E-commerce marketing and insights platform MikMak has raised $10 million in Series A funding, which it plans to use to expand the company across the U.S. and beyond. It has sights set on international territory as it looks to capitalize on the exponential growth it has seen during the coronavirus pandemic, Rachel Tipograph, founder and CEO, told Cheddar.
"COVID has accelerated e-commerce demand by five years. So, where we all thought the industry was going to be in the year 2025, it arrived on the week of March 9th," she said.
MikMak works with brands like Nestle and L'Oreal to create captivating digital ad campaigns and links them to retailers with major online presences, including Target, Walmart, and Sephora.
While many businesses have failed to keep their online operations up to speed, Tipograph said it is necessary in order to run a thriving business today.
"E-commerce has become the way these Fortune 1000 consumer brands have to go to market. Brick-and-mortar is now secondary," she noted.
The retail industry has suffered tremendously amid the coronavirus pandemic, but for MikMak and Tipograph, selling essentials has allowed shops to keep their doors open.
"We don't focus on apparel and footwear. Our clients are personal care, home care, beauty, food, beverage, alcohol. They're actually the pantry staple items," she explained.
While traditionally major brands tended to target everyday Americans on a broad scale, hoping to reach a large group and find a few potential customers within it, Tipograph said success in online sales is due to carefully curated marketing for a specific target consumer.
"You actually have to go really narrow and really niche," she said. "Let's find people online who suffer from acne or rosacea and live in the Chicago metro area."
With research, according to Tipograph, companies may find that target groups they least expect to consume their products, particularly amid the pandemic, are actually driving sales.
"Brands want more data and we've got it," she said. "The fastest growing demographic in terms of shift during COVID has actually been people that are over 60 years old," noting that older people turned to online shopping during the pandemic and speculating that they will continue to use it once the health crisis has subsided.
Tipograph provided a nugget of advice for companies currently figuring out their marketing strategies, saying a "shift in mindset" and abandoning old approaches to selling an item is how they will see success in their businesses.
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
