Nothing is more disappointing than paying way too much for a celebrity influencer to pump up your brand, briefly, and then leave you without a proven marketing mix to continue growth. This has happened many times to brands with more cash than experience in brand-building. Unless
The primary reasons to exit early (early being Phase 2 or Phase 3) is that a) you are sick of operating the business and cannot find a suitable person to step in (or quickly enough OR b) you want an ‘entity’ to finance its growth
In 2020, as Covid up-ended our lives, I fielded lots of inquiries about how to make use of Direct-to-Consumer sales. If you remember, e-commerce sales had just exploded overall at the time. Americans received multiple stimulus checks and payroll protection and could not spend money at
The vast majority of CPG startups operate as B2B businesses. They don’t interact with their consumers. They aren’t curious about how they receive and use their products. As long as case volumes grow, they’re happy. As long as their wholesale price can float operations and
The standard of consumer goods innovation has risen in the past 10-15 years. If you want to achieve scale without influencer hype and keep growing, you must understand category-specific trade-offs and resolve them with an excellent sensory experience. To get a real foothold, therefore, you need
Gotcha. April Fools. VC money is not coming back. Maybe at a trickle from small funds that somehow sold the food sector to their LPs. Mostly, Wall Street is done with super early investments in food because, unlike soft drinks, precisely none of these brands
I’ll explain. But before I do, there are less than 10 spots available for the April Q2 cohort. So, you may want to grab one now. OK. For the rest of you reading this, this is my best explanation of why it matters for CPG founders
The power of focus is how they do it. They keep their revenue primarily within 1-2 core categories and even further, mostly within 10-15 prime cash cow UPCs. This makes their plants very efficient since most of the UPC diversity becomes different packaging runs or flavorings
When early-stage businesses struggle in the premium end of consumer-packaged goods, a shocking number of founders and operators leap to the conclusion that they need a “brand refresh” or a “re-brand.” Look, branding agencies are numerous, and they network heavily at Expo West. They sponsor
Here’s a teaser for my free webinar this Wednesday - What Has Changed Since 2019? The latest data I have on hand shows that, across food/beverage/personal care and supplements, natural and organic product dollars only grew 3% in 2023, which is more or less on track