Over the past year, in speaking to people for this column, a few topics have emerged over and over in our conversations: the value of surrounding yourself with people who see your worth.

For Neha Kumar, COO and co-founder of Full Glass Wine Co, this is the rule she has lived by in the industry. In less than two years, the brand acquisition and management firm focused on the DTC wine space has acquired a number of wine companies such as Wine Insiders and Scout & Cellar and is now worth $200 million after a recent Series A funding round. But things weren’t as straightforward in the beginning.

The story begins in November 2023, when Kumar made a bid for Winc.com that had filed for bankruptcy, which is also when she saw an opportunity and approached Louis Amoroso, founder of Drinks, whom she had worked with years ago. Knowing his expertise in DTC shipping, the two joined forces and acquired Winc’s DTC business and became co-founders of Full Glass Wine Co (Amoroso assumed the CEO role).

“Maintaining good relationships, strong relationships, are very key for business overall,” Kumar told Retail Brew. “It’s a very small world, and you never know what’s going to happen.”

Still, while at the helm of a successful business today, Kumar says the industry still remains an “old boys’ club.”

Keep reading here.—JS

The beverage world was abuzz this week as PepsiCo announced it’s buying prebiotic soda brand Poppi for $1.95 billion, concluding weeks of hot—and nearly contentious—better-for-you soda competition that included a clash with Olipop, and a new number of companies, including Coca-Cola, entering the ring.

Poppi began as Mother Beverage in 2015, secured investment from CAVU Ventures’s Rohan Oza on Shark Tank in 2018, and rebranded to Poppi in early 2020. The brand raked in over $500 million in sales in 2024, boasting a star-studded investor group, two Super Bowl ad spots, and even a line of merch at Target, before the beverage giant snapped it up.

The sale comes a month after Poppi garnered online backlash for sending giant branded vending machines to creators ahead of its Super Bowl spot, which some dubbed “out of touch.”

Keep reading here.—EC

One thing that really makes consumers see red, ironically enough, is that they don’t like the red that they’re seeing.

So found a recent report that analyzed 51 million customer reviews by Yotpo, an e-commerce marketing platform. Among reviews that mentioned the color red, 70% were negative, according to the report.

The problem generally was not that shoppers didn’t expect the delivery driver to hand them a red product; it was that the product was not the shade of red they were expecting.

“This sweatshirt looks nothing like the photo,” states a one-star review featured in the report, which didn’t name the retailer. “Raspberry red—nothing like the soft coral in the photo.”

There’s no way to know when the mixup is the fault of the brand, which may have lit or photographed the item poorly, or the consumer, whose devices may not display the color properly. But the stakes, of course, are high, as the brand has to contend with not only the possibility of losing a disappointed customer, but also having to deal with the likelihood (and expense) of the item being returned.

Keep reading here.—AAN