Loonie & Toonie 🇨🇦 🍁
Canadian e-commerce, Coco the delivery bot, Insta subscription, KFC on naughty list
👋 Hey there!
Welcome to mid-week D2C Pulse: A bite-sized newsletter where we cover:
🌎 Exciting products from e-commerce markets of the world
🗞 Developments in online marketplaces globally
📊 Fun facts about the D2C ecosystem
Let’s get to it…
🇨🇦 Global To Local: Canada
Canada has all of the right ingredients for becoming a hotbed for the consumer brand retail with its 24.2 mn digital customers: they are buying on mobile devices, through social media, and engaging in cross-border commerce. In 2020, Canada recorded USD 61.8 bn retail e-commerce sales that are poised to reach USD 102.54 bn by 2025. It is amongst the top 10 e-comm economies of the world.
Want to dig deeper? here’s a complete landscape of Canadian D2C! We also rounded up a list of some emerging Canadian brands that are innovative and interesting:
👖 Sheertex offers relief to women from their old-fashioned, barely one-time use hosiery tights. With ‘sheer’ grit and proprietory manufacturing process, they have created unbreakable tights!
🧩 Fits makes lux-looking puzzle sets that feature art from up-and-coming female artists. The linen finish means Fits Puzzles are perfect for framing and hanging on a wall. Think you have mastered the art of puzzle-solving? Try Four Point Puzzles that feature contemporary art!
😇 Brandless is democratizing access in the ‘better for you’ category, be it household essentials, beauty, or wellness. It removes the frills from branding & focuses on building impact-creating products and social community. Simple is the new sexy!
🍳 Ensembl differentiates itself from its peers that are laser-focus on millennial aesthetic. It is giving millennials space. Literally! Its selling point is simple - stainless steel collection of versatile pots and pans and more, designed for stacking to save space in kitchens with limited storage.
🤖 Pandemic has fueled interest in robotic deliveries abroad. To meet the demand, Coco has designed a solution for last-mile remote drivers. These robots are not fully autonomous, which is the approach taken by most of Coco’s peers.
🗞️ Global Marketplace Updates
Shopify is partnering with China’s e-commerce giant JD.com in a bid to increase its cross-border sales: U.S. businesses with Shopify will be able to list their products on JD, that will handle end-to-end fulfillment.
Amazon aggregator Thrasio enters India with plans to spend approx USD 500 mn on acquisitions.
Instagram is introducing paid subscription option for creators! One more win for the gig economy!
Here’s why KFC is on China’s naughty list these days!
📊 Graph-iti Of The Day
India was showered with unicorns in 2020. Result? India has taken over countries like the UK, Germany, Canada to rank third among nations having the most number of unicorns.
Lastly, in case you were wondering, a Loonie is what Canadians call their one-dollar coins which have a loon on them. Toonies are their two-dollar coins. More Canadian slang words here.
That’s all for today!
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Bye Now & Stay Safe!