Interview #9: Matt Holden
Software companies see across many different verticals within CPG, which offers a unique perspective into what is going on in the landscape. I had the pleasure of chatting with Matt Holden, from Glimpse, an AI-enabled invalid retail deduction management platform for CPG brands. Glimpse has raised over $50M from Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, and YCombinator. Thank you so much for joining, Matt! I am super excited to share this conversation.
This is the ninth conversation in an ongoing series with movers and shakers in the retail industry. Is there anyone you want to hear from? Please be sure to drop their names 👇
The following conversation has been lightly edited for context and clarity.
Takeaways:
Trade spend is one of the biggest pieces of the P&L, invalid deductions can be 2-3% of topline revenue, and it really starts to add up
It can be really hard to be objective about your own product, and sometimes the retail buyers also aren't being that objective about the taste of your products
In order to get people to buy your product a second time, you need a good product
Retail power is shifting more towards brands, but the growing retail media spend shows retailers still have some power
AI being able to handle those menial back-office tasks frees up all those humans to make more human connections
Health and wellness space is being spurred by new form factors, instead of pills, like patches
Whether you think retail is alive or not really depends on your local economy, but it’s constantly shifting (see Williamsburg’s luxury retail boon)
Interview:
Noah Sobel-Pressman: Thank you so much for joining us, Matt. For those who aren't aware, could you tell us more about Glimpse and your background?
Matt Holden: Thanks for having me, Noah. Glimpse is all about turning invalid retail deductions into a new revenue channel. We are building AI agents that are consolidating all the different sources of retail data, validating all the different deductions and chargebacks, and then recovering cash that CPG brands otherwise write off as a cost of doing business. We've been in market for a couple of years now. We've raised $52M from Andreesen Horowitz, 8VC, YCombinator, and a few others. Our team is located in New York City, and we are hiring!
NSP: Why is it important from a brand perspective to really understand their deductions, and how have you been able to support brands throughout their life cycle?
MH: Trade spend is one of the biggest pieces of the P&L. Deductions are the actuals of that trade spend. There are thousands of little charges, and they're not really connected to anything else. It is really hard to make any decisions or spot any opportunities where you're losing money and margin. Invalid deductions can be 2-3% of topline revenue. Invalid deductions you can dispute, and you probably win back. The more you understand what's going on there, the more you can recover, and the more power you have in your conversations with lenders and investors and retailers,
NSP: You have worked with hundreds of emerging brands. A big topic right now, obviously, is all these emerging brands launching in retail. From your perspective, what have you seen that differentiates the brands that are able to not only land that initial distribution, but really scale sales up after they get that?
MH: Getting that shelf space is the beginning of the work. It's not the end. It's definitely something you should celebrate, but it is the beginning of a long road. I think the successful brands are really educated or educating themselves on things like trade spend, packaging changes needed to stand out on retail shelves, and how retail media works. If you are coming from direct-to-consumer, retail is a different beast. For instance, what you are doing with an influencer in retail is often different. You often are in the dark making decisions compared to some of what you're able to decide with all the data at your fingertips from Shopify and all the other digital channels.
[Once you get into retail] even if you have a celebrity attached to your brand, that might be good for awareness and trial, but if the product isn't good, people won't try it again. If you spend all this money to go into retail, and people buy your product once [then] never buy it again, you've wasted your money. It can be really hard to be objective about your own product, and sometimes the retail buyers also aren't being that objective about the taste of your products. They're thinking in terms of gaps in the market, pricing, and assortment. If the product doesn't taste good, it's just a waste. I feel like that is honestly the biggest thing that separates brands that succeed from brands that don't. It is very possible to get on the shelf if your product isn't very good.
NSP: Traditionally, a lot of the power within the paradigm of retailers and brands has been more on the retailer side, but that definitely seems to be shifting a lot over the past 5-10 years. With brands getting more and more power, how do you think the role of the retailer changes over the next decade?
MH: I think the retailer still has a lot of power, but it's different power. Back in the day before the internet, before social media, retail was where you discovered new things, new brands, and new categories. If you were new and nobody knew who you were, you had to partner with those retailers to get in front of any eyeballs. But now, you can blow up on TikTok Shop. You can blow up because your co-founder has a really dedicated, engaged, and large audience that aligns with your product. People are also just discovering new ideas, new solutions, new problems through being so connected digitally, and so that means the retailer has to keep up with that pace.
[Retailers have] to stay ahead of consumer expectations faster, which is hard for big companies to do well. If a brand truly can bring new foot traffic into your store, people [will] not only buy their products but other products. That is power. The retailer does kind of have to bow to that, but the retailer still is really powerful because there's so much noise online, [especially] with AI. On the flip side, the growing retail media shows the power of the retailer. It is basically like more trade spend.
NSP: Another paradigm shift we're seeing is AI, but it's interacting with every industry a little differently. Where do you see AI impacting the retail world the most on the food and beverage side?
MH: Food and beverage retail is such a relationship-based business. It's also a business that has a lot of really menial, repetitive back office tasks. AI being able to handle those menial back office tasks frees up all those humans to make more human connections, or develop the relationships that are necessary to be successful in a [large retailer]. I think that there will be a lot of pressure for everybody across the supply chain to do more with less. There are a lot of legacy businesses in manufacturing and distribution of food and beverage that are old school. There will either be reorgs, layoffs, or there will be a generation of people that retire who do not get replaced. Hopefully we'll get more connectivity and less physical paper trail, so that we can operate more efficiently and collaboratively. On the brand side, AI means you can actually launch a brand and successfully scale it with way fewer people.
NSP: In terms of looking at the industry as a whole, which consumer categories or brands are you most excited about right now, and are there any like underlying consumer behaviors driving that excitement?
MH: I think vitamins and supplement space is really interesting. There have always been a lot of options, but there are many new form factors that are really interesting. There are a couple of brands that are doing a different type of supplements, but instead of a pill, they're a patch that you wear. I think like hydration is really interesting. Leisure [Hydration] is probably one of my favorite brands that I consume daily. You can replace a Gatorade with that, but you can also stand around at a barbecue and drink one of those instead of a beer or a Liquid Death. They were able to ride a couple of waves and hone in on some actual white space, and it's been really successful. Health and wellness is just something that's more top of mind for people.
NSP: Thank you so much for joining, Matt. This has been a great conversation. I always like to end with the same question. Is retail dead or alive? Why do you think that?
MH: It's a really interesting question, and the answer probably varies based on the perspective. For Amazon, for example, retail's probably incredibly alive. They have taken over Whole Foods, made a lot of changes. I'm sure they probably think it's really alive. If you ask someone living in a rural area, where there's no place to buy food or drinks outside of a Dollar General, and the mom and pop retailers have been priced out, they might have a different perspective. That person might not feel like retail is alive.
I think even like New York City, retail's very alive, but it's really changing. There's a lot of like empty storefronts in places where you never would have thought you'd see an empty storefront in the past, downtown Manhattan, West Village. But, there are also crazy luxury retail stores in Williamsburg, where there used to be a warehouse. There wouldn't have ever been those types of shoppers there [before]. So it's always changing.
I think also if you look at the K-shaped economy, the upper part of the K is where a lot of people are focusing, and you're starting to see more Erewhon type of retailers. I know in Manhattan there's a bunch of these kind of bougified retailers. That’s new and interesting. [Overall,] I would say for a lot of people, that feels really alive.
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