Soylent ($PRIVATE:SOYLENTCORPORATION), the company behind meal-replacement products of the same name, once had a ton of media and consumer attention when it released its shakes and packs in 2013. But things are a bit different now.
According to Amazon best-seller rankings, all but one of Soylent's products have fallen out of the top-100 best-selling Grocery & Gourmet Food items.
In 2018, Soylent often had at least two product be within the top-100 best-seller products on Amazon. Today, only one product — its Cacao flavored shake — is seeing a top-100 sales rank. It went under three different names on Amazon over the course of its run, i.e. being called a "Drink" rather than a "Shake," but combining those three iterations shows a chart that reflects Soylent's overall fall out of the best-seller rankings.
This all indicates that people are shifting away from getting Soylent on Amazon, but where might the company be focusing its efforts elsewhere? Not only is it expanding into more brick-and-mortar locations — it recently struck a deal with distributor Dot Foods — but it's also honing in on direct-to-consumer marketing through a new advertising campaign and its own online storefront.
It also started to run two new advertisements during 2019 that are targeted towards those who are "too busy" to sit down and eat a full meal.
A drop in best-seller rank on an e-commerce giant should usually be a cause for concern, but Soylent appears to be taking its product and putting it directly in the hands of the consumer instead. IBIS World Market research pegged the meal replacement industry's revenue at $4 billion in 2018 with 2.9% annual growth, and with Soylent leading the pack despite a drop in Amazon's rankings, it may be continuing to grow without giving a slice of the pie... erm... a sip of the shake to Amazon.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
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