Retail: Heartcore Consumer Technology Trends 2021

Heartcore is Europe's consumer technology VC. Our annual Consumer Technology Trends Report sums up what happened in the world of consumer technology - category by category.

L’Oréal has developed digital factories with advanced audiovisual capabilities to create responsive, consumer-oriented and highly personalised social content. In 2019, L’Oréal’s 1M content posts reached a total of 1.3B visitors and 285M fans.

In 2017, Nike announced it’s “Consumer Direct Offense”, expanding its focus on content, community and customisation, driving a veritable D2C revolution. “As we look ahead, we are focused on moving even faster against our strategic vision of Consumer Direct Acceleration.”, Matt Friend (CFO), Q2 2020

Covid-19 has re-oriented the way consumers discover and purchase products, fortifying the trend of virtual immersive experiences-- a trend that is likely to prevail in a digital first, post pandemic world.

In 2019, 30% of China’s population viewed livestreams. In 2020, the number grew to 39%.

Li Jiaqi, a Chines salesman luminary of beauty products, gained international fame after selling 15,000 lipsticks in five minutes.

On Singles’ Day in 2019, Li attracted 36M viewers during his live-stream on Taobao and generated more than $145M in sales.

The highest-paid YouTuber is 8-year-old Ryan Kaji. In 2020, Ryan made $29.5M in revenue on Youtube through his unboxing and product review (we expect his parents take-rate is high)

Brands started by influencers continue to emerge across fashion and beauty. Some of them are getting to a meaningful scale.

Heartcore's portfolio company Italic is bringing the Costco business model to online retail. A subscription for "quality at cost". La Fourche, another Heartcore portfolio company is doing the same thing in groceries/ staples. We believe that membership-dirven retail has substantial customer and manufacturer benefits and are excited by this segment.