Road Trips with People Building and Growing Emerging Brands.

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.

Thinking of joining an emerging brand? Thinking about bringing in outside talent?

On today's show we speak with Hayes Reilly- Managing Partner at PeopleSuite. Hayes has had a long successful career placing senior executive talent with Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) firms of all sizes.

The Road2Retail team recently spent some time with Brandon Pogue- cofounder of TruLabs. TruLabs produces a great tasting and uniquely formulated product in the very competitive hydration space. Brandon tells us about how the brand morphed into a hydration focused brand and their commitment to a "science based and consumer approved" product design.

On today's show, Bruce & Tracey discuss how to go about expanding your small, emerging or challenger brand with an existing retailer. Often, brand leaders get distracted by defining growth as "more retailers" when growth actually means building and expanding your brand intelligently. However, the smart play may be to expand with a retailer you are already working with and having some success vs getting involved with another one.

Gaylord shares with us the backstory of launching their unique infant care brand - Buddle. Their team invested a lot of time and resources upfront on R&D, consumer testing, and pricing before making the move to selling product. The discussion also covers:

- Buddle's launch hiccups (everyone has them!)

- His view on building out a team and advisory panel that are highly skilled in their areas of expertise

- Why they have launched exclusively online and what Buddle will look for in a partner when they think to move into brick and mortar retail

- Their goal to build a community as well as a brand

- How marketing performance metrics differ for an emerging brand vs those of an established brand

- How Gaylord thinks about raising money and what he looks for in an investor

On today's show we are fortunate to spend time with Elliot Begoun, the founder of TIG Brands. Elliot discusses their very comprehensive approach to helping founders grow their emerging brands by focusing on building a sustainable business and not just a brand. Elliot describes how TIG Brands utilizes 'The Collective' allowing brands within their ecosystem to utilize subject matter experts and then their "Accelerator" process to grow these brands once the foundation is set. We also learn why the tardigrade is superior to the unicorn!

Learn how emerging brands can effectively work with Amazon from Anu Bliss - General Manager of Digital Commerce at The Emerson Group

Getting your brand on Amazon is all many small, emerging and challenger brands think they need to do to be successful. As we learn in our discussion with Anu today- it is far easier said than done. The Amazon beast is constantly changing, and your business must be monitored very closely. Anu goes into detail on the following key points:

- Before getting started with Amazon, make sure you fully understand the financial and operational implications of working with Amazon

- Confirm that you have worked through the financials of working with Amazon

- Amazon changes its strategy on the fly and along with these changes- fees and the cost of doing business with Amazon can change as well

- Provides a crisp explanation of the differences between being a 1P vs 3P seller on Amazon

- The importance of fresh, compelling content about your brand

- How to avoid head-to-head price comparisons with other retailers

- Understanding the critical importance of the Buy Box

- Given the traffic on Amazon- every day has a Super Bowl audience!