eCommerce

Target.com is latest retailer to add support for SNAP payments for online shoppers • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in Commerce, eCommerce, online grocery, Snap, TargetNo Comments

Target is the latest national retailer to roll out the ability for customers to pay with their SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits when shopping for groceries online. While the payment method has long been accepted in stores, online grocery retailers offering curbside pickup and delivery programs have only more recently begun to support the payment type in their online offerings. That was also true for Target, where customers who wanted to pay with SNAP could only do so in-store. Now, the retailer says customers will be able to pay for SNAP-eligible grocery items on Target.com. Soon, it will also introduce mobile payment options for digital orders in the Target app. These changes will allow customers to use SNAP to buy groceries for same-day pickup through Target’s Order Pickup and Drive Up services, both of which don’t have minimum order requirements or subscription fees. Customers can also apply Target Circle discounts to their food items, when available, or shop the grocery deals in the retailer’s weekly ads. To get started, customers will first need to log into their Target.com account and add their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) account number as a new card under “Payments.” They can then add SNAP-eligible items to their online cart and pay using their EBT payment method at checkout, confirming their purchase with the PIN. “Food and beverage is an incredibly important part of our guests’ lives, especially as we head into the holiday season,” said Rick Gomez, Target’s chief food and beverage officer, in a statement. “I’m proud that we’re adding new digital payment options for grocery shopping so we can make the entire Target experience more accessible to all families,” he added. Target had announced earlier this year it would soon accept SNAP for online food purchases, and then began pilot-testing the option in select states this year, including Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas after first testing the feature earlier this summer in Minnesota alone. With this week’s announcement, the SNAP payment option is available in all U.S. states except Alaska, Target says. As many retailers have already explained, online shopping should no longer be considered a luxury. Lower-income shoppers, including those on SNAP, can often save money by shopping online where they can better compare deals between stores and where they may find discounts they may have otherwise overlooked. In addition, being able to shop for groceries online can be a time-saver — particularly for those who are working long hours or multiple jobs to make ends meet. In recent years, many major U.S. retailers have introduced support for SNAP to online consumers, including Amazon and Walmart, both of which were participants in a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) pilot program introduced in 2019 that aimed to open up online grocery shopping to those on public assistance. And with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic the following year, the need for the program became even more critical as people looked to avoid indoor shopping to reduce their risk of catching the virus. Outside of the retailers, other grocery providers have also been working to help customers on public assistance. Instacart this year has been steadily advancing support for SNAP across various U.S. states, allowing shoppers to use its app to buy groceries from select retailers using their benefits, after initially partnering with ALDI to offer the option back in 2020. Amazon, too, has been looking to better support lower-income shoppers, having just reorganized its website to introduce a new hub that aggregates its discounts and various assistance programs under one roof. Here, shoppers can find its discounted Prime membership, Amazon Layaway, and information about using Amazon Cash and SNAP EBT payments.

Thai beauty platform Konvy raises Series A for international expansion • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in Asia, beauty, eCommerce, Konvy, Southeast Asia, Startups, ThailandNo Comments

Founded 10 years ago, Konvy is now Thailand’s top beauty e-commerce platform. It plans to accelerate its omnichannel and international distribution with a new Series A of $10 million from Insignia Ventures Partners. Konvy was launched in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneur QingGui Huang, who previously managed fashion e-commerce platforms in China. It now works with more than 1,000 brands, representing SKUs of more than 20,000. Its brand portfolio includes L’Oréal, Shiseido, Sulwhasoo, Eucerin and La Roche-Posay. “Konvy had the advantage of starting in Thailand when there were no really significant e-commerce players there at the time,” Huang told ZebethMedia. “We’ve since leveraged our first mover advantage in Thailand to become a leading e-commerce player in the market.” Konvy founders Leon Huang, Pornsuda Vangvidhayakul and QingHui Huang Konvy’s goal is to help local and international beauty brands take advantage of two major trends. The first is that health and beauty purchases are a priority spending category for Thai consumers and the second is that Thailand sees high rates of e-commerce purchases and social media usage, meaning that young people in Thailand spend an average of about two hours and 55 minutes on social media each day. Huang said he confirmed his assumptions about Thai spending on beauty products through conversations with brands, and that drove his desire to start Konvy. “This opportunity of health and beauty being a priority spending category for Thai consumers is a function of both demand and supply circumstances favoring this consumer behavior over the past decades,” he said. “On the supply side, Thailand has been a manufacturing hub for a lot of international brands for more than 40 years. This has spawned as well a thriving local industry. On the demand side, we see that Thai consumers are plugged into this mindset of ‘upgrades’ when it comes to health and beauty, that is to say, it’s not just about accessing such products but actually looking for the best products and high willingness to spend on the latest trends.” Konvy taps into the high rate of social media usage by developing a feedback loop, where engagements on its partner brands’ not only helps Konvy’s existing portfolio, but also helps more brands in the future. For example, as more Gen Z consumers bought products they saw on TikTok during the pandemic, Konvy made itself more present on that channel. In a statement, Insignia Ventures Partners founding managing partner Yinglan Tan said, “While there may be stronger competitors from horizontal marketplaces in the future, we believe Konvy is best positioned to be the market leader in the online beauty segment given its long-standing brand equity, brand-centric and community-led approach.”

Trendsi secures $25M to help sellers and manufacturers predict demand • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 10, 2022Posted in artificial intelligence, Commerce, eCommerce, lightspeed venture partners, startup, Startups, TrendsiNo Comments

In the traditional business-to-business world, sellers often don’t know how much of a product they should order. Even at well-run companies, anywhere from 20% to 30% of inventory is either dead (i.e. doesn’t sell) or obsolete, according to one source. The impact on profitability can be quite severe. Dead stock costs sellers and manufacturers as much as 11% of their revenue, reports Katana, which develops raw material and bills of material tracking software. Seeking to give sellers greater visibility over product demand, so they can make more informed decisions, Ella Zhang co-founded Trendsi, which connects sellers with suppliers while managing the back-end supply chain for its customer base. After gaining traction during the pandemic as many retail businesses made the risk-reducing pivot to selling goods directly to retail, rather than buying inventory, Trendsi has closed a $25 million Series A round that brings its total capital raised to $30 million. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the tranche, with participation from Basis Set Ventures, Footwork VC, Peterson Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures and individual investors, including Zoom CEO Eric Yuan and Zola CEO Shan-Lyn Ma. Zhang tells ZebethMedia that the new cash will be put toward investments in data infrastructure, supply chain technology, new merchandise categories and international expansion. “We are building a new platform that lowers the barrier for anyone to start selling online or offline,” Zhang told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “With Trendsi … influencers, creators, and more can sell via social networks without worrying about sourcing products, managing warehouse, packaging and shipping, etc., so that they can focus on what they love: their brand and customers.” Image Credits: Trendsi Zhang came from the venture world, serving as an investment director at Kleiner Perkins after stints at Google, Tencent and Binance (where she founded the startup’s investment arm, Binance Labs). Zhang met Trendsi’s second co-founder, Sherwin Xia, while a postgrad at Stanford, where the two participated in the Stanford Startup Garage incubator. Xia was one of the first employees at e-scooter startup Lime and previously worked as an analyst at a16z (Andreessen Horowitz). Zhang, Xia and Trendsi’s third co-founder, Maddie Davidson, sought with Trendsi to build a service that applies AI and machine learning to streamline tasks like inventory and sales forecasting. Using data collected on the platform and from third parties, Trendsi attempts to predict sales down to the SKU level, so that sellers can reduce excess inventory and ideally prevent out-of-stock issues. Beyond this, the platform taps sales and behavioral data to curate and recommend products to sellers. Recently, Trendsi launched a feature it calls “just-in-time” manufacturing, which aims to help manufacturers quickly restock based on real-time sales data and predictions. “[This] allows retailers to only take minimum and no inventory risk by building our inventory and sales forecasting models and offering the drop-shipping service,” Zhang explained. “The original upfront risk of buying inventory is now shared among retailers, Trendsi platform and the manufacturers.” Despite competition from inventory optimization startups like Flieber, Syrup Tech and Black Crow AI, business has been robust over the two years since Trendsi’s founding, Zhang claims, with new user growth up 10x year-over-year. (She declined to give a figure.) Over the next year, the company plans to expand its work with sellers and manufacturers in industries where it sees strong upward momentum, specifically home decor, accessories and makeup. “For both our suppliers and retailers, especially in fast fashion, overstock means locked-in capital, wastage of storage space, increased inventory holding costs and unnecessary losses,” Zhang said. “This pandemic has revealed the real costs associated with inventory mismanagement. So Trendsi actually gained traction.” San Francisco-based Trendsi currently has 105 full-time employees and expects to hire 15 more by the end of the year. Not all retailers are climbing aboard the AI train. Nearly half of respondents to a KPMG survey cited cybersecurity breaches and possible bias as their top concerns about the technology, while 75% said they believe AI is more “of hype than reality.” But broadly speaking, AI in retail is a burgeoning category, with the vast majority of retailers participating in the survey saying their employees are prepared — and have the skills — for AI adoption. Retail business leaders expect AI will have the biggest impact in customer intelligence, inventory management and chatbots for customer service, creating a virtuous adoption-investment cycle in the coming years.