Brand News
21 February
New funding for Lemon Perfect, Moët Hennessy acquires rosé
Dealboard has news on funding for ecommerce finance and subscription tech.

Dejounte Murray signed on with Lemon Water. (Courtesy photo)
Dealboard has news on funding for ecommerce finance and subscription tech.
Dejounte Murray signed on with Lemon Water. (Courtesy photo)
Welcome to Dealboard. In this weekly feature, The Current is providing a look at the mergers, acquisitions and venture capital deals making waves in ecommerce, CPG and retail.
This week, a hydration brand raised its second $30+ million round in a year, and there’s new funding for seaweed materials and subscription tech. Plus, Gorilla Glue sells a home goods maker, and Moët Hennessy adds luxury rosé.
Lemon Perfect, the Altanta-based hydration brand, raised $36.8 million in a new funding round. Goat Rodeo Capital Management led the round, Forbes reported. Goat Rodeo Managing Partner Carlton Fowler and Arby’s CMO Rita Patel will join the company’s board. The new funding comes less than a year after the lemon water maker raised $31 million in a Series A round that was backed by Beyonce. Alongside the funding news, the company also laced up a new endorsement deal with NBA star Dejounte Murray.
Loliware, a materials tech company that makes products using seaweed, raised $6 million in a pre-Series A round. The financing includes investment from L Catterton, CityRock Venture Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Geekdom Fund, Ehukai Investments, 5 Pillars Capital, Kilara Capital founder Ben Krasnostein, Clay Rockefeller, Kiss the Ground cofounder Ryland Engelhart, Nutiva founder John Roulac and Blue Bottle Coffee founder Bryan Meehan,
Smartrr, which provides subscription technology for Shopify brands, raised $10 million in a Series A funding round. The financing was led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from Expa and Nyca. The company’s software allows Shopify brands to offer customizable subscriptions, bundles, loyalty programs and rewards. “While Smartrr got its start in subscription management, we really see them as a leader in an emerging ‘post-purchase operating system’ for growing digital brands,” said Canvas’ Harrison Lieberfarb.
Highbeam, which provides financial insights for ecommerce brands, raised $10 million in debt from TriplePoint, TechCrunch reported. Founded by Microsoft and Shopify alums, the company will use the funding to expand its digital products, which include banking and cashflow insights.
Caliray, a beauty brand from Urban Decay founder Wende Zomnir, raised funding from early stage beauty and wellness-focused VC firm True Beauty Ventures, WWD reported. The funding will help the company expand an existing partnership with Sephora.
Moët Hennessy acquired Château Minuty, a luxury rosé producer based at an estate in the Saint-Tropez peninsula in France. With the deal, previous owners The Matton family will continue to run the estate, and operate the company. Under Moët Hennessy, the company will be able to meet export demand for the wine internationally. Terms were not disclosed.
Sapadilla, which makes environmentally conscious and naturally scented home products, was acquired from Gorilla Glue by Cincy Brands, a technology company founded by former Procter & Gamble executives that acquires “better-for-you” brands. Vancouver-based Sapadilla makes a line of hand soaps, dish soaps and cleaners that use essential oil blends and biodegradable ingredients. The brand sells through its direct-to-consumer website and Amazon. Terms were not disclosed.
Away, the DTC luggage brand, is exploring a potential sale of the company, according to reporting from Bloomberg. Valued at $1.45 billion, Away was among a generation of digitally native brands that combined product acumen, millennial-friendly design appeal and marketing prowess to achieve fast growth over the last decade. After demand cratered during the pandemic, the brand rebounded as travel returned and explored an IPO in 2021. Now, it is working to solicit potential buyers, as well as other strategic options.The grocer is expanding a partnership with Cooler Screens.
(Photo courtesy of Cooler Screens)
You may have heard of offsite retail media. How about offline?
Retail media holds out the opportunity that brands and marketplaces can reach customers with advertising, anywhere that there’s a screen. Through a new partnership, that capability is extending to the store.
Kroger is set to add smart screens to 500 stores, bringing retail media activations to aisles and checkout lines.
It’s the result of an expanded partnership with Cooler Screens, a company that developed software and enabling hardware to provide advertising and analytics on in-store screens. The company started by developing screens for the cooler doors of frozen food sections, but has since expanded to other areas of the store, like endcaps, banner aisles or existing screens.
Kroger and Cooler Screens piloted the technology for three years, and set out to determine whether they could improve customer experiences through interactive media and digital merchandising. The companies now have conviction that the content available on screens can enable consumers to make “better-informed decisions based on their own preferences, diets, health needs, budgets and lifestyles,” according to an announcement detailing the activation.
In turn, providing in-store retail media allows brands to reach consumers while they are shopping at a brick-and-mortar location. It extends the digital ad opportunities available via ecommerce to a new channel. Unlike a traditional static display ad, digitally-powered retail media is measurable, and Cooler Screens said it offers tools that help brands provide contextually relevant promotions and product information, as well as analytics on performance.
Kroger has made retail media a central part of its digital strategy. The grocer provides advertising through the Kroger Precision Marketing arm, and customer insights through its 84.51° data science team. Executives have talked about how retail media is helping the company unlock new, high-margin business lines, and see the growth of available data as a key driver of the company’s proposed merger with Albertsons.
“We’re excited about this continued collaboration as it extends our vision for the future of retail media, offering brands another powerful marketing lever inside the store,” said Cara Pratt, senior vice president at Kroger Precision Marketing, in a statement. “Cooler Screens shares and further enables this vision by bringing the best of digital experiences directly into our retail stores while integrating with our 84.51° data science platform to create an engaging and valuable experience for our customers, associates, and brands.”
Cooler Screens said it reaches more than 90 million viewers monthly in stores. Along with Kroger, customers include Walgreens and Giant Eagle’s GetGo convenience stores.
While retail media is primarily a means of advertising on ecommerce marketplaces today, the expanded appearance of advertising on in-store screens underscores how the first-party data that powers it can be foundational for a growing range of channels.