Dive Brief:

• DTC brand Grove Collaborative will venture into physical retail for the first time through a partnership with Target to make sustainable products more accessible.
• Grove is launching an exclusive new citron and white rose scent along with its best-selling cleaning products at Target locations nationwide and Target.com starting Sunday, according to a press release emailed to Retail Dive.  
• Together with its merchandise, Grove will have in-store educational displays that aim to convince shoppers to transition to sustainable, plant-based products, per the release. 

Dive Insight:

Months after closing a $125 million funding round, Grove is now focused on bringing its products where shoppers spend their time and money. 

Grove Collaborative co-founder and CEO Stuart Landesberg told Retail Dive that Target was a natural partner for the company's entry into physical stores.

"To achieve the overall vision and mission of the company, we need to collaborate with partners like Target in order to make sure that the reach of mission-driven product spans as widely as it possibly can," Landesberg said. "As much as I believe in the experience on our own dot com, vertical e-commerce in our segment is probably under 5% of the market."

As Grove Collaborative settles in among Target's CPG mainstays, the big-box retailer's collection of partnerships with digitally native brands continues to grow. Target, in recent years, has been known for using partnerships with brands and exclusive products to drive sales and hype.

In a time where traditional department stores have faltered, Target has stepped in to become a place shoppers visit to discover new products and brands in a physical setting — much like how department stores functioned in their heyday. 

In a bid to change consumer behavior, Grove also plans to include informational displays in Target stores to educate consumers about the benefits of purchasing sustainable products.

"In this case, we chose to invest in education because the benefits for the consumer and the benefit for the environment are so well aligned if we can just drive a little bit of consumer understanding," Landesberg said.

Amid a financially tumultuous year for some retailers, Grove announced it conducted a funding round in December after seeing strong sales across all product categories. The latest funding round brought Grove's valuation to $1.32 billion.

Despite the notion that eco-conscious ambitions have taken a step back, recent data from Kearney shows that 77% of investors said they intend to consider the climate as part of their investment decisions, suggesting that the demand for sustainable products will continue to grow.

"We think there is a need for every corporate actor to participate in change," Landesberg said.

"I think it is absolutely appropriate for stakeholders to demand disclosure to make clear the business leaders are making decisions that don't just benefit their shareholders at the expense of the environment, at the expense of employees, at the expense of customers or at the expense of communities," Landesberg added.