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.

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.

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.

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.

Not a day seems to go by that a New ‘Quick’ grocery operator doesn't raise funds - launching in a new country or forming a new partnership. In just the past few weeks Berlin-based Gorillas has raised $1bn, and launched a partnership with Tesco.

After an unprecedented year of stay at home orders, lockdowns, travel bans and store closures what does the UK economy look like in 2021, and what does that mean for the consumer and retail industry? Following a coordinated and 'deliberate' recession, how has the pandemic affected the UK consumer's spending power and will it affect their behaviour in the immediate future? True takes a closer look to see whether it is the consumer that will lead a bounce-back for Britain.

Mental health is now viewed by many as being of equal importance to a person’s physical health, and as such the market for consumer tools, apps and platforms, including Unmind, Headspace and Calm, continues to grow at pace. This shift in behaviour and attitude has supported the growth of workplace mental health platform Unmind, in which True became the business’ first institutional investor in 2017.

Warpaint is a disruptive men’s make-up brand which we were tracking for almost a year before we invested. We'd identified a brilliant management team and a brand that was one step ahead of consumer behavioural shifts. Although lockdowns across the world were changing consumer behaviour we were confident in our investment case. We take a look at why we chose to invest in founder Danny and his brand despite an uncertain time.

We are deliberately a business which has a different approach and way of doing things than traditional businesses in our industry. From the outset we’ve believed that through our investments we can build better businesses which put people and planet on a level playing field with profit. We're proud of our B Corp Certification and we want more businesses to join us.

The Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing health and economic crisis is, first and foremost, a humanitarian emergency. CEO’s and management teams of all organisations – consumer facing and more broadly – are rightly focused at the moment on the welfare of their colleagues, providing support where possible to the national response and local communities and, of course, focusing on a path to survival through the significant disruption.

As specialist investors in the consumer space, we are fascinated by shifts in behaviour, such as the move towards at-home fitness, and what they mean for brands and business models longer term. Trying to predict which behavioural shifts will become permanent is a key part of our role. Here we look at the health and fitness sector.

This is our first investment in the food and beverage sector - so why have we chosen Antipodean healthy food group Soulfresh? We take a look at the market and the reasons why we believe we can help support the Soulfresh team on its journey.

The importance of wellbeing has become increasingly recognised in modern society, with issues surrounding one part of this – mental health – moving up the social and political agenda. As is often the case, innovation has more than matched demand, with a proliferation of startups seeking to enhance all aspects of personal and mental wellbeing, including sexual wellbeing.

In December 2018, True invested in Zwift, the multiplayer online training and racing platform for cyclists and runners, a business that we believe has the potential to transform the indoor fitness market. Our investment forms part of a $120m fundraising round, in which we have partnered with leading venture capitalist investor Highland Europe and strategic investor Causeway Media, which have a number of assets in both traditional sports and esports.

Here at True we're fortunate to witness the innovation activities of a wide range of players from early-stage brands through to emergent, scaling operators all the way to some of the largest global businesses. In addition to ongoing, organic innovation we are increasingly seeing a trend towards acquisition as a means for larger companies to expand their capabilities and reach. Here Matt investigates why more businesses are turning to investment to innovate.

Sneak is disrupting the energy drinks market, with a distinctively branded healthy alternative. We believe that Sneak has the creativity, brand power, product attributes, and founding team to continue its disruption of the UK energy drinks market and to grow internationally, both in the US and Europe.