What's In-Store: December Update

December’s here! And with it, a packed out newsletter featuring some of the interesting things from the world of CPG mostly falling into two camps important on the minds of both shoppers and the wider industry right now - AI and Health.

Plus, we’re doing a webinar on December 11, 2025. We’ll be talking through how to build and test shelf strategies before you launch, including some live demos and case studies (more below). Register here to attend. 

November’s Interesting Things

1. Kimberly Clark Agrees to Buy Kenvue for $48.7 billion - This will create a giant CPG force with annual revenues of ~$32 billion. Since Kenvue was spun out of J&J in 2023, the share price has fallen 35%. Back in the 90s, the Netscape CEO said before their IPO that there were two ways to make money in software; bundling and unbundling. It seems to be the same now in CPG - whilst Kimberly Clark, Ferrero, PepsiCo, and Mars are “bundling” right now with mergers and acquisitions, others are focused on unbundling (Reckitt, Unilever, Coca Cola’s coffee split, and KDP’s planned split), to make themselves focused and leaner. Bundling tends to only work when there are synergies - Kimberly Clark has focused these synergies on a science and technology play, rather than manufacturing, marketing, or distribution. Though the market doesn’t seem to agree with me - Kimberly Clark’s share price dropped 14% on the news.
   
   1. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/03/kimberly-clark-to-buy-kenvue.html 
2. AI 

1. AI Eats the World - Benedict Evans released his latest update on the state of AI. This provides a balanced view between the AI-evangelism and the doom & gloom right now, covering everything from the exciting stuff (the most significant platform shift since mobile), to the potential dangers of energy consumption, capex, and what this might end up being (TL;DR - it’s really good for very specific use cases right now, but with some limitations)
   
   1. https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations 
2. Perils of AI Content in CPG - A, quite frankly, bizarre story of UK-based peanut butter brand, ManiLife, who had a startup copy a bunch of their marketing content (including a photo of the ManiLife founder touched up with AI and recreated in the startup’s branding). On the creepy vs cool scale of AI content, this is heavily in the creepy, and a sure fire way to lose any authenticity for the startup brand. Stu Macdonald’s (founder of ManiLife) story about it is a very entertaining read:
   
   1. https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/comment-and-opinion/a-rival-brand-is-using-ai-to-steal-our-content-its-just-lazy/711760.article 

3. Health

1. Naked Doritos - PepsiCo announced their response to the food dye stigma going around the US by removing any artificial flavours or dyes from Cheetos and Doritos, and making them completely colourless. Cynical-me suggests this is about “getting ready” for any fast changes to unpredictable government legislation rather than what shoppers are looking for, but I’ll be interested to try these and see the effects of looks on flavour.
   
   1. https://www.pepsico.com/newsroom/stories/2025/cheetos-and-doritos-are-getting-naked 
2. Perelel Raises $27m to Reimagine Women’s Health - The hormonal supplement business focused on supporting women’s different hormonal life-cycles, and crucially, founded by doctors (not influencers!). Great growth success story for focusing on a huge, but under-served demographic. 
   
   1. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/perelel-secures-27m-growth-investment-from-prelude-growth-partners-to-reimagine-womens-health-302622022.html 
3. Trip Raises $40m - The CBD drinks brand raise is to help support growth into the US (notably Walmart). With revenues expected to top $100m (profitably!), Trip seems to be leading the way in meeting shoppers’ new functional soft drinks desires.
   
   1. https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/news/trip-valued-at-300m-as-it-secures-40m-for-us-push/711678.article 
4. Circana on GLP-1s - Circana’s interesting findings on GLP-1s in the US right now shows 23% of US households have at least 1 person using a GLP-1. Is it the end of the food industry as we know it? No - post-usage boomerangs show shoppers going back to their old ways on foods, beverages, and even tobacco. Or my favourite stat - people on GLP-1s over-index on “eating fries with lunch.” Sounds like I’m going to need some GLP-1s in my life soon.
   
   1. https://www.circana.com/post/the-6-most-surprising-findings-from-circana-s-latest-glp-1-research 

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Webinar - Test Your Shelf Strategy Before You Launch It - 11th December, 2025

When we ran our What’s In-Store Event in October, we focused all of our content on talking insights, trends, and what works on-shelf.

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We forgot to mention what it is we actually do and how we help our client partners (not really, but you get what I mean). So we’re going to rectify that with a webinar featuring a live product demo and some case studies. 

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Sign up below:

https://www.crowdcast.io/c/shelf-testing-vst-webinar 

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