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As retail costs balloon, certain products deflate.

Across retail categories, more manufacturers are making products smaller to offset rising costs, a practice called shrinkflation, or downsizing.

Retail costs keep climbing, as U.S. inflation hit its highest one-year price hike in more than 40 years in March 2022. Global supply chain disruption has made raw materials, labor, and freight more expensive. Costly omnichannel investments, product returns, and sustainability efforts also add financial pressure. 

That’s why consumer packaged goods (CPG) suppliers are now scrambling to cut back somewhere. Shrinkflation helps brands save some money—and keep prices stable—by slightly reducing the amount or weight of their goods.

Let’s examine what shrinkflation looks like and how it affects brands, retailers, and consumers.

Household staples shrink

Recently, several popular CPG brands exhibited signs of shrinkflation across the food and beverage, personal care, and pharmacy categories:

Doritos bags fell in weight from 9.75 ounces to 9.25, equivalent to five fewer chips, and parent Frito-Lay cited inflation  Aleve pain relief pills have decreased from 100 caplets per bottle to 90 Cottonelle toilet paper mega rolls shrank from 340 one-ply sheets per roll to 312  Gatorade bottles decreased in size from 32 fluid ounces to 28. The brand…
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Micro Health And Wellness Trends Consumers Are Melting For: How To Drive Sales This Summer

If you’re reading this wearing sweatpants, make-up free, with unbrushed hair, you’re not alone.

But with people starting to leave their homes more last year, the overall consumer health industry grew by 4% in 2021, according to Euromonitor International.

So, what’s driving sales of health and wellness products?

Multi-use products

Hybrid products mean consumers buy less but feel they’re getting more. Avon’s Anew Revival Serum has added AHAs; and Charlotte Tilbury’s Multi Miracle Glow Balm functions as a cleanser, overnight mask, and face and body balm/moisturizer. If only it did the laundry too.

Then there’s Olay’s 7-in-One Moisturizer which smooths fine lines and wrinkles, hydrates, evens skin tone, evens the skin’s texture, brightens, reduces age spots, and replenishes moisture. 

With inflation hitting everyone hard, manufacturers are focusing on adding value to their products.

Personalization

Today’s consumers don’t want a generic product, they want a product for them. 

According to Euromonitor International’s Voice of the Consumer: Lifestyles Survey in 2021, 51% of respondents stated they want products and services that are uniquely tailored to them.

Companies doing a good job at homing in on each individual consumer include Roman (for men, offering personalized treatments for everything from hair loss to erectile …

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The global inflation crisis goes from bad to worse. War in Ukraine, lockdowns in China, and COVID-19-related supply chain disruption continue to cause problems, sending prices spiraling all around the world.

In the U.S., the annual inflation rate hit 8.6% in May, the highest level seen since 1981, prompting the U.S. Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for the third time this year, by 0.75 percentage points. In Europe, U.K. inflation is expected to hit 11% by autumn, while the eurozone has seen price rises hit 8.1%, the highest level seen since the launch of the euro. On the other side of the world, inflation is heading towards 7% in both Australia and New Zealand.

Consumer-facing businesses such as consumer packaged goods (CPG) suppliers and retailers are finding it difficult to cope with surging inflation. Their own costs are rising rapidly, with inflation running particularly high in staple ingredients – wheat prices, for example, have doubled this year. But they are nervous about passing on too much cost to customers, for whom a cost-of-living crisis is rapidly intensifying.

CPG businesses and retailers are already seeing consumers taking action in the face of soaring prices. In particular, we are seeing a …

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Four LGBTQ-Owned Brands to Shop and Support on RangeMe

This June, we’re celebrating Pride Month by spotlighting LGBTQIA-owned brands on RangeMe. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) Pride Month is celebrated in June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan. Supporting and shopping queer-owned brands and retailers is one way to counteract the disproportionate platform granted to non-minority-owned businesses. There are countless LGBTQ-owned businesses that you can support during and beyond Pride Month. 

Ahead are four LGBTQ-owned brands with innovative products and inspiring stories! Read on to hear how being part of a diverse community has supported their business goals. 

Apothecary by Dr Botanicals

Apothecary by Dr BotanicalsApothecary by Dr Botanicals Apothecary by Dr BotanicalsFounder, Richard Walker Apothecary by Dr BotanicalsPride Lemon-butter campaign Apothecary by Dr BotanicalsPride Lemon-butter campaign

Apothecary by Dr Botanicals is an indie beauty brand from London, formulating natural and vegan ingredients to create skincare products. Dr Botanicals was founded by Richard Walker, who was greatly inspired by his father, a chemist responsible for constructing a new treatment of plant botanicals in 1958. As a trusted natural botanicals brand, they insist on NO parabens, NO harmful preservations, and NO animal testing. 

“Dr Botanicals Skincare is fabulously proud to be gay-owned and -operated,” emphasizes Walker. “We love the LGBTQ+ community, which embraces respect, community, and individuality.” Dr …

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Global Retailers Bring Inclusive Products to the Front

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has become a key phrase for the roaring 2020s, as the world wakes up to accepting and welcoming people of every race, color, gender, religion, and sexuality.

In retail, we’re seeing that play out both in the products on shelves and the sourcing practices of retailers.

Target’s focus

Target’s focus on diversity is not going unnoticed. Last year the retail giant pledged it will spend more than $ 2 billion with Black-owned businesses by 2025 and now carries more than 500 Black-owned business brands in stores and online, already ahead of its goal.

This “includes everything from investing in underrepresented entrepreneurs and launching Black-owned brands on our shelves, to working with Black designers and suppliers,” LaKesha Brown, a Target spokesperson, told RangeMe. 

Target also has a Forward Founders program, designed to engage entrepreneurs, particularly Black founders, early in their startup journeys by helping them navigate critical stages of bringing a brand to market, including ideation, product development, and scaling for mass retail. More than 2,000 founders have attended the virtual program since it launched.

Chill Tips at TargetTarget carries more than 500 Black-owned business brands in stores and online Blk & Bold Coffee at TargetTarget carries more than 500 Black-owned business brands in
…
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Upcycled Food and Beverages Are on the up and Up

Our grandmothers did it really well: Taking leftover foods and turning them into something else. Scraps of vegetables and animal bones made stock; leftover bread turned into bread pudding; croutons became breadcrumbs. 

What’s old is new again and companies are following grandma’s lead. And now it’s got a new fancy name: Upcycling. Upcycling means taking food that would otherwise be wasted and turning it into something new. It also means, hopefully, that the 1.3 billion tons of food that is wasted every year, according to the Food & Agriculture Association, will be reduced.

America’s upcycled industry was estimated at $ 46.7 billion in 2019, according to the Financial Times and by this year, more than 160 products from 37 companies are Upcycled Certified by the Upcycled Food Association (UFA), Greenwood Village, Colo. 

Upcycling is gaining traction, especially with the environmentally minded, but even big companies are getting in on the action. Anheuser Busch is building two facilities, in the U.S. and Belgium, to process barley, which would otherwise be discarded or fed to cattle, to sell to companies like Nestle.

The greatest solution

Upcycling means doing more with less and protecting the planet at the same time. According to Project …

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