134 - What I'm Reading: Week of March 1st
A new acne supplement, a spiral designed tampon, new fragrance first detergents, subscription fatigue, Thrasio files for Chapter 11, how adults 'lurk' aka use Tiktok, Yelp on the 'Sheconomy' & more...
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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
Fast Company: Walmart isn’t buying Vizio for its hardware. It wants the TV maker’s ad business.
Maddyness: Unlocking your wardrobe — DHL Supply Chain and Reflaunt get together to transform fashion resale.
⭐️ rest of world: Riders in the smog - Rest of World equipped gig riders across South Asia with pollution monitors. The readings were off the charts
Just for fun:
Visual Capitalist: The richest people in the world in 2024.
Happiest cities in America…go to California or Hawaii…I’ll take Hawaii.
FlowingData: Feeling Rested with Age.
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
SickScience, an exosome based skincare brand. Their first product is a serum targeting the jaw & neck. The brand is founded by two Turkish Ph.D.s, Polen Koçak-Denizci, PhD & Merve Yildirim-Canpolat, PhD [Instagram]…the branding looks a lot like SpoiledChild from Oddity.
Antevorta Laboratories - feminine care products backed by TCM [Instagram].
PatPat Beauty - simplified beauty launching in April [Instagram].
RMS Beauty - enters into skincare broadening the range with oils, creams, and and a mist. The brand launched a tinted SPF this past summer [Instagram].
🇮🇪 Doctrine - a new skincare brand founded by three industry veterans - it is leaning on formulation expertise and sustainability…I have to say it feels a little bit like a parody with how much they are using religious wording. I guess if you are not a ‘science’ obsessed brand (in this case they are), you swing the other direction 🤷♀️ [Instagram].
🇸🇪 Meyenberg a cool Swedish soap & scent company (manufactured in France)- spotted in ThingTesting. The bottle shape immediately stood out to me. I initially thought, ‘oh how cool it can be flipped easily’. Then I realized the flipping doesn’t really matter since it is a pump design, so unless the bottom of the packaging is sloped on the inside it could get really annoying when the product is running low…strange [Instagram].
🇸🇪 Alvaret - a hand and body care line focused on distinctive fragrance, spotted in Thingtesting [Instagram].
👩🦱 Haircare:
Happy Hair People - a new haircare brand from SLG focused on ‘mood boosting scents’ exclusive to Target [Instagram].
Sadie B, a personal care line - starting with haircare described as “Girl Care for your physical & mental hygiene”. The brand offers haircare, bodycare, and body sprays - with four different lines: go-getter, adventurer, athlete, & creator (I’ve never seen creator focused products…so that is a first). The brand launched at Target this week [Instagram].
🦷 Oral Care:
Dr. Dento - a holistic line of oral care products out of India - offering electric toothbrushes, mouthwashes, and toothpastes in interesting flavors (like Matcha Green Tea hemp seed oil) [Instagram].
🧺 Homecare:
Snif, a popular scent company is launching into laundry [Instagram].
Bath & Body Works launches detergent & scent boosters [Instagram].
💊 Supplements:
Nutrafol, known for their haircare products, has launched a skincare supplement targeting acne & hormones [Instagram].
AndRepeat, a wellness company founded by Jayme Cyk launched a supplement for focus along with a number of pricey pill boxes [Instagram].
👩🔬 Femtech:
⭐️ Sequel - a new spiral tampons design by two Stanford athletes [Instagram].
Pelvital announces landmark study demonstrating efficacy of Flyte® device in treating stress urinary incontinence [PR Web].
🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...
⭐️ HBS: With subscription fatigue setting in, companies need to think hard about fees.
US e-commerce market to reach US$580B by 2027 [Parcel & Postal Technology International].
Beauty Independent: McKinsey & Co. - consumers expected to pull back on skincare and makeup purchases this year.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...
Wired: A new startup wants to turn the sugar you eat into fiber
Americans eat too much sugar. Food tech company Zya is developing a substance to add to sweet foods that can convert some of that sugar into fiber in the digestive system.
Samsung just launched a wearable ring to help track sleep; many think Apple will launch their version soon.
The Verge: No, smartwatches and smart rings can’t measure blood glucose yet.
The Guardian: Binge watchers more likely to need multiple night-time loo breaks – study.
🇮🇳 HerStory: Women are battling a self-care deficit, but there are ways to change this — Compared with married men, Indian women spend 82 minutes fewer on themselves in a day. However, there are ways to address this longstanding problem, say experts.
♻️ Sustainability: Sustainable Design
💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs, Bankruptcies, Closings...
BoF: Matter of Fact lays off remaining staff. They raised $16M since 2018, and were listed in Sephora as of August 2023.
⭐️ TechCrunch: Thrasio, once king of e-commerce aggregation, files for Ch.11…yikes
🔬RESEARCH
New research shows how through epigenetic editing versus genomic editing - researchers were able to reduce cholesterol in mice. This is believed to be far less risky than potentially damaging a strand of DNA where major changes can be made to health [Nature].
👁️ A new study out of UCL found that certain inherited eye diseases leading to blindness are linked to harmful gut bacteria and could be treated with antibiotics. The CRB1 gene, which is expressed in the retina, and is linked to the building of the blood-retina barrier. A specific mutation in this gene compromises barriers in the retina and gut resulting in bacteria from the gut leaking into the retina which causes lesions that lead to blindness [Cell].
🧐 REPORTS
⭐️ Pew Research Center: How U.S. Adults Use TikTok.
⭐️ McKinsey: Consumers — Spending more to buy less.
🇨🇳 Savills: Retail Trends 2024.
Deloitte: Can investors help women’s health break through the glass ceiling?Deloitte’s analysis of health tech investment trends reveals an increased focus on women's health, but challenges remain.
🌏 GWI: Gen Z in Asia — Charting the trends of APAC’s young consumers.
💡 Enjoy,
-Anne