Road Trips with People Building and Growing Emerging Brands.

Discussion points

• How Little Big Brands saw a path to offer clients creative services beyond their package design roots
• The importance of staying consistent in look and feel across platforms. Imperative for brands and agencies to stay current on all platforms
• A view on how to ensure a healthy client/agency relationship
• Comments about the interesting early moves Hoka made to set them apart from better financed competition
• An offer to the Miami Dolphins to evolve the look of their team brandingThanks to todays sponsor
• Eagle Labs-https://www.eaglelabsinc.com

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Discussion points

• How does an emerging or challenger brand get the attention of a major retailer?
• What are the core considerations a retailer has when thinking of adding an emerging brand to their assortment?
• How should an emerging brand think about their competition?
• Why do retailers charge fees? An interesting perspective
• What do best in class emerging brands need to do to win at retail?

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Discussion points

• We cover a definition of trade spending, its reason for being, and define some of the components of this line item
• The trade promotion "hierarchy of needs"
• The importance of building trust with the buyers at your distributor and the important role they play
• How to evaluate your trade spending effectiveness, course correct, and navigate towards efficient promotions
• "No one ever regrets taking the time to get their trade spending well organized"

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Discussion points

• The different types of funding available to brand founders
• What separates founders who get funded from the those who don’t?
• What type of funding is available to brands that are early in the fund raising journey?
• How do you use grants to raise money? What is the process?
• A fan of Sarah Blakley, the founder of Spanx

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Discussion points

• Don't skip the strategy stage and jump right to selling. Strategy is your road map of what you will, and won't, do to grow
• Why a brand can't use their DTC selling approach when dealing with a buyer at a retailer
• As a former buyer, Alli shares what she looked for in a brand before bringing it into her set
• The importance of persistent, but professional, follow up. 80% of sales take five follow ups to close a sale!
• Why she admires the Golden State WarriorsSupport us by supporting our sponsorsEagle Labs: Contract manufacturing of OTC and HBA products: https://www.eaglelabsinc.com

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Discussion points

• What exactly is a line review?
• How to prepare for this meeting? Spoiler alert: bring facts and proof- not opinions alone
• If there are issues with your brand- bring them up early and directly. Don't hope no one noticed- they did
• Detailed review of your performance versus expectations: sales, margins, service levels
• Key questions to ask and the importance of fast, accurate follow up

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Discussion points

• How AI is changing the CPG industry- including a definition of generative AI and how AI can be harnessed to assist an emerging brand across multiple disciplines. AI is math, not magic! How AI can clean your datasets and can customize the output in the custom manner a specific retailer likes to review brand data. Which AI tool should an emerging brand use? Hint: Start with ChatGPT and just start using it. How AI can help an emerging brand grow by driving speed, scale, and efficiency. Example: Claude.co is a great AI tool for web site development. A fan of Jose Altuve: small, but powerful!

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Discussion points

• The importance of innovation in healthcare products and how best to communicate innovation to the consumer: the art of storytelling and explaining the science clearly are paramount How to best educate the consumer on Amazon. Imagine you are the shopper – what process do you follow and what do you want to learn when in the shopping process? A detailed discussion about how to best utilize video to educate consumers and how you can manage production costs Consumer health trends in 2025: What Alex is seeing and some of the sources his firm finds useful An F1 fan and a Williams supporter. Pulling for the “challenger brand”- just the way we like it!

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Discussion points

• The origin story of the brand led by people that had been helping other DTC brands grow- and saw an opportunity to build their own
• What motivated them to move into brick & mortar retail? And how they learned the DTC playbook does not translate perfectly to the brick & mortar environment
• Some hard truths about brick & mortar distribution: slotting, trade spending, deductions and other matters a brand will have to deal with
• What to look for in a contract manufacturer- and it goes far beyond price alone
• Hiring, managing and working through rough patches with your brokers. Hint: treat your brokers like they work inside your company and not as an outside vendor to your company
• Finally, a Knicks fan!

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Discussion points

• The Sircle Team has a focus on brands in traditional brick & mortar distribution. They are very focused on helping drive sales and hit sales velocity hurdles
• We spend time discussing 'social interest' versus 'social media'.
• The potential risk to an emerging brand of bringing on creative people that may focus more on art than on creative and content that drives the brand
• The benefit of working with boutique marketing agencies that do a very few (or one!) thing VERY well versus a larger integrated agency
• Key to work with agencies that not only know the social networks, but they know your category.

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Discussion points

• How Floret supports brands of all sizes (from Small to large brands) manage their deductions. Understanding the types of deductions
• How Floret started, and the gap Tanay saw in the market
• What does Floret look for when deciding to work with a brand
• How much savings can be realized when working with Floret
• How Floret is different from other deduction management platformswww.tryfloret.com

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Discussion points

• That no matter how hard they tried in the early days to kill their brand- the team kept plugging away and learning. Eventually evolving to a winning commercial approach
• With a mission driven brand- the mission must make sense to the consumer that the tie to the brand is logical
• While the brand mission may be a differentiator in the category and help you secure some retailer meetings and distribution- the products must perform and sell in order to remain in distribution
• Why it is best to focus on your top skus and to have a unique growth plan with each retailer versus 'getting too clever with your plan'
• Counsel on what to expect when taking on an investor
• In the very early days of Soapbox, his landlord thought he was up to 'illegal activities'!
• David is offering a special discount for listeners of the Road2Retail podcast. Go to www.soapboxsoaps.com and enter the promo code: Road2retail20 to save 20% on your purchase!

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Discussion points

• What is the Naturally Network and how does the Naturally Network help small/emerging brands?
• What is the CPG Academy? What does the Academy offer Naturally Network Members?
• The introduction of the Retail Launch Pad: An on-line learning platform
• Why establishing pricing is critical to brands starting out. Kate shares the definition of COGS and her margin calculator.

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