Dive Brief:
- Mission-driven retailer Grove Collaborative launched a rebrand of its flagship private label, Grove Co., on Thursday as part of a multi-phase effort. The rebrand is aimed at improving Grove Co.’s visibility on shelves and highlighting its sustainability focus and partnerships to end single-use plastic waste, according to a company press release.
- The company is consolidating all owned brand products under the Grove Co. label, which includes incorporating the Rooted Beauty personal care brand under Grove Co. and sunsetting the Good Fur, Honu, Peach, Sustain and Superbloom brands.
- New packaging for the Grove Co. label highlights aluminum as a plastic alternative and contains elevated fragrance illustrations “to communicate the experiential nature of Grove’s natural origin fragrances,” said the company. All new products starting this year will display the new artwork, and existing product lines will transition to the new packaging throughout the year and as inventory is restocked.
Dive Insight:
By bringing all company-owned products under a single brand, Grove Collaborative is aiming to simplify the experience for customers, focus resources on its most innovative products and drive home its message as a planet friendly company.
The rebrand also features a ready-to-use line of home essentials in aluminum packaging versus the concentrated refills Grove Co. has been known for. The ready-to-use line will include hand soap, dish soap and concentrated laundry detergent to provide affordable, reduced plastic offerings without the need for a durable dispenser, according to the company. Four new fragrances are launching this year across all products, including sunshower, fresh pomelo, wild mint and sea spray.
Grove Collaborative is also launching a “Perfect Isn’t Sustainable, Progress Is” campaign to coincide with Earth Month and encourage customers to make choices to reduce plastic use. The company said the campaign — which runs across paid, social, email and performance marketing channels — is a rallying cry to think about sustainability differently.
“Grove Collaborative is on a mission to make consumer products a force for human and environmental good — a mission we pursue each day by creating and curating planet-friendly, wallet-friendly, and efficacious products to support each customer’s sustainability journey,” Jeff Yurcisin, who just marked his seventh month in the CEO role, said in the press release.
Grove’s plastic intensity (pounds of plastic per $100 of net revenue) was 1.07 pounds in the fourth quarter of 2023, an improvement from 1.11 pounds in the third quarter of 2023 and 1.08 pounds in the fourth quarter of 2022. The company said the fourth quarter of 2023 marked the lowest plastic intensity across the entire business, including owned brands and third-party products.
In fall 2022, Grove Collaborative started selling its products at CVS, doubling its retail presence and distributing its products in more than 2,000 CVS locations and on the pharmacy chain’s website. Last year, Grove Collaborative launched a dedicated health and wellness hub, called Grove Wellness, to sell a curated assortment of products from various brands on its website.
In early 2023, the Certified B. Corp. company expanded its wholesale channels by expanding its selection of products on Amazon and entering select Walmart stores.
At the end of February of this year, Grove Collaborative launched a new subscription model to improve the first order experience for new customers. The new model removes gated access and default subscriptions and creates incentives for customers to buy more.
Yurcisin, a former chief executive officer at Zulily and Shopbop, in March outlined his goals for the new year after taking over for co-founder Stuart Landesberg as CEO in August. He said planet sustainability and a profitable business needed to co-exist.
“We seek to be the most trusted brand for conscientious customers who want to make the right choices for their families and the plan to achieve that, we must deliver profitable growth,” Yurcisin said in the fourth quarter earnings call on March 6. “ I'm proud of our team's incredible progress over the past few months as we continue to prioritize profitability while putting the customer at the center of all that we do. The creation of a leading sustainable brand is a catalyst for our future growth, which we’ll accomplish by creating and curating the most efficacious and Planet first product.”
