CONSUMER PRODUCT INDUSTRY PRACTICIONERS:
I have an extensive toolset for growing brand awareness, revenue and distribution.
See that in the STARTUP ROADMAP section of my website.
I have an extensive toolset for understanding, strategically positioning for, and tactically operating in web3.
See that in the WEB3 FOR CONSUMER BRANDS section of my website.
There is no real way that I know of to find an average, and I could be wrong about that. Certainly you might find some analyst reports on public companies in a certain product category where it makes sense to assemble these averages, but for private companies, I do not know how you could assemble this data.
I think trying to arrive at this kind of data would also be very misleading, because it would depend upon how you want to use it.
If you are a brand, or vendor as it is called who sells wholesale to a retailer to resell at retail, or also called the manufacturer (although this can be misleading because so many products are produced by co-manufacturers, or 3rd party manufacturing companies that produce private label products), then this number will be specific to the category in which you sell.
In general, products with conventional and more commodity-based ingredients might make more margin than a natural or organic brand, because cost of goods sold (COGS) for these latter products are generally in the 40-70% range, at least in my experience. Conventional may be closer to 30%, but again, that varies highly with the product category.
As a goal, I shoot for 40% or less in COGS, so my gross margin is 60% or better, and I try to shoot for a 20% net profit margin (when selling through retail), so my remaining operating expenses would be in the 40% range. But, this is at volume, not at startup, which typically sees higher COGS and operating expenses, so much lower or negative net profit margin.
I know as a general rule of thumb, which I try to follow, CPG’s seek 20% net profit margin (when selling through retail).