MARKETPLACE--- https://gumroad.com/a/238646387

01

Kroger to Build Web Marketplace, https://gumroad.com/a/238646387,  to Compete With Amazon, Walmart

© Bloomberg A shopper holding an umbrella walks towards a Kroger Co. grocery store in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Sunday, April 26, 2020. Louisville has projected a $115 million budget shortfall over the next 14 months, and without federal aid, will have to cut a fifth of its workforce, according to Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer.

(Bloomberg) -- Kroger Co. is setting up an e-commerce marketplace, https://gumroad.com/a/238646387,  open to third-party vendors, part of the grocery-store operator’s bid to wrest web sales away from giants like Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.

The owner of the Fry’s and King Soopers chains is working with online commerce specialist Mirakl to offer tens of thousands of additional goods, including housewares and toys, the companies said Tuesday in a statement. The partnership will let Kroger offer “more-relevant products” by broadening its e-commerce operations to include third-party sellers, according to Jody Kalmbach, the company’s vice president of product experience.

Kroger is looking to capitalize on growth in its digital platforms , https://gumroad.com/a/238646387, and heightened demand for essential goods as quarantined customers stock up during the pandemic. Amazon’s marketplace remains the undisputed leader in terms of selection, with hundreds of millions of products listed -- but with demand surging amid the global pandemic, many merchants are seeking new online partners.

Online marketplaces let retailers offer inventory without having to buy it wholesale, minimizing the risk of getting stuck with unsold products needing markdowns. Third-party merchants typically pay a commission on each sale, and mature marketplaces like Amazon and EBay also sell advertising to merchants looking to stand out, providing an additional revenue source.

Mirakl works with retailers such as Office Depot and Urban Outfitters in the U.S., Best Buy in Canada and Carrefour in Brazil.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Gallery: Amazon's upcoming supermarket could be the first step in an ambitious plan to change the way we grocery shop — here's what we know about it so far (Business Insider)

02

Curastory Aims to Help NCAA Athletes Make Money and Change the Influencer Marketplace

With NCAA athletes soon being able to make money off their likeness, one platform hot off the crowdfunding site WeFunder is stepping in as a middleman to connect content creators in sports with brands. 

Curastory recently closed a pre-seed round that included $150,000 from WeFunder alone. Listed in the campaign as the “first platform where NCAA student athletes make money from video content,” its success hints at demand for such solutions ahead of the 2020-21 school year, when athletes will be able to start profiting off their likeness through the production of podcasts, vlogs, and livestreams.

Tiffany Kelly, Curastory’s CEO and a former athlete herself, left her job as a content data scientist at ESPN in January 2019 after realizing there was a need to streamline a path to monetization for athletes. She says the business idea stemmed from her time at the largest U.S. sports media company, where she began to feel that athletes were being “taken advantage of” by traditional media companies. 

“The idea was percolating in my mind for a while,” she says. “We’d literally take an athlete’s tweet or post and monetize things that weren’t our IP, which can be frustrating if you’re the original creator.”

Curastory seeks to solve this by directly connecting brands in need of video content with athletes, influencers and actors who create video content and are willing to create directly for brands. Kelly says it’s the pro athletes without the star power, such as rising college talent, that stand to benefit the most. “The gymnasts and golfers that have great personalities,” she says. 

Curastory serves as a marketplace in the sense that it helps brands find content creators and then facilitates the legal dealmaking to streamline the process. It also offers guides and tools to help athletes navigate the video creation process. Videos will be pre-produced at the start, but Kelly says Curastory plans to expand into live video as well. Athletes can create video first and then team up with an interested brand (e.g., they love healthy eating and want to produce a cooking show that a sponsor latches on to), or they can work directly with brands ahead of the shoot for more immersive campaigns. Athletes maintain IP ownership of the content and then share the videos across their social channels. 

Kelly says the model favors influencers over brands by putting more of the creative power in their hands, which consequently also helps to produce a more authentic ad. Whereas an athlete might have to customize everything to the brand’s liking in traditional influencer marketing, Curastory tends to give them more flexibility to create what they want first (similar to the experience of a YouTube creator), and then easily find sponsors to back their videos after. 

“So if you have a video talking about your pregame meditation routine, multiple brands can sponsor that, like Calm,” says Kelly. “As opposed to making an influencer post for Calm, it’s natural. You don’t mention Calm, other than audio and logo attribution between breaks, and Calm’s logo just so happens to be on the video.” 

Kelly says Curastory can be another asset in an athlete’s toolbox to help them make money alongside personal vlogs or podcasts. The NCAA recently approved Curastory as a platform that student-athletes can use beginning next summer for monetization. 

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Curastory differentiates itself by the way it pays. YouTube’s model of taking 45% of the money paid to creators by advertisers, based on ad views, favors established accounts with large followings. Curastory takes a small processing fee of a lump sum. The payment will certainly be higher for bigger-ticket athletes, but the model at least creates equal opportunity for those with less established audiences. 

Before next summer, Curastory will begin offering professional services to onboard and train athletes on the platform and video content production. That might include sending some of its investors and other advisors or employees to visit with NCAA athletic departments to physically show student-athletes how to create videos around certain topics. The logistics of film production, such as ring lights, audio and point-of-view shooting, will also be covered in these sessions. 

Kelly, a Black woman, says she has focused on putting together a diverse team, which includes a large percentage of women and minorities, such as CTO Shane Austrie and lead WeFunder investor and Texas A&M football coach Dameyune Craig. She says her time at ESPN, where she was the only Black woman in the stats and info group, taught her the importance of building diverse teams.

“Being a minority period, whether you’re a woman or person of color, it’s just something you notice,” she says. “I knew that in building a company, the two most important things were having a kickass product, and culture. When you’re working on a project day in and day out on the verge of burnout to make product/market fit, making sure you’re doing it with people you like and respect is really important. I wanted a diverse team for new ideas and to create an inclusive environment.” 

Dameyune Craig's son, Devin, is also one of Curastory’s investors. As an actor, he plans to personally use Curastory to find commercial gigs, but he says the platform’s sports roots are strong.

“If you’re a high-profile guy, you can afford to sign one of these long-term contracts. But if you’re a college football quarterback and don't want to lock into a long-time deal, you can explore more options and play the field and increase your earning potential,” says Devin. “Maybe you have some guys who are considered a mid-tier draft pick, the Auburn and Stanford guys. Rather than sign a deal with Nike being lower on the ladder, they can now work with Nike, Adidas and Converse all in one month and make content to sustain themselves.”

Beyond sports, Curastory is targeting entertainment influencers such as actors and TikTok personalities. It’s additionally luring big YouTube creators who want to expand their brand across digital channels, such as BlackTipH, a big game fishing YouTube channel with 2.9 million subscribers. 

“There’s certain things Curastory offers and allows for content creators that YouTube doesn’t,” says Jarred Fayson, a former NFL journeyman who now serves as manager and marketing director of BlackTipH. “They’re sharing more of the pie with the person doing all the work.”

Fayson says the direct line to brands who are interested in working with BlacktTipH, and the fact that creators get to keep all their original IP, will “set this industry on its head.”

“It’s being launched around the same time that athletes are getting more rights and understanding their rights with their likeness and imaging,” he says. “So I think it’s something that’ll be good for all content producers from top to bottom, no matter if you have 10,000 or 10 million followers.”

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03

Check Point Software Launches Distribution Marketplace, https://gumroad.com/a/238646387,  Program to Help Partners Reach New Customers and Market Sectors

SAN CARLOS, Calif., Aug. 12, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:CHKP), a leading provider of cyber security solutions globally, has today announced the launch of the new Check Point Distribution Marketplace Program, joining with Arrow Electronics and Ingram Micro Inc., to help partners reach new customers and sectors with Check Point's advanced cloud security solutions. The new program delivers enablement, marketing support, flexible financing and consumption models to partners, and builds on the Partner Growth Program launched in January to further accelerate and grow channel success.

Customers are increasingly using cloud marketplaces, https://gumroad.com/a/238646387,  to get immediate access to solutions and consumption models that adapt to their business needs. At the same time, resellers need new approaches to finding and reaching new customer segments for cloud solutions. To address these needs, Check Point has teamed up with Arrow in Europe and Ingram Micro in the U.S. to enable its channel to offer customers' best-in-class cloud security with fast, easy and flexible deployments, backed by a complete range of expert resources.

"Distributor marketplaces are a key growth driver for partners based on scale, reach and ease of doing business with a wider range of customers," said Larry Walsh, CEO of The 2112 Group, a channel-focused research and strategy firm. "With its new Distribution Marketplace Program, Check Point is expanding its market coverage and go-to-market capacity in the cyber-security segment. Through these distribution marketplaces, Check Point is positioning itself to provide the partners with frictionless acquisition of turnkey solutions that customers need and demand."

Dan Yerushalmi, Chief Customer Officer at Check Point said, "Partners are the bedrock of Check Point's growth strategy. This initial launch with Arrow and Ingram Micro is testament to that, providing a unique opportunity to bring Check Point's cloud security portfolio to a wider range of customers, digging further into the channel through these initial distributors."

Frank Rauch, Check Point's Head of Worldwide Channel, added, "As more and more organizations move applications, data, compute and security to the cloud, or create their own private cloud environments, Check Point is perfectly placed to capitalize on this move with its cloud solutions portfolio. This new program further strengthens our commitment to helping our partners win new business, and build even stronger relationships with existing customers. We plan to partner with additional marketplace distributors over the coming months to extend the new program."

ArrowSphere, which is one of the first solutions available through the Distribution Marketplace Program, https://gumroad.com/a/238646387,  is a single platform by Arrow offering procurement, provisioning, integration, and management of cloud solutions, services, and aggregated billing globally. Check Point will be one of the first Security Partners to be integrated on ArrowSphere, bringing additional value to Arrow's product portfolio providing them with the capacity to secure their customers Cloud environments. In early September, ArrowSphere will launch an extensive range of Check Point's CloudGuard cloud protection and SandBlast threat prevention solutions concurrently in 14 European Countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

"Cyber attacks continue to increase at rapid pace, and the situation we are currently facing has forced many companies and organizations worldwide to implement additional security layers", says Eric Nowak, president of Arrow`s enterprise computing solutions business in EMEA. "Following CloudGuard IaaS we are now adding more Check Point security products to ArrowSphere, helping our channel clients and end customers to manage the cloud easily and securely. With the new offer, Arrow and Checkpoint are providing new opportunities to cloud customers and users to differentiate their business and reduce the complexity of cloud and digital transformation."

The Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace, https://gumroad.com/a/238646387, powered by CloudBlue, is also part of the Check Point Distribution Marketplace Program. Established in 2009, the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace is the one of the largest cloud ecosystems on the planet, credited with helping channel partners manage their cloud services, offer more "as a service" and grow their recurring revenues. Check Point's CloudGuard and SandBlast solutions will be available as from August on the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace in the U.S., Canada and Netherlands, with further solutions being introduced over the coming months.

"With the click of a mouse, Check Point's channel partners can use the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace to immediately address and manage the advanced security needs of their customers--offering them more as a service with greater ease and service excellence," said Tim Fitzgerald, vice president, cloud channel sales, Americas, Ingram Micro.

"For MSPs, having the ability to quickly and effectively deploy and scale cloud services –especially when it comes to security solutions— in real time is critical to the customer experience," says Eric Kohl, vice president, security, Ingram Micro. "With so many businesses operating from homes, as well as offices, demand for cloud-based security solutions is rising, making it a good time for Check Point to launch and for channel partners to take advantage of all Ingram Micro and the Cloud Marketplace have to offer."

Follow Check Point         https://gumroad.com/a/238646387,       via:Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/checkpointswFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/checkpointsoftwareBlog: http://blog.checkpoint.comYouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/CPGlobalLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/check-point-software-technologies

About Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (www.checkpoint.com) is a leading provider of cyber security solutions to governments and corporate enterprises globally. Its solutions protect customers from 5th generation cyber-attacks with an industry leading catch rate of malware, ransomware and other types of attacks. Check Point offers multilevel security architecture, "Infinity" Total Protection with Gen V advanced threat prevention, which defends enterprises' cloud, network and mobile device held information. Check Point provides the most comprehensive and intuitive one point of control security management system. Check Point protects over 100,000 organizations of all sizes.

MEDIA CONTACT: INVESTOR CONTACT: Ekram Ahmed Kip E. Meintzer Check Point Software Technologies  Check Point Software Technologies +1.650.628.2040 +1 650.628.2040 press@checkpoint.com ir@us.checkpoint.com

https://gumroad.com/a/238646387

https://gumroad.com/a/238646387

https://gumroad.com/a/238646387