Instacart Reimagines Sell Sheet for Emerging Brands

Instacart has rolled out new discovery tools leveraging its grocery insights to reimagine how brands showcase their products to retailers.

Instacart’s revamped digital sell sheets were designed to help emerging brands on the platform more easily showcase the best of their product catalog to Instacart’s network of over 1,400 retail banners, according to a media release.

Powered by Instacart’s first-party data and insights, Brand Explorer now enables Instacart’s retail partners to search and discover these sell sheets and connect with new products and up-and-coming brands directly in the Instacart Platform Portal. Instacart says this enables retailers to make smarter decisions when looking for new products to stock their shelves, while helping emerging brands grow in-store distribution. More specifically, retailers can:

• Browse sell sheets and brand profile pages to discover trending products.
• Filter their search for categories and brands that match trends, metrics and assortment gaps.
• Understand product attributes, pricing and sales performance via one tool.
• Access brand contact information to establish direct relationships with brands through Instacart’s platform.

“We know that driving distribution in more stores is a significant challenge for emerging brands,” Chris Rogers, chief business officer at Instacart, said in the release. “They’re working hard to break into a crowded industry, from attending trade shows to cold-calling retailers. Meanwhile, retail category teams are sifting through thousands of new products to find the right fit for their business and customers. The process is still fairly manual and time-consuming for everyone involved.

“Instacart is well positioned to connect innovative brands with retailers looking to expand their selection, empowering everyone with easy-to-access insights directly within Instacart’s self-serve technology,” he added. “Today’s announcement furthers our investment in emerging brands’ success, and our commitment to streamline grocery operations for retailers online and in-store.”

Instacart’s new sell sheets are designed primarily with emerging brands’ particular challenges in mind and allow brands to showcase their products easily and automatically – including platform sales data, product information, and key growth insights – directly in Ads Manager. The company says that connecting emerging brands with retail category managers to share insights that prove their products are a strong addition to store shelves is an essential part of the brand growth journey.

Chomps, Liquid Death and Poppi are among the first emerging brands to leverage the new sell sheets.

“We have a unique approach to marketing at Liquid Death, where creativity and humor are the center of it all,” Hamid Saify, senior vice president of digital retail at Liquid Death, said in the release. “We use tools from Instacart to tell that story to audiences, including people looking for healthier beverage options. As one of the fastest-growing water and iced tea brands in retail, we also need to connect with retailers to scale both brick-and-mortar and digitally.”

“At Chomps, we’re committed to creating the healthiest protein snacks that don’t compromise on taste,” Matt Meloy, vice president of sales at Chomps, added. “It’s crucial for us to share that vision and our success metrics with retailers in order to keep growing our retail footprint and drive consumer discovery. We love that Instacart is creating a new opportunity for retail category managers to easily find brands like ours, see the sales our products are driving – like our new Taco Beef flavor – and connect with our team directly.”

This launch builds on Instacart’s ongoing efforts to help emerging brands drive omnichannel growth. Earlier this year, Instacart unveiled a new integration enabling growing brands using Shopify to easily connect to Instacart Ads products and insights. Instacart has also previously worked to streamline Ads Manager’s design so that advertisers, including emerging brands and their agencies, can choose an objective to get tailored, optimized recommendations for the ad formats, targeting and bidding options to reach their business goals.