True Stories

As the price of materials, energy and products soar, it's tempting for retailers and brands to discount to keep their customers, whose disposable income continues to shrink.  For many brands the urge to discount, if not well thought through, can be damaging to your brand and easily spiral in a race to the bottom. In this piece we take a look at how businesses can lean into strategic partnerships, innovative tech platforms and other ways to creatively keep your customers.

Margaret joins Frugi as Chair, bringing her wealth of experience from leading global brands including Victoria’s Secret, Gap, Primark and Masai Clothing.

NFTs (and applications utilising blockchain technology more broadly) are coming under increasing scrutiny for their impact on the planet, and for good reason. The blockchain technology which enables the creation and trade of digital assets is environmentally damaging due to the ‘mining’ processes required to certify transactions, which use a LOT of power. Having said this NFTs certainly don’t have to be entirely at odds with ESG considerations.

Did you know that 80% of consumer spending is done by women (a total of $20 trillion) and yet only 2% of all VC Capital is in all-women led businesses. These numbers shed a disappointing light on the industry - and business landscape more broadly - and so we invited the brilliant women of our community to discuss topics such as this on International Women's Day in a panel hosted at True House.

With rising inflation rates and a downturn in consumer confidence what is the lay of the land for retail this year? And what - if any - are the investment opportunities out there?

For the past two years most of our community interactions have been virtual – but none were quite like the event we hosted at the end of 2021. We jumped into the Metaverse with our guests to take them around a ‘Truetopia’ of virtual shops, streets and leisure spots as our avatars got together in the virtual auditorium, to discuss realistic opportunities for brands and retailers in our community.

The Metaverse has well and truly landed. All things 'metaverse' have reached fever pitch since Facebook's rebranding to Meta. The October 2021 announcement not only set out a vision for what a fully immersive digital world powered by VR would look like for the company's 2.89 billion monthly active users, but also confirmed a colossal investment in making this a reality – $10 billion this year alone. Since then, everyone's been talking about it.

At True, we believe that business can always be better. It’s why we help people and companies reach for more meaningful relationships, why we break down the barriers to better business in industries, and why we help companies transform how they work and what they do. We’re changing what good business looks like — reshaping it as a force for positive change by showing the world a better way to succeed. True. Business, Reimagined.

We have been immersed in the virtual world and metaverse for quite some time but the landscape is still evolving and we're still learning. We've done some of the hard work so you don't have to by putting together a glossary of terms that might help unravel the mystery of the metaverse.

This October, our team was finally able to meet in person for a few fun-filled days of getting to know each other — and our new brand — a little better.

True has completed the first close for its new seed stage fund, which covers pre-seed to Series A. We’ll be investing up to £5m in exciting, innovative brands that are stretching the possibilities of digital and changing the retail and consumer landscape.

True has acquired a majority stake in D2C zero sugar, energy drink business Sneak to help supercharge international expansion, build out Sneak’s distribution channels and support the business as it continues to disrupt the traditional energy drink market with its creative approach to marketing and ecommerce.