Our Investment in Impacked

"What is primary packaging?" was the first question I asked when meeting Lisa-Marie Assenza and Natasha Trueman, the NYC-based founders of Impacked.

Turns out I encounter a lot of it - from my shampoo bottles, to face cream jars, to laundry detergent tubs and medicine bottles. Anything that's in direct contact with product itself is considered a form of primary packaging, and this industry - while absolutely enormous - is also completely antiquated.

This is exactly what shocked Lisa-Marie during her time at Unilever, where discovering and sourcing primary packs was one of the biggest bottlenecks in her product launch process. Meanwhile Natasha, who was working at Softbank's newly formed NY-team, was witnessing how global marketplaces were driving change in otherwise traditional industries. The pair got to talking and came up with the idea for Impacked.

At its core, Impacked facilitates the discovery and fulfillment of primary packs by connecting brands and suppliers through a B2B marketplace. Traditionally this process is manual, where brands rely on personal networks and a lot of phone calls & emails to suppliers to procure packs. Sustainability is also at the root of Impacked's offering in aggregating data pertaining to the sustainable properties of each pack in the market. Brands simply aren't able to access this kind of data today.

Looking ahead, we see that e-commerce is skyrocketing with hoards of new D2C players entering the market. CPGs are being disrupted by grassroots brands that can distribute direct to consumer and innovate faster by catering to changing customers’ needs. In speaking with one large CPG, we learned that their innovation cycles went from one product launch every 12 months to multiple products every 6 months. As a result, the primary packaging market is poised to explode and speed of execution is becoming a critical factor of success.

We are thrilled to be on this journey, alongside the brilliant teams at FJ Labs and Quiet Capital, as Impacked strives to be the destination for every pack purchase on the planet.