UrthMarket will tempt consumers to buy groceries online by offering curated products, cash back

29-Aug-2017 - Last updated on 30-Aug-2017 at 17:01 GMT

Even though sales of groceries online are minuscule compared to brick and mortar stores, online snack subscription service UrthBox sees significant potential in ecommerce for food and beverage and hopes to attract more consumers to the channel with launch in late September of UrthMarket.

“We see online grocery shopping growing rapidly over the next few years, especially in health and wellness,” company spokeswoman Kathy Chang told FoodNavigator-USA, adding, “We are planning on UrthMarket being the go-to online destination for health minded consumers.”

She explains, the new online marketplace, which officially launches Sept. 20, will be “a platform which would allow consumers access to a large selection of healthy, ethically sourced, and of course, GMO-free products in food, beauty, skincare and lifestyle goods.”

As such, she said, UrthMarket, like its snack subscription predecessor UrthBox, will offer consumers “a level of trust and peace of mind,” as well as a convenient way to discover and share new products that they love through “state-of-the-art, innovative search features designed to optimize for web, mobile and social” and through “an online community.”

Financial incentives for consumers and brands

But the platform will offer more than just carefully curated products that meet niche consumer needs and access to community of like-minded individuals, it will offer significant savings over competing online retailers, Chang said.

For example, unlike other similarly positioned online retailers, such as Thrive Market, UrthMarket will not require a membership fee.

Currently, “consumers don’t really have free access to a marketplace where everything listed is GMO-free and healthy,” said Chang, who explained that other curated online markets charge consumers between $59 to $140 a year in store access fees – a model that she says will struggle to succeed in the future.

UrthMarket also hopes to attract consumers by offering a “revolutionary cash-back program” that will give “savvy shoppers the fiscal incentive to continue to traffic the platform,” Chang said. She explained the company’s UrthBucks program will give the company a competitive edge over retail giants like Amazon by giving consumers 10-30% in dollar-for-dollar credit that they can redeem at any time on any purchase “just like any other form of payment.”

The platform also will offer deep promotional discounts, deals and giveaways daily from top brands, she said.

Finally, she noted, the market will give the first 100,000 customers $10 in automatic spending credit towards their first purchase within the marketplace.

UrthMarket also is offering financial incentives for brands to stock their products on the platform, Chang said.

“Early bird vendors/brands are getting first-come, first-serve top placement for their products, plus 70% off all of our standard marketing programs during pre-launch,” she said. “Basically, the sooner you join, the higher in the results your products show up above your competitors for as long as you are in the marketplace.”