'We like to be the friend': Amazon competitor Boxed's CEO reveals how the wholesale retailer is cozying up to CPG giants like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo
- New York-based wholesale retailer Boxed is taking the opposite approach to Amazon as it tries to take on the juggernaut by giving brands and retailers reams of data, said founder and CEO Chieh Huang.
- "We like to be the friend, rather than the enemy for the industry," Huang said at Groceryshop, a conference for CPG brands, grocers, mass retailers, and startups.
- Boxed is building strong partnerships by giving brands and retailers analytics, data and guaranteed ROI on the platform, resulting in partnerships with Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, Huang said.
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LAS VEGAS - Brands and retailers have often complained that Amazon's stronghold on data puts them at a disadvantage.
New York-based wholesale retailer Boxed is taking the opposite approach as it tries to take on the juggernaut, cozying up to big brands and retailers by giving them reams of data, founder and CEO Chieh Huang said.
"We like to be the friend, rather than the enemy for the industry," Huang said at Groceryshop, a conference for CPG brands, grocers, mass retailers, and startups. "Whether you're a retailer needing technology or a CPG company needing extra sales or extra growth or extra marketing opportunities."
Boxed is giving brands and retailers analytics, data and guaranteed ROI on the platform, showing retailers the visual path of purchase data, giving them demographic data, and showing them how certain kinds of placements or lifestyle shots lead to more ROI in real-time.
Doing so has resulted in partnerships with the likes of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, Huang said. Coca-Cola rolled out two new Smartwater products, Smartwater Antioxidant and Smartwater Alkaline, exclusively on Boxed earlier this year. PepsiCo.'s Quaker Oats ran an A/B test on the platform, leading it to create new e-commerce packs for its products.
"For us it's been great to be able to empower you...and say 'Hey, I want to spend this, because I'm guaranteed a certain amount of ROI," Huang said. "And we share that data...how the packaging was, did folks really like it? What were the demographics of the folks that actually bought this?"
The company has also started to build robotics for distribution centers and a front-end platform for shoppers and is growing its advertising business.
