Many new CPG founders get very concerned at the highly unstable, week-to-week velocities and month-to-month sell-in volumes for their product lines. The fear is heightened once you are inside a significant chain. I get it. But here’s the thing. This is entirely normal. It’s like
Now please don’t tell anyone (!), but this post contains THE top-secret formula to Ramping Your Brand. OK, that was sad clickbait. But there’s a serious point I want to share today
So many founders, early on, get sucked into what I would call a distributor first mentality, all hail the distributor. And that is because it’s often the only way into many of the retailers that you have available to you in your local area, and
General Mills just laid off thousands of folks, hundreds in their corporate HQ. This will continue among public CPG firms as these companies are still overstaffed in many functions, especially marketing. And despite the pandemic surge, they’ve returned to stagnancy. This Wall Street tale doesn’t concern
If you have investors on board, you’ve already heard them suggest this or that ‘industry expert.’ Usually, they’re referring to a business generalist, an industry savant whom they know well and who can offer general strategic guidance. These ‘experts’ are not agencies in that they don’t
This is for those out there who are just starting out and are trying to do it alone. I think you’re
Anyone go to Sweets and Snacks? 6,000 did. Amazing. But there were only 450 booths. I bet 3,000 of those attendees were desperate service providers sucking wind. I’ve been to this show twice before, and they had at least twice that number typically. But here’s 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…you simply are
I often come across founders griping about attracting investors. Often, they haven’t spent much time networking at all. They’ve spent more time thinking about their working capital problem. But, more importantly, many founders simply don’t come off as investable. At all. This is because they don’t
On a webinar hosted by Gary Hirshberg in May, Wayne WU of VMG Partners pointed to a common problem before the pandemic. “[Brands chasing a pre-determined exit] are generally not the best brands to invest in because … they haven’t focused on surprising and delighting consumers.