Bob’s Discount Furniture debuted on the New York Stock exchange on Thursday, and despite barely budging above its opening price, some experts see the offering as a sign of strength in the beleaguered home goods category—especially at the low-end of the price spectrum.

“You always have winners and losers, and in the furniture industry, similar to other sectors, the companies at the value end of the price spectrum tend to do well,” Richard Baum, managing partner of Consumer Growth Partners, an investment and advisory firm specializing in discretionary consumer products, told Retail Brew.

Bob’s is well-positioned at the lower end of the price curve, Baum added, and has done well as other higher-end furniture retailers such as Williams Sonoma and Ethan Allen have struggled coming off of the pandemic-era home goods boom.

Crucially for investors, Baum noted that Bob’s also has growth potential. The company plans to open 500 stores in the existing format by 2035, according to an SEC filing, with a focus on markets where there are existing furniture stores, in order “to optimize capture of qualified customers.” The expansion would more than double the chain’s footprint, which currently stands at more than 200 showrooms across the US.

Keep reading here.—AV

On Sunday, you can find us tackling a table full of snacks as we watch Sunday’s main event: the commercials.

“Buy now” categories, particularly CPG, have taken over Super Bowl advertising in recent years, per TV ad measurement company iSpot, with food and beverage accounting for 36% of ad time last year, its highest level since 2013. And CPG companies, including a number of beauty and personal care brands, aren’t fumbling the marketing opportunity this year either.

Here are the CPG ads to watch:

Food & Bev

• PepsiCo said this week it’ll cut prices by up to ~15% across Super Bowl staple snacks like Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos, and Tostitos, and will highlight Lay’s with not one, but two ads during the Big Game. One will focus on its farmer partnerships and the other a product giveaway to fans. It’s also airing an ad for Pepsi Zero Sugar starring a polar bear, and a Poppi spot featuring Charli XCX.
• Svedka’s Super Bowl debut will be the game’s first-ever vodka ad, and, even more notably, the first that’s largely AI-generated, starring a Fembot character last featured in its ads 12 years ago.
• Liquid I.V.’s Big Game debut, which it’s been teasing on social media, features a “bold public service announcement,” CMO Stacey Andrade-Wells told Marketing Brew.
• In its first Super Bowl ad under Mars’s ownership, Pringles’s spot depicts Sabrina Carpenter building her soulmate out of the salty snack. Mars-owned Skittles will also do a live commercial starring Elijah Wood in partnership with Gopuff.
• Kinder Bueno tapped Armageddon actor William Fichtner and Summer House star Paige DeSorbo for its inaugural Super Bowl ad, supporting its new “Yes Bueno” campaign.
• Mayonnaise maker Hellmann’s ad centers on Andy Samberg as “Meal Diamond,” singing a condiment-themed song to the tune of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”
• Answering the question of why William Shatner has been recently snapped by paparazzi carrying a box of Raisin Bran, the Star Trek star is headlining the cereal’s Big Game ad.
• Anheuser Busch is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Budweiser with an ad featuring—you guessed it—Clydesdales, alongside a bald eagle.

Keep reading here.—EC

In an era when nearly a fifth of retail sales come from e-commerce, many online shoppers have gotten used to receiving their purchases in packaging that is far too large for the item inside. Tubes of lip gloss are being shipped in boxes that could hold at least a dozen of them, meaning retailers are paying not only to send products, but also the air that accompanies them inside oversized packaging.

Paccurate, a software company, helps companies solve that problem by figuring out how they can ship their products in more suitably sized packaging that cuts down on excess waste. Morning Brew spoke with Paccurate’s co-founder and CEO, James Malley, about the software’s special sauce and the specific problems it’s able to solve in the e-commerce industry.

Keep reading here.—TC

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s weekly news quiz has been compared to getting a company-wide shout-out from your boss. It’s that satisfying.