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Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits names a VP of omnichannel

Paul Demery — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 17:22:30 +0000

Family-owned Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits is out to gain market share by enhancing its collaboration with buyers and trading partners through digital and offline channels.

It took a significant step in that direction yesterday in announcing several appointments to key positions including vice presidents in ecommerce and omnichannel development, customer and supplier relations, and national retail sales.

“These teams continue to evolve under the National Accounts umbrella, enabling Southern Glazer’s to remain the strategic thought partner to grow these categories and gain market share,” Southern Glazer’s said in statement.

Southern Glazer omnichannel development

Robyne Eldridge, vice president, omnichannel development, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

Robyne Eldridge is the new vice president for omnichannel development. In addition, she will continue to lead digital B2C operations, development of ecommerce business priorities, and supplier integration.

Included among her duties is leading “B2C deliverables for digital-first eCommerce Business Priorities development,” the company says, adding: “The B2C Omnichannel team creates targeted goals to grow ecommerce sales and share for our suppliers. Digital allows us to support suppliers’ brick-and-mortar program priorities and also amplify support with digital-only opportunities.”

“Robyne oversees a team of B2C omnichannel ecommerce sales directors that work closely with our national accounts teams to find ways to grow sales and share for our suppliers at our most ecommerce enabled national accounts,” a spokeswoman says. “Robyne also oversees a new digital Center of Excellence to provide digital insights in this fast-evolving space and also support the integration of omnichannel capabilities throughout the 100+ person national accounts organization.”

Eldridge joined Southern Glazer’s in December 2019 and most recently served as vice president, B2C ecommerce for national and regional accounts.

Eldridge will report to Chris Williams, executive vice president of national accounts.

Reporting to Eldridge will be:

Sam Raia, senior director, omnichannel development;
DarShanna Smith, senior director, Amazon sales;
Sarah Twitchell, director, liquor channel;
Brennan Duke, director, mass market, club and drug channels;
Jennifer Bailein, director, grocery sales.

Customer and trade development

Ryan Saas has been promoted to vice president of customer and trade development for national retail sales and on-premise sales. In his new role, he will drive supplier relations and manage Southern Glazer’s NRS business with support from customer development category experts. Saas will report to Williams.

National retail sales

JR Allen has been promoted to vice president, NRS Commercial Operations. He will work on demand forecasting, inventory and execution.

Nicolle Nottingham has been appointed senior director of GoBrands. She will work on strengthening and fostering national strategy with national retail sales suppliers.

Allen and Nottingham will report to Scott Moore, senior vice president of national accounts off-premise.

Center of Excellence

Adam Byrne has been appointed vice president, customer planning and development for Southern Glazer’s Center of Excellence. His duties will include focusing on the COE’s Elevate program, which recommends branded merchandise to customers. He will report to Williams.

In July, Southern Glazer’s hired ecommerce veteran Alan Wizemann as its chief digital officer. In prior roles, he worked in digital operations for Munchkin Inc., Target.com and Lululemon Athletic.

Southern Glazer’s racked up $3 billion in digital sales last year on its B2B ecommerce platform SGProof.com.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Why a serial ecommerce entrepreneur bought Blue Apron

Mark Brohan — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 22:04:15 +0000

A pioneer in the food delivery ecommerce business is soon to be owned by one the most famous empire builders in online retailing.

Blue Apron is an online retailer that helped to create the meal planning and ingredients ecommerce market. It has been acquired in a stock deal valued at about $103 million.

Wonder Group acquires Blue Apron

Blue Apron is being sold to Wonder Group, an online food-to-home delivery company, founded by serial ecommerce entrepreneur Marc Lore.

Lore pioneered combining digital community with ecommerce with the launch of Diapers.com in 2005. Amazon.com later bought the ecommerce business for $545 million in 2011. From 2011 until 2016, Lore next launched Jet.com, a general merchandise and shoppers club. Walmart acquired Jet.com for $3.3 billion in 2016 and named Lore as president of Walmart.com.

He worked at Walmart until 2021 and then went on to start Wonder Group. Lore’s Wonder Group is now acquiring Blue Apron to build out its business-to-consumer ecommerce model for home food delivery and meal preparation.

“Wonder is creating the mealtime super app, serving a broad range of occasions that feature cuisines from some of the world’s best chefs and restaurants while leveraging our culinary engineering and vertically integrated model,” Lore says. “At-home meals play a key role in this vision and have been on our strategic roadmap since the beginning.”

Why does Marc Lore want Blue Apron?

With the acquisition of Blue Apron, Wonder Group is purchasing a company that processed more than 8 million orders for more than 350,000 customers in 2022. It will give Wonder Group a bigger base to expand and diversify its online food delivery operation.

“When the opportunity presented itself to unite with Blue Apron, pioneers in the meal kit industry, we knew it would accelerate our strategic position (and) create immediate opportunities for synergy,” Lore says.

Under the terms of the merger agreement, Wonder will acquire all outstanding shares of Blue Apron Class A common stock for $13.00 per share in cash. The companies expected to close the transaction by the end of December.

“The transaction delivers immediate and certain value for Blue Apron stockholders at a significant premium over recent trading prices,” says CEO Linda Findley.

Blue Apron generated revenue in 2022 of $458.5 million. That’s down 3% from $470.4 million in 2021. It had actively been looking for a buyer, according to various industry financial reports.

Blue Apron is No. 195 in the Top 1000. The database ranks the largest online retailers in North America by web sales.

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Infographic: General Mills incentivizes customers through mobile app Fetch

Gretchen Salois — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 15:15:18 +0000

The days of the print-out coupons are in the past as General Mills has gone 95% digital this year, says KC Glaser, senior manager of brand experience.

“We want to meet the consumer where they are, and they prefer digital experiences — but it’s also really good for our business,” Glaser says. “We get so much more data to inform our future plans and marketing choices from a performance marketing perspective.”

General Mills can be more flexible by offering digital promotions, Glaser says. This includes incentivizing the consumer to take action when they’re most likely to convert.

“How do we build those relationships with consumers?” asks Glaser.

One way General Mills is building incentives for customers is through the Fetch rewards mobile app. Consumers download the Fetch app and create an account. They take photos of their grocery shopping receipts from in-store or online shopping and upload them to the app.

Consumers earn points they can redeem for gift cards. Eligible receipts that have at least one participating brand may receive at least 35 points. Each dollar is worth one point. 1,000 Fetch rewards points are worth $1, for example, and consumers need to reach 3,000 points in order to redeem for gift cards at stores including Starbucks, Macy’s, Amazon, Nordstrom Rack and Home Depot as well as for Visa cards. Fetch charges participating retailers like General Mills a referral fee.

Brand loyalty: What it is and how to build it

There is a lot of data exchanged between Fetch and General Mills, Glaser says.

“We get a ton of data from the Fetch partnership — about 62 million lines of data per day,” he says.

That data feeds into the brand’s customer data platform (CDP), which is a software platform that collects first-party data from multiple sources to help brands create targeted and personalized marketing campaigns.

“Loyalty programs are something that the consumer packaged goods (CPG) space isn’t necessarily ubiquitous — it’s something not all CPGs have nailed,” Glaser says. “We wanted to be intentional. What does that look like? How does it come to life?”

In March 2023, General Mills said it had added 2 million customers to its Good Rewards loyalty program with Fetch within the first six months of launch.

Consumer engagement experience

Fetch has about 18 million monthly active users, with 6 million of those using the app every day, says Robin Wheeler, the chief revenue officer at Fetch. In April 2023, the rewards app said it had surpassed $152 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV) across U.S. in-store and online retail sales.

“Fetch isn’t your traditional kind of shopping app,” Wheeler says. “It’s a consumer engagement experience.”

A larger portion of consumers are Millennials and Gen Z, Wheeler says.

“The younger generation is definitely coming to Fetch and I think a lot of that is tied to the experiences they’re seeing on social media,” Wheeler says.

Fetch rewards: adding brands

Fetch shares its general merchandise value scanned daily, Wheeler says. Fetch employees also track potential opportunities.

“We’re reading the trades and keeping up to speed on industries,” she says. “If we’re seeing national brands start to compete with a certain brand of deodorant, for example, our primary goal is to focus on where we’re seeing a lot of activity where we’re not currently rewarding consumers. Because that’s low hanging fruit.”

The company uses this information as it attempts to build relationships with other brands.

“There are plenty of big companies we haven’t started working with, and we need to be there,” she says.

This includes providing carousel information displayed at the top of the app that consumers see when they open it. Whether the promotion is about back to school or another busy shopping period, brands also want to include their offers and create more consumer awareness.

Fetch also has daily spin feature where consumers can obtain a daily reward.

Brands use influencers to reach new customers

This includes learning about the app from social media influencers, Wheeler says.

Fetch can share with brands what consumers are spending based on the receipts they upload to the app. Brands can target consumers, whether they’re loyal customers or “competitive buyers, which you have a to work a little bit harder for,” Wheeler says.

Fetch works with influencer agencies to source talent, Wheeler says. The company monitors influencer content and when it finds the right fit, it reaches out with affiliate links.

While the majority of Fetch receipts are in-store, Wheeler says online receipt uploads are growing.

“We have integrations with Amazon and Walmart,” Wheeler says. “We also have emailed receipts. If we have your email integrated and you order from DoorDash, we’re able to scan and pick up that receipt. So emailed receipts are definitely growing.”

Consumers can connect their Fetch account to their email, Amazon and Walmart accounts to earn Fetch rewards.

Fetch social

61% of Fetch monthly active users engaged with social features during July, up from 24% in January.
Daily Reward launched in December 2022. Consumers have played daily rewards over 222 million plays since then.
People who engage with social features/in-app games are more likely to scan receipts every day and have retention rates around 4-5 points higher than cohorts that don’t engage with these features.

Fetch eReceipts

On average in 2023, about 10% of all receipts submitted to Fetch were eReceipts.
About 29% of Fetch users who scan receipts also submit eReceipts.
Top retailers include Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, Walgreens, McDonald’s, Starbucks.

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Costco ecommerce sales improve compared with previous quarters, but still down overall

Abbas Haleem — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 20:28:56 +0000

Costco Wholesale Corp. reported that its ecommerce sales dipped slightly but were essentially flat in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 3, 2023. The retailer’s total sales, however, grew 9.4% in the quarter.

Costco is No. 6 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers.

Costco ecommerce sales

Although Costco did not provide a dollar amount for its ecommerce sales, it said they decreased 0.8% year over year. Costco ecommerce sales for the fiscal year decreased 5.7% compared with 2022.

Food and sundries also led the retailer’s ecommerce sales, “with fresh foods right behind and some offsets on some of the non-foods categories,” said Richard Galanti, chief financial officer, in the retailer’s fourth-quarter earnings call. Sundries are small, miscellaneous items.

“Results showed good improvement this quarter versus our year-over-year results in Q2 and Q3,” he added.

Galanti also said some product category ecommerce sales decreased 15% to 20% year over year in Costco’s fiscal second and third quarters. Those included:

Home furnishings
Small electronics
Jewelry
Hardware

However, compared with Costco’s fiscal fourth quarter last year, these sales decreased just 5% this year. Those big-ticket departments comprised more than half of Costco ecommerce sales in the quarter, Galanti said. Online appliance sales grew 30% in the quarter as well.

He also said he has been getting calls about Costco selling one-ounce gold bars on its website.

“Yes, but when we load them on the site, they’re typically gone within a few hours and we limit two per member,” Galanti said.

Galanti said Instacart shoppers do not count toward Costco ecommerce sales because Instacart employees enter the retail stores to shop, purchase at the register, then take the order to their customers. Instacart sales do not count toward Costco mobile ecommerce sales either, he said.

Costco mobile ecommerce

“We’re always asked about this,” Galanti said.

Costco redesigned parts of its mobile ecommerce website, he said. It also redesigned its account page and the digital membership card, he said. And it also redesigned the header with a larger search bar and expanded selling space.

“We’ve added an app box for messages and advertisements right in the app,” Galanti said. A few months ago, Costco “opened an optical digital store where you can virtually try on glasses and then order them for pickup — prescription glasses.”

Costco app

The retailer has also worked to improve its in-warehouse shopping tools on its app, Galanti said. That includes:

Digital membership card
Managing shopping lists
Viewing warehouse savings
Seeing gas prices (if the location has a gas station)
Searching warehouse inventory
Scanning barcodes from the app

“With the improvements made thus far over the past year, our app store rating has gone from a dismal 2.3 stars to currently 4.7 stars,” Galanti said.

Unique visitors to the Costco ecommerce site increased 40% year over year in the fiscal fourth quarter, he said. Meanwhile, Costco app installs increased 46% year over year.

Costco Next

Galanti said the retailer is also working on growing Costco Next.

Costco Next is the retailer’s way of connecting members with its top suppliers through an ecommerce website. The suppliers drop-ship those orders.

“When you transfer to one of our suppliers’ sites, you will be able to purchase directly from that Costco supplier,” Costco says on its website. “For any items purchased on the supplier website, the supplier will ship, provide customer service and handle returns.”

Costco Next now has 62 suppliers on its site, Galanti said. He adds that the retailer is onboarding more in categories, including:

Apparel
Electronics and accessories
Home improvement
Pet
Sports
Toys

Costco earnings

For the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 3, 2023, Costco reported:

Net sales increased to $77.43 billion. That’s up 9.4% from $70.76 billion in the prior fiscal year’s fourth quarter.
Net income was $2.16 billion, up from $1.87 billion in the year-ago period.
Costco ecommerce sales declined just 0.8% year over year.
$1.51 billion in membership fee income, up from $1.33 billion in the year-ago period.

For the 53-week period ended Sept. 23, 2023, Costco reported:

Net sales grew to $237.71 billion. That’s a 6.7% increase from $222.73 billion last year.
Net income increased to $6.29 billion from $5.84 billion the previous year.
Costco ecommerce sales decreased 5.7% compared with the previous year.
$4.58 billion in membership fee income, up from $4.22 billion in the previous year.

Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports. Here’s last quarter’s Costco report.

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A B2B grocery marketplace rolls out national logistics services

Paul Demery — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 13:00:48 +0000

Founded in 2017 as new way to connect buyers and suppliers in the grocery industry, Pod Foods Co. relies on digital technology and data to connect emerging brands with grocery merchants through its B2B wholesale marketplace.

The company is eyeing new growth by providing its buyers and sellers with national logistics services under an expanding arrangement with Flowspace, a fulfillment software and infrastructure provider with more than 150 fulfillment locations across the United States, including temperature-controlled facilities operated by farm produce supplier Fresh Del Monte.

“With our accelerating growth from coast to coast, we need a partner with the best warehousing capabilities in the most sought-after retail grocery markets in the U.S.,” says Peter Gialanztis, senior vice president of sales and operations for Pod Foods.

Nationwide Sprouts Farmers Market joins the Pod marketplace

Pod’s network of participating grocery retailers includes such names as goPuff, Dom’s Kitchen & Market, Plum Market and, most recently, the national chain Sprouts Farmers Market.

Pod’s digital marketplace, PodFoods.co, connects these and other merchants with emerging brands. Those include:

SANS meal bars
Blue Elephant Soup Ready to Eat
Beanitos Bean Chips
505 Southwestern Roasted Green Chile
Sati CBD Soda
Altitude Functional Beverages’ Functional Oat Milk Lattes.

Pod started rolling out Flowspace logistics services in 2022 for an initial location in Ocala, Florida. It has since expanded the arrangement with Flowspace to cover facilities in:

Atlanta
Denver
Sacramento
California

Additional locations are in the works, Gialantzis says.

“The opening of the Denver, Atlanta, and Sacramento warehouses this summer are just the beginning,” he says. “With this flexible capacity, we are able to expand our distribution footprint into key new geographies to keep pace with all of the new brands and retailers joining the Pod Foods supply chain.”

Erik Lucas, an executive of LifeAid Beverage Co., a supplier on Pod’s marketplace, says it has helped to expedite getting products on grocery store shelves.

“We were able to roll out a nationwide promotion from first conversation to the shelf in less than four weeks,” he says in Pod Foods press release.

Analytics data on sales metrics

Pod Foods also provides retailers and suppliers with analytics based on such data as

Total number of orders
Cases sold
Monthly sales by location

In addition, it offers such services as consolidating deliveries and invoices, processing rush orders, and customer service.

Pod Foods asserts that its business model is designed to provide brands with higher profit margins, as detailed in a sample pricing structure on its website, compared with more traditional distributors.

Pod Foods has raised $18.6 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Larissa Russell, the CEO, and Fiona Lee, the chief product officer, co-founded it after they launched the Green Pea Cookie baking company in 2014.

“Our story is the story of the brands on our catalog,” Russell and Lee say in a blog on the Pod Foods website. “Like so many, we were faced with a common distribution dilemma. We could self-distribute to a limited set of direct retail accounts, or we could attempt to work with the big traditional distributors that were conceived decades ago. We knew they could easily squeeze us out with their high cost and opaque operations.

“Three years later, we decided to stop making cookies and create a tech-enabled grocery supply chain designed for brands first. We needed Pod Foods, so we created it. In nature, a pod creates an environment for peas to grow and thrive, and that’s what we’re doing for brands small and large, near and far.”

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Earnings recap: What you missed from American Eagle, Kroger, Zumiez and more

Mary Meisenzahl — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 19:56:42 +0000

This week, more retailers in Digital Commerce 360’s Top 1000 list of leading ecommerce retailers in North America reported ecommerce earnings results for the most recent fiscal quarter. Here’s the ecommerce earnings summary you need to know from this week. Read more ecommerce earnings coverage here.

American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (No. 54 in the Top 1000)

American Eagle reported digital revenue declined 7% in the fiscal second quarter ended July 29, 2023. Meanwhile, store revenue grew 4% and total net revenue was up “slightly” to $1.2 billion.

“Demand picked up in June and July, reflecting brand strength and on trend collections that are resonating well with customers, supported by exciting new marketing campaigns,” CEO Jay Schottenstein said in a written statement.

Following improvements to BOPIS offerings in the quarter, pickup penetration doubled, the retailer said. That is leading to savings on shipping costs and leading to additional sales.

Designer Brands Inc. (No. 77)

Designer Brands reported net sales declined 7.8% to $792.2 million for the fiscal second quarter ended July 29, 2023. Total comparable sales, which include ecommerce sales, declined 8.9%. The shoe retailer did not share specific information about online sales. It also took over hushpuppies.com, its sixth ecommerce brand website.

Designer Brands noted declines in consumer spending. Forecasts are uncertain due to “competitive inventory, the health of the consumer and overall macroeconomic headwinds,” said Jared Poff, chief financial officer.

Express Inc. (No. 114)

Express reported online sales decreased 1% in the fiscal second quarter ended July 30, 2023. Retail store comparable sales declined 21% during the same period. Consolidated net sales declined 6% to $435.3 million.

Ecommerce sales were a highlight of the quarter, nearly offsetting depressed store sales, particularly in women’s products, the retailer said.

J. Jill (No. 246)

J.Jill reported total net sales declined 2.9% to $155.7 million in the fiscal second quarter ended July 29, 2023. Direct-to-consumer sales decreased 5.1%, representing 44.7% of total sales. Comparable sales, including both stores and DTC, declined 1.3%.

A high rate of online returns continues to hurt margins, the apparel retailer said, though they are starting to stabilize.

Kirkland’s Inc. (No. 518)

Kirkland’s reported online sales declined 16.6% in the fiscal second quarter ended July 29, 2023. Comparable store sales declined 9.7%. Net sales decreased to $89.5 million from $102.1 million in the year-ago period. Declines were due to decreases in traffic and average ticket, the retailer said.

“The second quarter sales results were challenged by lower traffic and the aggressive liquidation efforts in Q2 of last year that presented a tough sales comparison, period over period,” interim CEO Ann Joyce said in a statement.

The Kroger Co. (No. 8)

Kroger reported online sales grew 12% in the fiscal second quarter ended Aug. 12, 2023. Total company sales declined to $33.9 billion from $34.6 billion the previous year. However, excluding fuel, sales increased 1.1%.

“Looking forward, we believe inflation will continue to decelerate and the environment will remain challenging for consumers. We therefore expect identical sales without fuel will be at the low end of our full-year guidance range and slightly negative in the second half of the year,” Gary Millerchip, chief financial officer, said in a written statement.

GameStop Corp. (No. 41)

GameStop reported net sales grew to $1.16 billion from $1.14 billion the previous year for the fiscal second quarter ended July 29, 2023. Net loss was $2.8 million, compared to $108.7 million last year. The retailer did not share additional information on online sales.

Sportsman’s Warehouse (No. 361)

Sportsman’s Warehouse reported net sales declined 11.8% to $309.5 million in the fiscal second quarter ended July 29, 2023.

“We were disappointed with our second-quarter results and the slowdown in store traffic, as the challenging macroeconomic conditions continue to pressure consumer discretionary spending,” interim CEO Joseph Schneider said in a written statement.

However, omnichannel sales were a bright spot, he said, with ecommerce sales outpacing in-store sales.

Zumiez Inc. (No. 452)

Zumiez reported net sales declined 11.6% to $194.4 million in the fiscal second quarter ended July 29, 2023. Net sales for the first six months also declined 14.4% year over year. CEO Rich Brooks called out “continued headwinds facing consumer discretionary spending combined with a heightened promotional marketplace” as explanations for the sales slump.

However, he said back-to-school sales have been promising so far, and are historically a good indicator of upcoming holiday sales.

So what does it mean?

Retailers across the board are seeing consumers cut back on non-essential spending, per ecommerce earnings reports. Even grocery retailer Kroger notes the pullback, although it managed to grow online sales.
Apparel retailers appear to be bearing the brunt of the decline in spending. American Eagle is an exception, growing in-store sales while online sales declined.

In case you missed it: Best Buy, Chewy, Lululemon, Land’s End and more reported last week.

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Kroger and Albertsons to sell 413 stores, Aldi expands in UK … and online?

Staff and Bloomberg report — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 15:00:56 +0000

Kroger Co. and Albertsons Cos. agreed to sell 413 stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers in a divestiture designed to help win antitrust approval for their $24.6 billion merger.

C&S will pay $1.9 billion in cash for the stores, which are mostly located in the West and middle of the country, the companies said in a Sept. 8 statement. This confirmed a Bloomberg News report from earlier that week. Closely held C&S is a major grocery wholesaler that also operates Grand Union and Piggly Wiggly stores.

The same day, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union released a statement in response. It said its “team of experts will be analyzing every aspect of this proposed deal and will assess the impact, positive or negative, that it may have on our UFCW members, the customers we serve, and the communities we call home.”

The Kroger Co. is No. 8 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers by web sales. Albertsons ranks No. 26.

Fighting for (antitrust) approval

Kroger is betting the store sale will help it persuade the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to allow the Albertsons transaction. The transaction is the centerpiece of the retailer’s push to keep up with Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. The FTC, which has recently challenged high-profile deals in video games, pharmaceuticals and mortgage software under Chairman Lina Khan, is scrutinizing the merger’s impact on grocery competition.

Amazon ranks No. 1 in the Top 1000. Walmart is No. 2.

“This comprehensive divestiture plan marks a key next step toward the completion of the merger by extending a well-capitalized competitor into new geographies,” Kroger and Albertsons said in the statement.

Frontline workers will remain employed and existing collective-bargaining agreements will continue, they said. Kroger may require C&S to buy a further 237 stores in connection with efforts to win regulatory approval of the Albertsons deal, which would bring the total divestitures to 650. That’s the number Kroger had earlier defined as the ceiling for store divestitures.

The Cincinnati-based company also released financial results for its fiscal second quarter. Kroger grew digital sales 12% in the quarter.

The FTC still could sue to block the deal. Labor unions including UCFW and officials from a range of states have urged the regulator to oppose the merger. They say it would hurt wages and competition. Some senators and members of Congress have also criticized the transaction.

Kroger said the Albertsons acquisition remains on track to close in early 2024, with CEO Rodney McMullen having vowed to fight in court if necessary.

Store footprint

The agreement with C&S covers stores in 17 states and Washington, DC, along with eight distribution centers and five private-label brands. The sale also includes the QFC, Mariano’s and Carrs banners, plus exclusive licensing rights to the Albertsons brand name in Arizona, California, Colorado and Wyoming.

On a combined basis, Kroger and Albertsons currently have a footprint of about 5,000 stores. Walmart has roughly 5,200 retail locations in the U.S., including about 600 Sam’s Club warehouse stores. Amazon, which is already a force in categories such as diapers and some packaged goods, recently began the biggest overhaul of its grocery business since it acquired Whole Foods Market six years ago.

When Kroger announced the Albertsons acquisition in October, the companies said they would spin off as many as 375 stores if they couldn’t find buyers. Kroger later suggested in a merger agreement that 650 was the upper limit for divestitures.

For C&S, the deal will further an expansion into retail grocery stores. The Keene, New Hampshire-based company bought 12 stores from Tops Markets in 2021 when the latter grocer merged with the Price Chopper/Market 32 chain. The FTC approved that divestiture.

“C&S recently expanded its retail operations with the acquisition of 11 Piggly Wiggly Midwest retail stores, and hired a former retail grocery executive with significant retail experience to lead retail efforts,” the regulator said at the time.

In its sprawling wholesale business, C&S supplies more than 7,500 independent supermarkets, chain stores, military bases and institutions with over 100,000 different products.

Aldi opens 1,000th UK store

Aldi opened its 1,000th UK store on Sept. 7 and committed to a further 500 outlets in the country as the German discount grocer snatches market share from rivals.

The supermarket had previously aimed to have 1,200 stores by 2025 and is now targeting 1,500 over the long term, Aldi said that day. That’s ambitious growth for a company that opened its first store in Britain in 1990.

“We’re looking for new Aldi stores from Hackney to Harrogate and Bath to Brentwood,” Giles Hurley, chief executive officer of Aldi UK and Ireland, said in a phone interview. “We’ve had an unwavering will to grow in the UK and that’s been backed up by capital.”

U.K. shoppers have been flocking to Aldi as inflation erodes their purchasing power during the cost-of-living crisis. The discounter became Britain’s fourth-largest grocer last year, knocking Morrisons off the spot. Now, £1 in every £10 spent at U.K. supermarkets is at Aldi.

Shoppers are turning more to store-brand goods to tackle rampant food inflation, a trend that favors Aldi. The grocer also stocks fewer big brands than competitors. The grocer has served more than 1.1 million new customers over the past 12 months, said Hurley.

“We’ve seen customers switch their shopping” to Aldi, he said. “Existing customers are consolidating their spend with us and treating us as a first-stop shop.”

The grocer is growing sales at the fastest pace among supermarkets, seeing an increase of 21% in August from a year earlier, according to Kantar data. Sales at fellow discounter Lidl rose by almost 20% in the same period, while revenue at higher-end rivals Waitrose and Co-op rose by 4.4% and 3.4% respectively.

Competitors are watching Aldi’s rise closely. Both Tesco Plc and J Sainsbury Plc have pledged to match Aldi’s prices on hundreds of goods, while grocers are increasingly doing away with in-store food counters and delis in favor of the discounters’ simpler approach.

More reductions

Food inflation has begun to ease in the UK, though remains at a high level, with the Office for National Statistics reporting a rate of 14.9% in July. Supermarkets are keen to demonstrate they are cutting prices where possible.

“I’m quite optimistic that between now and Christmas there will be more price reductions in our stores,” said Hurley. “When it comes to the longer-term picture on inflation it’s definitely more difficult to read. There are a lot of influences on the grocery sector.”

This year, Aldi will open 20 stores as part of its existing £1.3 billion ($1.6 billion) expansion plan. The new one opening in Woking, Surrey, is one of more than 150 that Aldi has in the South East, as it seeks to attract customers in the affluent region.

Aldi also relaunched its website, priming it for ecommerce growth. The grocer is not currently ranked in any Digital Commerce 360 databases.

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The post Kroger and Albertsons to sell 413 stores, Aldi expands in UK … and online? appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Ghirardelli taps generative AI to edit photos but not yet to generate images

April Berthene — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 17:50:01 +0000

For Ghirardelli Chocolate Co. to update its product detail page with a new image, it could take a month to go from idea, photo shoot and editing to live, says Pam Perino, ecommerce content operations and development manager at Ghirardelli.

But with the new generative artificial intelligence tools available to brands, it could be “10 to 100 times faster than the manual process for image creation,” Perino says.

“That’s a great opportunity to do something quickly versus having to wait for a photoshoot or having to use stock images,” Perino says.

But right now, Perino is not confident generative AI is ready to create images from scratch for its brand. For example, if the brand were to say, “create a Ghirardelli logo,” Perino is doubtful the AI would get the logo exactly right.

And getting it exactly right is critical.

“We have very high expectations for how our images to look,” she says.

Where Ghirardelli Chocolate Co. is currently using generative AI is for editing images on its product detail pages. On a recent photo shoot for its new no-sugar-added baking chips, the brand used generative AI to remove part of a napkin in the image and fill in the background with a part of the product’s bag.

Ghirardelli uses AI to decide how to tweak product images

But editing is as far as Ghirardelli will let the generative AI create. The brand will, however, use artificial intelligence to help guide its decisions about what images should look like.

Since Q2 2023, the brand has used image-scoring software Vizit to evaluate its images. Vizit uses artificial intelligence to analyze how impactful an image is and to catalog the attributes of the image. Based on publicly available metrics, such as likes or shares on a social media website, Vizit can analyze and score an image, and suggest tweaks.

The technology is helpful when deciding which images to use on product detail pages and the changes Ghirardelli might make so the images perform better, Perino says. For example, Vizit’s technology scored many of its closely cropped baking images higher than those that were zoomed out, and so those are the ones Ghirardelli will use on its page, Perino says.

Instead of having a 2D static image of its chocolate chip bag, another tweak Vizit suggested was to have the image on the package “burst” off the package for more of a 3D look. In the same image, Vizit also suggested to make the text larger for “12 oz.” With these tweaks, Vizit scored the image at a 95, meaning it has a high likelihood of converting shoppers, compared with the image without these changes, which it scored at a 6.

Vizit’s AI technology scores Ghirardelli’s package image above lower compared to the one below with the chocolate chips bursting off the package and the 12 oz. bag size in a larger text size.

Perino did not share any data about increases in conversion since using Vizit’s technology. Vizit says its clients typically have a 15%-25% increase in conversion rate when using the images it suggests, says CEO and founder Jehan Hamedi. Hamedi did not share how many clients it has, but in 2021, he told Digital Commerce 360 that Vizit has less than 100 brands that use its technology, including padlock products MasterLock, shoe brand Reebok, and food brands OceanSpray, Tyson, Cliff Bars and Mars Petcare.

Brands jump on using AI technology

While Vizit’s technology doesn’t use generative AI, it uses artificial intelligence to help brands more effectively and more efficiently increase sales, Hamedi says.

“Where the rubber really meets the road for these businesses is how AI and these tool sets actually help drive sales,” Hamedi says. “Because at the end of the day, every brand is in business and exists to sell products and create positive outcomes.”

With the popularization of OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative AI chatbot, Hamedi says many in the ecommerce industry are talking about AI and becoming more educated on how AI can be practical for businesses.

“It’s created urgency among our customers about how to adopt AI because it’s a new arms race,” Hamedi says.

Ghirardelli’s future applications of generative AI

Ghirardelli has plans to use generative AI in other ways in the future, such as creating product copy on the product detail page and updating product copy with relevant search engine optimization (SEO) words and for creating images, Perino says.

“We are excited about artificial intelligence as a digital technology and how can it help us be faster and more nimble, and how do we update, create and improve our content,” Perino says.

For example, Ghirardelli wants its product detail pages to be updated with seasonal SEO words, such as chocolate for Halloween, Christmas, Mother’s Day and graduation. Today, the brand manually updates this copy to ensure the detail pages can show up high in search results.

Ghirardelli, however, finds that generative AI is not yet refined enough to have mastered brand voice and tone, and it is waiting until it improves before having a tool write copy to go live on its site.

“We’re excited,” Perino says. “It’s such an interesting time with AI right now, but it needs to be tempered with a bit of caution and guardrails.”

Brands should use caution with generative AI right now

That’s particularly true for a food manufacturer like Ghirardelli, given strict government regulations about food and beverages. For example, Ghirardelli can’t call some of its products that might be commonly referred to as “white chocolate,” because they do not contain cocoa and are not technically chocolate. Instead, it labels products as “white baking chips” or “vanilla flavored.” Perino isn’t confident that generative AI would understand this distinction.

At this early stage of generative AI, brands should have a cautious approach to using the technology, says Kassi Socha, director analyst, retail, at research firm Gartner. If brands are using generative AI today in their business to create content, she suggests still having manual oversight before anything is published.

“Generative AI can suggest copy and suggest opportunities, but there still needs to be a team in place to validate some of the outputs,” Socha says. “With any machine learning or artificial intelligence, it’s only as good as the inputs, and it take time to optimize and learn.”

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The post Ghirardelli taps generative AI to edit photos but not yet to generate images appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Walmart is serious about its online marketplace

Mary Meisenzahl — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 16:52:50 +0000

Walmart Inc. hosted its first Seller Summit event for retailers on its online marketplace. The event was part of Walmart’s push to grow its Walmart.com marketplace.

Walmart ranks No. 2 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales. It is also No. 9 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the top 100 online marketplaces.

Emphasizing omnichannel and fulfillment

Walmart emphasized its strengths through both online and physical retail repeatedly at the event. Becoming an omnichannel retailer was the largest and most important transformation for the company in recent years, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner told an audience of third-party marketplace sellers on Aug. 30.

Walmart is giving sellers on its platform access to more tools and services to make fulfillment better for customers, it says. The retailer announced it will now offer local pickup and delivery for products on the marketplace if they have physical stores.

“This will lower sellers’ fulfillment costs, create new ways to convert sales and delight customers along the way,” Manish Joneja, senior vice president of Walmart Marketplace and Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS), wrote in a blog post.

The retail giant will also give sellers a better ability to ship big and bulky items through WFS. This will also apply to products that come in multiple boxes, like patio sets. Products shipped using WFS then get a “Fulfilled by Walmart” tag online. Walmart says the tag drives conversion, with sellers seeing an average 50% growth in GMV when they switch to WFS.

Throughout the event, Walmart emphasized the seamless experience for consumers between shopping online and in Walmart stores. The retailer noted that highly successful online products can then be selected to appear on store shelves. During the event, Walmart announced it would begin selling Solo Stoves in select stores after successful sales on the marketplace.

New announcements for Walmart Marketplace

Walmart announced some other updates for third-party sellers on its marketplace at the event.

The big box retailer is rolling out online brand shops and brand shelves. These are digital storefronts that retailers can curate to highlight seasonal collections or other product lines and boost conversion, Walmart says. Brand pages are complemented by customer tools, like the recently added Virtual Garage where consumers can store details about personal vehicles. That information is integrated with Walmart auto centers to schedule maintenance and recommend products, Walmart says.

Walmart also announced plans to expand its third-party marketplace to another international market. Walmart Marketplace will be available in Chile beginning in early 2024, in addition to the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

Walmart Marketplace is growing

Walmart’s Marketplace is growing substantially, according to results from the second fiscal quarter ended July 28, 2023.

Marketplace customers grew 14% year over year in the quarter. Sales were strong across consumables and general merchandise, with double-digit growth in home, apparel and hard goods, John David Rainey, chief financial officer, told investors.

The number of sellers using WFS also grew by 50%, he said. Products have increased about four-fold on the marketplace since Q2 the previous year. The majority of merchandise sold during Walmart+ Week came from third-party sellers, too, Walmart said.

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Who are the top online retailers in Europe?

James Reeves — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 14:00:02 +0000

The 500 largest online retailers in Europe grew 2.8% online in 2022.

The Europe 500, a ranking of the largest online retailers in the region based on 2022 web sales, collectively sold $350.5 billion online last year, up 2.8% from $340.9 billion in 2021.

Comparatively, the Top 500 online retailers in North America collectively grew 5.1% to $981.8 billion in 2022.

The No. 1 European online retailer is Wildberries

Russia-based Wildberries, founded in 2004 by Tatyana Bakalchuk, is the largest European online retailer. Wildberries sells 37,000 brands of clothing, shoes, cosmetics, household products, children goods, electronics, books, jewelry, food and much more. Since 2022, Wildberries has dropped from serving 15 countries to six: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. However, sanctions due to the war in Ukraine have led many Russian shoppers to turn to domestic retailers like Wildberries, boosting its ecommerce sales despite serving a shrinking number of regions.

Top 5 Europe ecommerce retailers

Wildberries
Ahold Delhaize
LVMH
Sainsbury
Otto Group

Turkey’s Mavi is Europe’s fastest ecommerce grower

Apparel retailer Mavi, which specializes in luxury denim, ranked No. 409, growing 96.5% to a Digital Commerce 360-estimated $62.7 million in 2022. Online shopping, which saw a significant surge during the pandemic, slowed in 2022 but continued its upward trend. Mavi’s own mavi.com ecommerce site, which operates in Turkey, the U.S., Canada, Germany and Russia, as well as sales through marketplaces, accounted for 11% of total sales.

Mass merchants are the fastest-growing online retailers in Europe

The 57 mass merchant e-retailers ranked in the Europe 500 grew 17.1% to $68.9 billion in 2022. This is the fastest-growing category among the 14 merchandise categories Digital Commerce 360 tracks. Health and beauty e-retailers are second, with the 30 merchants in this category growing online sales 10.3% year over year to $28.9 billion in 2022.

Europe 500 ecommerce retailers’ sales reach $350 billion in 2022

193 of the Europe 500 sold their merchandise to U.S. consumers, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2022, these sales to U.S. consumers hit $146.2 billion, up 4.0% from the previous year. The top two merchants which had the largest share of the online revenue from the U.S. are food and beverage e-retailers Naked Wines and Godiva Chocolate.

This data is mined from the recently released 2022 Digital Commerce 360 Europe database, which ranks the largest European retailers by ecommerce sales. Purchase access to the database here.

The post Who are the top online retailers in Europe? appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

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Costco ecommerce sales improve compared with previous quarters, but still down overall

Costco ecommerce sales

Costco operates ecommerce sites in:

Costco mobile ecommerce

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Costco earnings

For the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 3, 2023, Costco reported:

For the 53-week period ended Sept. 23, 2023, Costco reported:

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A B2B grocery marketplace rolls out national logistics services

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Earnings recap: What you missed from American Eagle, Kroger, Zumiez and more

American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (No. 54 in the Top 1000)

Designer Brands Inc. (No. 77)

Express Inc. (No. 114)

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GameStop Corp. (No. 41)

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Kroger and Albertsons to sell 413 stores, Aldi expands in UK … and online?

Fighting for (antitrust) approval

Store footprint

Aldi opens 1,000th UK store

More reductions

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Ghirardelli taps generative AI to edit photos but not yet to generate images

Ghirardelli uses AI to decide how to tweak product images

Brands jump on using AI technology

Ghirardelli’s future applications of generative AI

Brands should use caution with generative AI right now

Do you rank in our database?

Sign up

Walmart is serious about its online marketplace

Emphasizing omnichannel and fulfillment

New announcements for Walmart Marketplace

Walmart Marketplace is growing

Do you rank in our databases?

Sign up

Who are the top online retailers in Europe?

The 500 largest online retailers in Europe grew 2.8% online in 2022.

The No. 1 European online retailer is Wildberries

Top 5 Europe ecommerce retailers

Turkey’s Mavi is Europe’s fastest ecommerce grower

Mass merchants are the fastest-growing online retailers in Europe

Europe 500 ecommerce retailers’ sales reach $350 billion in 2022