Instacart Debuts New Discovery Tools for Emerging Brands

Instacart has rolled out new discovery tools that leverage its grocery insights to reimagine how brands present their products to retailers. The tech company’s new digital sell sheets permit emerging brands on the platform to easily showcase the best of their product catalog to Instacart’s network of more than 1,400 retail banners. Using Brand Explorer, Instacart’s retail partners can now easily search and discover the sell sheets, connecting with new products and up-and-coming brands directly in the Instacart Platform Portal. This allows retailers to make better decisions when seeking new products for their stores, meeting customer needs while helping rising brands grow in-store distribution.

“We know that driving distribution in more stores is a significant challenge for emerging brands,” observed Chris Rogers, chief business officer at San Francisco-based Instacart. “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. Today’s announcement furthers our investment in emerging brands’ success, and our commitment to streamline grocery operations for retailers online and in-store.”

[Read more: “Game-Changing Tech Updates at Instacart”]

Powered by Instacart’s unique first-party data and insights, Brand Explorer enables retailers to do the following: 

• Browse sell sheets and brand profile pages to find cutting-edge products.
• Filter searches for categories and brands that match trends, metrics and assortment gaps. 
• Understand product attributes, pricing and sales performance in a single easy-to-navigate tool.
• Access brand contact information to establish direct relationships with brands via Instacart’s platform.

Instacart’s new sell sheets are designed with emerging brands’ particular challenges in mind, helping them show what sets them apart so they can grow in-store distribution. Instacart’s reimagined sell sheets let brands easily and automatically showcase their products, including platform sales data, product information and key growth insights, directly in Ads Manager. Among the companies already doing so are protein snack maker Chomps, water and ice tea brand Liquid Death, and sparkling prebiotic soda company Poppi.

Today’s move builds on Instacart’s commitment to help emerging brands drive omnichannel growth. Earlier this year, the company revealed a new integration that enables 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 simply select an objective to receive tailored, optimized recommendations for ad formats, targeting and bidding options to attain their business goals. 

Instacart partners with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from 80,000-plus stores across North America on the Instacart Marketplace.