MARKETING

The Cycle

A couple of years ago, Anastasia Sartan, a tech entrepreneur who co-founded StyleHacks, was having severe PMS and decided to take a break and walk to an Erewhon near her home in Venice Beach, California. She found herself standing in front of a shelf of functional beverages, agog.

“OK, here’s 30 drinks for energy,” she recalled thinking. “Here’s a drink for your skin. Here’s a drink for your hair. Here’s a drink for your libido.”

Not one, however, was targeted at the symptoms she was feeling at the moment.

“And I was like, ‘What the hell? Why is there not an actual drink for something that 51% of us are experiencing on a continuous basis?’”

At the time, Sartan had found an online source for sea buckthorn juice, a popular traditional remedy in her native Russia, and had been mixing the tart juice with sweeter juices and finding it helped with her PMS. She’d even been fixing it for friends who liked the tonics, too.

She’d spent two decades in tech, not CPG, but the thought formed anyway.

“I was like, ‘OK, I need to put it in cans so it’s accessible.’”

Keep reading here.—AAN

      

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STORES

Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images

Self-checkout use among retailers fell 16.3% year over year, according to new data from Toast.

Toast surveyed 340 decision-makers at US convenience stores, grocers, and bottle shops with 16 or fewer locations, and 36% of respondents said they used self-checkout this year, down from 43% last year.

It is hardly the first indication that enthusiasm for the lanes may be waning. Dollar General removed self-checkout from about 12,000 stores in 2024. CEO Todd Vasos said on an earnings call that the move was to reduce shrink, the catchall term for merchandise disappearing due to shoplifting and other causes. Only two years earlier, the retailer announced that it would operate 200 locations entirely with self-checkout on a trial basis.

Keep reading here.—AAN

      

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RETAIL

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The retail industry finished out the summer with a strong monthly sales report, big news from Amazon on wages and same-day delivery, and a slew of early holiday promotions from major players such as Walmart, Target, and Best Buy.

Keep reading here.—AV

      

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swapping skus

Today’s top retail reads.

Turf war: Amazon has blocked a new AI agent from accessing its website after Meta declined to remove the bot voluntarily. (Bloomberg)

K-popped: Target is expanding its assortment of Korean beauty products, as major brands push deeper into the US market. (Modern Retail)

Off the shelf: Instacart launched a new software that shares real-time data on product availability and shelf conditions with grocers and CPGs. (Supermarket News)

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