Road Trips with People Building and Growing Emerging Brands.

Today we spend time discussing media with Buck Robinson - CEO of Retail + Response. Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn. Learn more at www.road2retail.com. Buck does a great job explaining in great detail how "traditional media" can help emerging brands drive awareness quickly in order to accelerate sales performance in e-commerce or brick & mortar retailers. Oh- and the expense is within reach for all brands! Listen to this 30 year veteran of the media business share his views on driving growth and making your advertising investment work hard.

Today's show we speak with David Koifman- VP of Sales for Kickfurther. A unique financing firm small and emerging brands need to have on their radar. Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn. Learn more at www.road2retail.com. The Road2Retail team and David discuss how Kickfurther can help small and emerging brands pay for their inventory without crushing their cash positions, so they have capital to invest in other areas to grow their business.

Episode # 80. On today's show the Road2Retail team runs through the brand details to double check for your brand as we roll into 2025. Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn. Learn more at www.road2retail.com. Consider today's episode a "pre-flight checklist" of details to make sure you are on top of with every retailer you are working with already and those you are setting up.

On today's show we visit with Nancy Kalish - Founder and CEO of Rule Breaker Snacks. Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn. Learn more at www.road2retail.com.

Nancy takes us through several of her key experiences establishing and growing her brand as well as sharing some key insights for other emerging brand founders to consider.

Greg shares his approach to handling the emerging brand business challenges he has encountered over the course of his career.

On today's show, Bruce Montgomery and Tracey Priest discuss how a small, emerging or challenger brand should think about working with a broker. Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn.

There is always a lot of discussion around what a broker does, what will they do for my brand, when do you hire one, how are they compensated, etc.? All important points. After 30 years each in the CPG industry, we thought we would share our views on this important topic.

On today's show we speak with Paul Kenny - Operating Partner at Stride Consumer Partners. Paul discusses his views on the importance of the Sales function within an emerging brand. Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn.

Paul has had a long, successful career building CPG brands of all sizes as a Sales leader. Heading a Sales function at an emerging brand calls for flexibility and a willingness to "get in the game" personally.

On today's show we visit with Rob Clemons of the rapidly growing emerging brand: Wonderbelly (VP - Supply Chain & Operations). Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn.

On today's podcast we discuss some of the learnings and actions this fast-growing brand has taken on their journey to date. These include:

- The importance of having a meaningful point of difference with your product versus your competition

- Using Wonderbelly's "birth" as an online brand initially to identify and prove out their core consumer

- Even when successful as a DTC brand, a strategic presence at brick & mortar retail is still vital to growing

- The importance of helpful, value-added investors to a growing brand

This week veteran advertising executive Neil Foster (CEO of Agency Habitat) joins us on the Road2Retail podcast to share his thoughts and experiences with growing emerging brands. Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn.

On today's show Neil shares with us his views on the following topics:

- The importance of executing a 'soft launch' for a period of time to work out the bugs in your business model

- Understanding the need to drive awareness and trial early in a brand's lifecycle to build momentum

- The importance of demographic match with a retailer's shopper profile when an emerging brand starts to consider the move to brick & mortar retail. Fit must be excellent.

- The risk of shooting to "scale" an emerging brand too fast too soon

On December 4, 2024 the Road2Retail attended The Founder's Innovation Day program in NYC put on by ECRM and Retail Media IQ. Today we recap the program with Wayne Bennett, SVP Retail for ECRM/RangeMe. Wayne and his team organized this fantastic event bringing together emerging brand founder's and leading retailers where the day focused on the role emerging brands play in their categories. Other speakers included experts in various functional areas such as finance, investment banking and contract manufacturing- all offering counsel on how to help emerging brands grow. Give a listen to hear what founders and leading retailers shared with the audience. Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast at Apple podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. Plus- give us a follow on LinkedIn.

On today's show we spend time with Patty Klingbiel - The President at the market

research firm - The Connell Group. Patty and the team at The Connell

Group have been helping consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands of all sizes, and

at all stages of their lifecycle, plot a growth path forward successfully for

many years. On today's show some of the topics we cover in depth

include:

1)

The need for absolute clarity in who your target audience is- not who you

think they are (or hope they are!)- but knowing who they are.

2)

The importance of understanding where your brand fits into the category

you participate in and why the retailer should believe you can help grow their

category.

3)

The baseline research an emerging brand should execute to understand their

brand, their category, and their consumer prior to embarking on the expense of

retail expansion and A&P commitment.

4)

She also covers how to write and test product concepts with consumers so that

you understand the potential positionings and product benefits that the

consumer will spark to. Hint: it is often not what you initially think!

To

hear views on these points and others, please give the episode a listen.

Your odds of success may very well improve!

Enjoy

the show! Please subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast on Apple

podcasts, Spotify or our YouTube channel. You can also follow us on

LinkedIn.

Big Chalk's Rick Miller is back to share some new data about the state of the consumer as we head into the holiday shopping season.

Rick Miller, Head of Sales & Marketing Effectiveness at Big Chalk, returns to share with us new data about the state of the consumer from their Tradeoff Consumer work. According to the National Retail Federation, approximately 19% of annual retail sales take place during the holiday shopping season.

How to understand the effectiveness of your Retailer Media Network Ad Spend

Episode # 70 An overview of these emerging platforms with Incremental's Executive Vice President - Skye Frontier. Subscribe to the Road2Retail podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, our YouTube channel and follow us on LinkedIn.

On today's show we speak with Skye Frontier - Executive Vice President at Incremental. Skye's firm offers a very interesting service where they help consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands evaluate, measure and deploy their advertising investments with the Retailer Media Networks (RMNs).

Understanding Your Consumer and Utilizing Research to Drive Your Brand Performance

On the show today we spend time with Rick Miller, Head of Sales & Marketing Effectiveness at Big Chalk. Rick takes us through a detailed discussion covering:

1) What research tools should a brand utilize to ensure they understand their consumer and their brand's role in the category

2) The three key pieces of data driven research you need in order to improve your odds of success in getting a retailer to take your brand into their assortment

3) Big Chalk's proprietary research detailing The Tradeoff Consumer. Who are these people? What decisions are they making right now? How do these consumer actions impact both brands and retailers?

What you need to know when buying or selling an emerging brand.

On today's show we spent time with Rusty Ray of Alantra. Rusty has spent his career buying and selling brands (with a focus on healthcare) - offering counsel to both buyers and sellers regarding the best approach to executing a winning transaction.