Quick Take — Unilever acquires the vitamin gummy candy brand Grüns

The group expands its wellness division in the wake of the supplement boom after agreeing the sale of the food division…

Grüns is the latest brand to join Unilever’s wellness division, which has been growing rapidly thanks to a surge in demand for vitamins and supplements since the Covid-19 pandemic. Over the past decade, soap manufacturer Dove has embarked on a series of acquisitions in the wellness sector. It has taken over brands such as the moisturising sachets Liquid IV, the hair growth supplement Nutrafol and the vitamin manufacturers Olly and SmartyPants.

In 2025, sales of the wellness division, which now includes eight brands, grew by double digits, driven by Nutrafol and Liquid IV.

Since Unilever acquired these brands, Liquid IV sales have increased sevenfold and Nutrafol sales threefold…

After the food deal, the beauty, wellness and personal care sectors, including brands such as Dove and Vaseline, will account for 67% of the group’s sales, up from 51% in 2025. Founded in 2023, Grüns produces vegetable-based gummy candies containing fruit and vegetable powder, vitamins and fibre, designed to be consumed daily to increase nutrient intake.

The company said last year that it generated $300 million in annual recurring revenues within two years of its founding, growth that will now accelerate thanks to Unilever’s global distribution network.

Among Grüns’ major distributors, besides its own site, are Amazon, Target, Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, and Sprouts.

Quick Take — Walmart launches new payment experience with ChatGPT

Walmart has launched a ChatGPT-based experience that will allow shoppers to find products in AI-based chat and then purchase them in a personalised Walmart environment, OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, said this week.

According to the company, this initiative links the product search functionality within ChatGPT to shoppers’ accounts, loyalty programmes and payments with Walmart. The experience is available via web browser and will also be launched with access via iOS and Android apps.

Walmart’s new ChatGPT-based experience represents a change from the retailer’s previous OpenAI strategy. In October 2025 , Walmart had announced a partnership with OpenAI to allow its customers to shop using Instant Checkout on ChatGPT. Walmart’s latest move marks a step back from Instant Checkout functionality….

Source

I had written on the subject here

Quick Take — Amazon launches one-hour delivery in US cities to challenge Walmart

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant said Tuesday that its 1-hour delivery option is available for more than 90,000 products, including essentials, toys and toilet paper, and will build on its existing same-day delivery network. The 60-minute delivery option was launched in major US metropolitan areas and smaller cities such as Boise, Idaho. The 3-hour delivery option has been launched in over 2,000 cities and towns. Perishable food products are available in selected areas, Amazon said. Reuters

Amazon recently launched Amazon Now “in select areas”

So there are three levels of delivery: 30 minutes, 1 hour and 3 hours

AI Agents in Retail: the silent revolution in large-scale retail

McKinsey estimates that retailers with autonomous AI systems are growing 50 per cent faster than competitors. Cognizant projects $4.4 trillion in additional spending over the next five years from customers embracing AI. Agents are not an investment in the future of retail, they are already the present, and those who delay to act today risk having to make up for a hard-to-fill disadvantage tomorrow

Quick Take — Instacart (US e-commerce) democratises ‘consumer intelligence’ with an AI-powered portal

Customer intelligence, often referred to as customer intelligence CI, is the collection, analysis and use of data to understand your customers’ behaviour, preferences and needs.

The Instacart Consumer Insights Portal (CIP) is a software platform that gives brands direct access to purchasing behaviour across the Instacart marketplace. Based on daily activity from nearly 100,000 locations, CIP offers marketing, sales, revenue growth management and insights to self-service teams access to SKU-level performance, search behaviour, substitution patterns and promotion impact, all based on actual transactions, not modelled data or survey panels.

Instacart is a service that does ‘last mile’ e-commerce for many US retailers. Instacart works with more than 1,400 different brands (national, regional and local), covering more than 80,000 shops across North America. Walmart is among its partners:although the Bentonville, Arkansas-based giant has its own strong delivery infrastructure, it works with Instacart in selected markets to expand its coverage. Below: the Instacart service at Whole Foods in 2016.

How Walmart became an advertising powerhouse while remaining focused on the food, non-food and e-commerce business

It is a pity that no Italian company has had the size but above all the vision to approach the world as these giants have done. In Italy everyone thought: e-commerce must be sustainable on its own. It happened to Esselunga at home until it had no rivals, but Amazon and Walmart disprove this vision. E-commerce is sustained by other, more profitable revenues