - a line of functional chocolate infused with mushrooms. The packaging / branding is pretty awesome.
Waterdrop, known for their functional hydration cubes, expanded into sports with ‘Microlyte’ hydration boosting sugar & caffeine free cubes comes in three flavors and includes five electrolytes + nine vitamins to support endurance and recovery.
Mount Sunny, TCM supplements from an Arizona based wellness practitioners specializing in Eastern medicine.
🇬🇧 MyOva - a line of supplements for individuals with PCOS - expanding into skin/hair/nails and metabolism..
👩🔬 Femtech:
⭐️ The Titty Gritty: What VCs Need To Know About Investing In Breastfeeding Tech.
Midi a virtual menopause care startup, positioned as bringing expertise to ‘midlife care’ raised $14M in seed funding.
Planned Parenthood Direct, a free app that offers multiple birth control and medicinal services on-demand including birth control via pills, patches, or rings, as well as various medicines that treat urinary tract infections, and a range of morning-after pills for emergency situations.
Founders Factory: The changing policy landscape for Women's Health - Where are the opportunities for founders?
⭐️ NYT: The New Abortion Landscape.
NYT: OB-GYN Residency Programs Face Tough Choice on Abortion Training; for more on ripple effect of these implications see this article published in JAMA.
🛍 Retail:
🇨🇳 Jing Daily: China’s Retail Festivals Cheatsheet, Part 1 & Part 2.
🇨🇳 The role loyalty membership programs are playing in Single’s Day growth opportunities.
🇮🇳 YourStory on live commerce in India.
⭐️ 🇨🇳 ✋ Tencent’s big bet on palm payments - the technology is already being rolled out in China as evidenced by reports on Chinese social media channels [MIT Technology Review].
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and More...The the bipartisan FDA Modernization Act 2.0, proposes removing animals from early drug trials.
⭐️ CB Insights: Unbundling Diabetes - How tech is transforming the care and management of this disease.
Tiny Health - raised $4.5M to launch baby gut PCR-microbiome tests [Femtech Insider].
♻️ Sustainability: Sustainable DesignWired examines FabricNano’s solution to scaling plant-based plastic.
🇩🇪 Apeel is developing a technology to detect produce ripeness with a scan to help reduce food waste.
Plan A is helping companies track emissions and stick to climate pledges - cutting through the greenwashing [Wired]. Another great sustainability tracking startup is Bluebird Climate.
🇩🇪 🛰 Constellr is using satellites to monitor water availability and predict drought. The micro-satellites can check the earth’s temperature and in the future chemical composition [TechCrunch].
💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs...Perfect Corp went public via a SPAC…bold choice.
⚕️ Walgreens’ VillageMD is exploring a potential $5B merger with Summit Health (Summit finalized its merger with CityMD earlier this year). This would make Walgreens a serious health competitor with CVS.
Revlon is reportedly shopping for a sale.
Kering in talks to acquire Tom Ford.
🔬RESEARCH
⭐️ Codex Beauty Corporation received their fifth skin patent, this one entitled: Skin care compositions and methods for regulating sebum production, is for a topical targeting oil control, and contains a bacteriophage for P. acnes (which is actually quite interesting) [PR Newswire].
A new large-scale study in China, published in Nature Scientific Reports, reveals how geographical and regional environmental differences impact skin barrier quality, hydration, pH, melanin and more. 1092 women aged 22–42 years were recruited from 7 representative Chinese cities. Findings revealed women in the western region of China exhibited a better skin barrier, as indicated by high skin hydration and sebum secretion and a weakly acidic pH.
Research published in Science Translational Medicine, shows a strong link between a gut bacteria and rheumatoid arthritis [The Conversation].
⭐️ Researchers at the University of Washington St. Louis have uncovered a critical clue about Huntington’s Disease, a crippling hereditary neurodegenerative disease. Patients with symptomatic Huntingtons exhibit high levels of microRNA (specifically miR-29b-3p), which appears to significantly impair the autophagy process. Meaning, the process by which waste is removed from cells is essentially turned off, leading to pre-mature cell death. If a drug or therapy is developed which can block the production of miR-29b-3p, this could extend the life (and quality of life) of those living with this disease [Nature Neuroscience].
🧐 REPORTS
Pitchbook: All In - Female Founders in the US VC Ecosystem 2022.
🇨🇳 👁 Daxue Consulting: Demand for Eyecare in China.
CB Insights: State of Retail Tech Q3 ‘22.
🇨🇳 Samarkand Global: Understanding China’s Decentralized eCommerce Landscape.
⭐️ Visual Capitalist: The Top 100 Most Valuable Brands in 2022 [Summary]; Brand Finance: Global 500 2022 [Full Report].
⭐️ The Visual Capitalist: Ranked - Gen Z’s Favorite Brands, Compared with Older Generations.
ThingTesting: Best of ‘22 - Congratulations EXPERIMENT for being a ‘new & noteworthy’ brand.
🇮🇳 McKinsey: Decarbonizing India - Charting a pathway for sustainable growth.
GWI: Why People Work.
💡Enjoy,
-Anne