Read on for the interesting things happening in retail and CPG last month, including an anti-competitive ingredients purchase, “Fridge Cigarettes”, and the wildest set of Celebrity CPG launches I think we’ve ever featured (warning; do not read with your breakfast).

June’s Interesting Things

• UK Retail Sales Dip - Retail volumes fell -2.7% in May, with grocery retailers particularly feeling the decline in alcohol and tobacco as people pull back on spending. We saw this uncertainty for shoppers in the economy back in March, and now consumer confidence is dropping. An interesting “one-to-watch” - supposedly 4% of UK households now have a person taking GLP-1s. As this grows, there’s further risk to the alcohol and tobacco categories as well.
• David Buys Ingredient Creator - The energy bar brand raised $75m and spent it on acquiring Epogee, creators of a plant-based fat alternative used by many energy / snack bar brands. David’s first move post-acquisition - cancel all contracts with competitors. Very interesting way to corner the market, and legal disputes focusing on the “anti-competitive move” are already in motion.
• Diet Coke, or Fridge Cigarette? - The latest TikTok trend is not a functional, healthy brand you’ve never heard of, but actually a crisp can of Diet Coke. Seen as an act of rebellion against the “better for you” movement whilst still not being as bad for you as a cigarette, younger generations have coined the term of describing a Diet Coke as a “fridge cigarette” - now common parlance in our office because we are all super-young-and-still-culturally-relevant. This is, of course, a hard one for Coca Cola to capitalise on - lean in and you’re admitting you’re part of the “bad-for-you”club, but don’t lean in and you’ll miss an important viral cultural moment. They don’t come around often.

Celebrity CPG

• Sydney Sweeney’s Bathsoap - Another celebrity beauty product? Well, with a twist. This soap contains her own bathwater. $8 a bar and sold out immediately because people are the absolute worst.
• Ozzy Osbourne’s DNA Sold in Liquid Death Cans - “What?”, I hear you ask? Liquid Death are selling a limited edition iced tea can containing traces of Ozzy Osbourne’s DNA. $450 a pop, and comes in a lab-quality display container, because you wouldn’t want to spoil your Ozzy Osbourne DNA, would you?

Coming up

I’m in Bentonville for most of July. If you’re in town, let’s grab an incredibly good coffee?

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Read all about it

To have a chat about anything above, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at nick@storetrials.com or hop on to www.storetrials.com

Be excellent to each other.

Nick Theodore

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