If you are a brand with national distribution offline, tariff impacts in 2025 may very well result in empty shelves near your products. But, who will be missing on the shelf may look different than during the pandemic. Large CPG brands whose primary foreign input is
As the lean years continue, you may wish to take a moment to review some of my most popular posts on fundraising. The temptation to take lousy deals or to pursue lousy investors has never been higher. It’s your company, but in many cases, it
You might think saying 'no' is simply a luxury of an established business who has the privilege to turn down an opportunity that isn't absolutely dead on perfect. But you'd be wrong. Saying 'no' is one of the fundamental business skills never taught in school,
Sometimes, innovation is complex AND long overdue. Here’s an excerpt from the new edition of my bestselling business book - Ramping Your Brand “
In Ramping Your Brand, I cite some research my old consulting team did on the optimal price range to ensure sustainable growth. Using a randomized set of 1000s of brands’ data for the prior five years, our modeling came up with 50-200% above the category’s
Laura Lerber and the Inc. team graciously allowed me to publish a four-part series inspired by my book, Ramping Your Brand. Here are all four articles, which I hope you can share widely with those new to my work! Top Five Mistakes Brands Are Still Making in
Scanner data companies like Nielsen, IRI, and SPINS love to default to Year-over-Year (YOY) time comparisons. Against every possible metric they have. Why? Because this involves the smallest amount of data released to any paying client, and it’s the least valuable possible information. It’s like the trailer
This post is a blatant plug. Not sorry, because I rarely do it. My course sales are up 80% this year! You don’t care, but there’s a reason I uncovered. In talking with B-school professors and founders, I realized that my courses hit a gap in
Reacting to tariffs is messy. It depends greatly on your current annual sales rate, working capital and supply chain. This makes it hard to give pointed advice to all founders in a public column. So, I will focus here on the vast majority of CPG
I have met founders who seem terrified of planning. This is often in the beginning, in Phases 1 or 2. The business is all upside at this early point in the journey. And most entrepreneurs hate shutting down opportunities. They generally thrill on seizing them,