Agencies are tacticians. They focus on a portion of 1-2 Ps. They have no business claiming to write your business strategy, more specifically, your competitive strategy. Often, they will discuss this as "positioning." Watch out. You have more data than they do on your consumers,
Unfortunately, the unprecedented shortage of aluminum cans contains a figurative lesson for ambitious young beverage entrepreneurs. The lesson is NOT that you should have picked Tetra-Pak. Instead, this is really an extreme distortion of an aluminum can shortage that already existed for the past few
I shared a great article yesterday on LinkedIn about some research done by the least well-known Silicon Valley investor - Bill Gross. His investigation of why his own firm's investments fared so much better in terms of scale/durability than startups out of his reach
I hope their attorneys don't send me a letter. Really. I've consulted multiple times for Frito-Lay North America in the past. Inside they have a culture that is terrifyingly disciplined, built around 8 billion dollar salty snack brands (will Smartfood be the ninth some day?).
Premium CPG founders face serious headwinds trying to scale. Most never do. The ones who do scale take 7-10 years on average, though we all get distracted by a tiny group that does it in 2-3 years. This is why I always recommend that founders
Say what? Where did I get this number? This is the metric that dozens and dozens of now-famous Skate Ramp brands met as they crossed the $100M trailing POS revenue threshold. This is an infrequent level of revenue efficiency for an early-stage brand. It's an
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,
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
Guess what? A lot of the face-to-face storytelling about brands during this pandemic has moved onto Zoom. Virtual happy hours. Virtual meet-ups. Virtual hang-outs. Facebook Livestream groups. But we're still talking about brands we love. And premium CPG brands tend to get an unusual amount
Although I caution against chasing unicorns, this is not meant to validate any brand's growth rate being 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