Hey friends,
Hope everyone has had a lovely week, and for those who had the day off yesterday, a great day free from work meetings. 🙂
In case you missed it, last week was a big one for FERMÀT. We officially announced our $45M Series B fundraise, led by VMG partners!
It was such a treat getting to celebrate the raise in person with ~150 of some of the coolest people in ecommerce in NYC last week at our Bessier Soirée! (Surprise revealed: Bessier is an anagram for Series B).
With this funding, the FERMÀT team will continue to advance our AI capabilities to power hyper-personalized commerce experiences for both human and agentic shoppers—investing deeper in everything from natural language interaction to AI-driven merchandising and offers. We’re also growing our team across AI/ML, enterprise sales, and agency strategy to accelerate adoption and deepen industry partnerships.
To read more about the Series B, check out this blog article from Rishabh, our Co-Founder/CEO.
If you missed us in NYC last week, we’re coming right back next Tuesday through Thursday for CommerceNEXT’s Growth Show. If you’re attending, we’d love to meet up! You can find us at Kiosk #260.
Onto this week’s newsie.
Inside: Asystem’s sleek, science-backed supplement PDPs, brand community building frameworks, the new CVS x Reddit partnership, and more.
Hope you have an awesome weekend! 🤗
Cheers,
Lex 💚
🛒 Store of the Week
Asystem
Founded in California in 2018, Asystem is a wellness brand that specializes in blending cutting-edge clinical ingredients with product design rooted in behavioral psychology. Their mission is to make healthy habit-building easy by offering supplements that integrate into consumers’ lifestyles with minimal friction.
A few callouts of things I love from Asystem’s site:
Homepage/Shop by Benefit → Really dig the Shop by Benefit carousel with quick Add to Bag buttons. Especially love that there’s a bundles section here.
Homepage/Hear from Them → Great social & authority proof section featuring reviews from pro athletes, authors, health professionals, and more
Science/Functional By Design Page → Really neat page that breaks down Asystem’s process for developing products & highlights their scientific rigor
PDPs/Icons by Carousel → Right vertical row of product benefit icons near the image carousel is super visually interesting & effective
PDPs/Clinical Research → Love the close-up product visual compared with the results data from consumers
PDPs/Ingredient Breakdowns → Gorgeous imagery here + very digestible yet detailed ingredient breakdowns on the PDPs
I’m a big fan of Asystem. I’m consistently impressed with how they concisely educate their shoppers on their rigorous and deeply scientific formulations without causing information overload.
🛍 Product of the Week
Brick
Brick is a neat little physical device that helps you stay focused. It temporarily removes tempting apps from your phone until you physically scan it again to get them back.
Unlike digital solutions, where the "unlock" button is always right there taunting you, Brick requires you to have the device with you to unblock apps. That means if you leave it at home during work, your phone stays distraction-free until you return.
You can even create different modes for different parts of your day. “Work mode” might block social media but keep productivity apps, while “family time” might block everything except the camera and emergency contacts.
The device itself is thoughtfully designed with a high-grade magnet and anti-slip silicone, so you can stick it wherever makes sense – your desk, fridge, or car dashboard.
It's essentially a physical barrier between you and your digital distractions, which honestly feels like exactly what our dopamine-fried brains need right now.
📖 Content of the Week
ModernRetail - Social platforms like Reddit and Pinterest are striking more retail media partnerships
The retail media landscape has just become a lot more interesting with two major partnership announcements that could reshape how brands reach shoppers across platforms.
This week brought news of CVS Media Exchange teaming up with Reddit, allowing advertisers to target CVS shoppers on Reddit based on combined insights from both platforms. Meanwhile, Instacart and Pinterest announced a partnership that ties Pinterest ads directly to campaigns on Instacart's marketplace, with closed-loop measurement coming in phase two to track Pinterest ads all the way to actual purchases.
For e-commerce brands, this represents a massive opportunity to connect the dots between inspiration and purchase. Instead of hoping your Pinterest ad eventually leads to a sale somewhere down the line, you can now track it directly to grocery purchases. And Reddit's community-driven discussions provide authentic context that traditional display ads simply can't match.
The bigger picture? Retail media is expanding beyond traditional retailers into "unexpected verticals," giving brands more sophisticated ways to reach customers across the entire funnel with first-party data backing.
🎧 Listen of the Week
Send It! Podcast, Beyond the List: Building Engaged Brand Communities Online | EP 35
Hard truth: Many brands are just building email lists when they should be building communities. There's a massive difference between the two.
In this episode of Send It!, Jimmy Kim and Chase Dimond tackle one of the most important shifts happening in e-commerce right now — how the winning brands like Glossier and Gymshark are turning one-way email blasts into genuine two-way conversations and multi-way customer connections.
This is a super tactical episode that offers listeners three solid frameworks for designing intentional communities, using email and SMS as the foundation. The "concentric circle growth" concept alone is worth the listen — it's all about how to scale your community without losing that authentic vibe that made it special in the first place.
This episode is perfect if you're tired of watching your open rates slowly decline and you're ready to build something that actually gets people excited to hear from you.
🧰 Tool of the Week
Yuzu
This is a super cool one with tons of use cases!
Yuzu is a personalized print marketing platform. Their solution creates custom inserts that print automatically while you pack orders; no manual work required. Instead of generic packing slips, customers can receive personalized notes, offers, or content that connects with them when they're most receptive to your message.
The platform works with any shipping software and can be set up remotely in just 10 minutes. You design your inserts in their app (or use pre-built templates), connect to your tech stack for personalization, and the system handles the rest – printing customized inserts in under 20 seconds during your normal pick-and-pack process.
Some of my favorite use cases: driving more customer reviews, streamlining influencer outreach, offering branded gift notes, and creating targeted upsell opportunities. Plus, Yuzu’s smart QR codes let you track engagement and run experiments to optimize results.
For brands looking to maximize every customer touchpoint without adding complexity to their fulfillment operations, Yuzu transforms a routine shipping moment into a profitable growth channel.
🎉 Upcoming Events
CommerceNext Growth Show 2025
June 24 - 26 // New York, NY
FERMÀT is stoked to attend this year’s CommerceNEXT Growth Show. We’ll be on stage, leading a roundtable, & hanging out at our kiosk. Pop by Kiosk #260 if you’re at the show; we’d love to chat!