This is a Quora question: Brands and Branding: What are the barriers to entry for CPG companies (Food, HPC)? What prevents new on-trend brands ("better for you") from displacing established brands? My answer is as follows. There are two key reasons, from my perspective. Brands that come up with new products with small improvements over [...]
Markup depends on the retail channel in which you sell. Specialty/natural channels run 50-65%, drug is 45%, grocery is 35%, mass is 30%, and club is 14%. If you sell direct to consumers, then the anchor price on a single unit of your product would equal that specialty/natural channel price. In my experience and opinion, [...]
This is a Quora question. This is my answer. The general goal in consumer products is 20% EBITDA (earnings before interest and taxes) profit margins. But these are commodity products and the category is probably competitive, so it's possible EBITDA is less, may 10%-15%. Cost of Good Sold (COGS) on a product like this is [...]
This is a Quora question. My answer is as follows. AngelList and http://F6s.com have fairly comprehensive lists of startups. Although more heavily weighted towards tech, you will still find CPG's. https://www.f6s.com/programs looks like it has a comprehensive list of accelerator programs that startups can apply to. Some funds are CPG focused and you can go [...]
This is a Quora question I was asked and here is my answer. I've never sold lighting products, so can't tell you for sure. But I have sold home improvement and margin in that channel to the mainline (Home Depot, Lowes, Ace, Menards, etc) averages 30-35%. If you are talking a lighting retailer, which I [...]
I get this question fairly consistently. And it could be any of a number of issues. But the biggest ones I see come down to the following areas: Product Have you created a "WOW" product that is easily differentiated from the competition that causes customers to make repeat purchases and tell their friends about? Products [...]
In the last week alone, I got asked multiple times about how to find consumer product distributors, so it merits a quick post. My answer is to contact the retailers that you want to sell to and ask them who the distributors are that they work with. Some retailers prefer that you go through a [...]
This is a Quora question I was asked. Here is my answer. Since I do not know who your customer is, I will give you a more general answer that may help you regardless if you sell products to other manufacturers, wholesale for retail sale, direct-to-consumer, or all of the above. I would search for [...]
I was asked this question on Quora and here is my answer. If I am not using a broker - and I prefer to use brokers - I check their website to find out the retailer's process for reviewing new products. If that info is not available, then a cold call works as well. If [...]
In my experience, a great startup business idea is one with 1, or better yet, 2 or even all three of these characteristics: Intellectual Property You have some sort of defensible intellectual property, like a process, a patent, data, expertise or a product. By defensible, I mean you can defend it from competitors copying, reverse [...]
