This week Winn Dixie announced several 'modern' Winn Dixie stores inside the infrastructure of prior Lucky's and Earth Fare supermarkets they acquired. It's a reminder to remind YOU not to get over-excited about upgrades rapidly transforming the shopper base of downmarket retail banners. Retail shopper
For years, I’ve talked about having a 1-Page Strategic Plan which contains your one-line competitive strategy and outlines the key playbook you are testing to drive exponential growth for your business. I even gave away my own template to another 20 folks last month at my
Many new CPG founders get very concerned at the highly unstable, week-to-week velocities and month-month sell-in volumes for their product lines. The fear is heightened once you are inside a major chain. I get it. But, here's the thing. This is completely normal. It's like
E-commerce sales have more than doubled across most consumer categories during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Some e-commerce consumer brands will soon want to enter physical retail to find the next wave of consumers. The problem is that most pure-play e-commerce brands aren’t ready for retail because many
In my recent COVID-19 webinar, I laid out my best, educated guess on the two main COVID_19 scenarios CPG brands are facing, large or small. Increasingly, I'm betting that a permanently altered food consumption landscape will take hold, even after the pandemic becomes endemic and
I'm taking a break today and contemplating on a startling inference one can make regarding how little the horrendous COVID-19 pandemic has really influenced our federal election results. You might think it is an odd election comment, of all the possible ones to make. Here's
It's a truism in professional hiring that you always want to seek out talent that is already employed first. This may seem silly because it gives leverage to the employee, not to the company hiring, but that completely misses the point. The issue you face
Innovative new CPG brands have a curious habit of sourcing lots of volume from outside their respective categories. This is NOT true of most line extensions, which are engaged in a limiting market share battle within their core merchandising category. One way they do this
Kara Goldin loves to recount her tale of being laughed at and mocked by ex-Pepsi executives when she discussed selling non-carbonated flavored water. "That'll never work. No one will ever make it for you. Not scalable." These were the knee-jerk operational objections she heard from
Exclusive brand loyalty is the privilege of legacy brands who had years with minimal competition to build an advantage in culture and your mind. Today, though, new CPG brands can expect a few years of sustained intermittent usage before the consumer moves on. This is