So…some of you sell in categories that routinely appear under the Xmas tree. Jam. Chocolate. Wine. Spirits. If you do, don’t confuse “Holiday LTOs” with a smart holiday growth play. Why? Well, let’s face it. Many folks who give gifts to others in the above categories make
Before the pandemic, I routinely did store visits by key banner and channel to keep up to date one highly revealing variable: % of perimeter end caps with premium brands (early-stage or middle-market). It seems too simple at first until you step back and think about
Here’s what I said on Friday to answer this question. “When I look at the macros, I am pretty bullish on premium food and beverage. But I want to qualify that. The sector will continue to grow. But the sector's been decelerating, just so some of
In a few hours, I’ll be hosting my annual Author Holiday Q&A with a bunch of friendly folks. This year, I’m celebrating two milestones. The first is that Ramping Your Brand has sold more than 10,000 copies lifetime. This is not a lot compared to
A product line purely a second-mover carbon copy of another emerging brand (e.g., Waterloo copying LaCroix) can scale based on grabbing established market share through sales wins. With a very experienced sales team and seed money. But this won’t create a consumer brand. A brand is an
Most CPG innovators and founders are geeks of some sort. It doesn't matter if the geekiness was professional or amateurish or a committee of both. The point is that you isolated a problem, a gap in your category, and you filled it. Or
I had a breakthrough with a client. He is a finance guy by training. He loves P&L forecasting. He has his finance team do it four times a year. “We can see problems 30 days in advance,” he claimed, which is true. But here’s the problem: Your P&L
When you are new to an industry and your company is young, stakeholders don't take you too seriously or are extremely indifferent to your existence. Initially. And as you play marketer, finance whiz, sales guy, and ops lead, you get overwhelmed. You feel amateurish. Things seem
It's a law of marketing seldom discussed, but first popularized by Byron Sharp many years ago. What's the gist? Well, the evidence shows that consumers with a robust set of brands they're content within a category are much harder to distract with a new brand
Although I caution against chasing unicorns, this is not meant to validate any brand's growth rate in the single digits YoY. This slow growth rate may be in line with the premium CPG sector overall, and it may be much faster than commodity brands in most