The Order : Weekly Aggregator Roundup - Stryze & Cincy Brands

Chart of the Week:

In its recent post "Some Amazon Aggregators Pause Acquisitions" Marketplace Pulse contextualized the activities of aggregators - including strategic refocus & a partial hold of acquisitions.

It remains too early to tell if the valuations graph will show a similar movement but one reason for the pause in late 2021 seems to be skyrocketing multiples that push the boundaries on the viability of the aggregator model.

There's hope: Although some firms have slowed their acquisitions, the overall deal volume hasn't come down according to the research. After all, the strategic rise of aggregators may have brought aggregation up as a key tactic for brands to grow and scale.

Gartner Hype Cycle [as references by Marketplace Pulse]

New funding this week: undisclosed

Funding Craze 💰

• EU: Stryze announced an expansion of its debt facility led by HF Private Debt (amount undisclosed) [Renzenbrink & Partner]

• US: Cincy Brands announced their first funding (amount undisclosed) to acquire brands with $1-$10M in revenues [Retail Dive]

Movers & Shakers 🤝

• US: Brand agency turned aggregator - "Ergode Featured as One of the Eminent Brand Aggregators on the Seller Rocket Report" [EIN News]

Strategy 📈

• Lots of M&A Stats: "Amazon FBA State of the Industry Report 2022" [Empire Flippers]

• Growing the pie: "Amazon Entices New Sellers with Up to $50K in Incentives" [eCommerce Bytes]

• Supply chain and digital ad woes, labor shortages, rising inflation: "At the Shoptalk Conference in Las Vegas, E-Retailers Have a Lot of Problems, and the Metaverse Isn’t One of Them" [The Information]

• Connie Chan from a16z comments on trends: "Shoptalk 2022: Retail's Future is on Social" [Bloomberg Technology Youtube]

• The next chapter in Meta's eCommerce push: "Instagram now lets all users tag products in their posts" [The Verge]

• Sea e-commerce unit Shopee to shut India operations [Yahoo Finance]

• Online Brands Try a Traditional Marketing Strategy: Physical Stores [The New York Times]

• Meituan Looks to Expand Its E-Commerce Business. It Wants to Rival Alibaba and JD.com [Barrons]

• Last but not least a real Sunday read: "The fascinating history of shopping and its influence on how we buy stuff today" [Fast Company]

Events 🎤

• 2nd eCommerce Aggregator Pitch Day by the German Online Retail Association on April 26 2022 in Cologne [BVOH]

Let's make this week count,

Christian