Everyone knows that the supplement industry supply chain is a total mess right now, but crawling into the fetal position and crying yourself to sleep nightly isn’t going to help your supplement brand. I guess I should take a step back and explain what I mean when I talk about supply chain challenges in the CPG industry, what are we trying to solve? At the core, it’s about keeping inventory on shelves (physical or digital). Yes, skyrocketing inflationary costs are also a major problem, but higher...
Dec 06, 2021•19 min
Why do I feel like the Monster Beverage and Constellation Brands merger reports resembles a famous early 1800s French erotic painting? How’s that for an odd introduction? Stay with me though because it will make more sense by the end of this episode. Last week, reports surfaced from Bloomberg that Monster Beverage Corporation (NASDAQ: MNST), the maker of Monster Energy drinks, is exploring a business merger with beer, wine, and spirits brand portfolio Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ). This is a ...
Dec 02, 2021•16 min
Huel is looking for a huge exit event soon, but should the plant-based meal replacement maker go the initial public offering route or opt to sell the business? Are you familiar with Huel (which stands for Human + Fuel)? You should be if you’re an avid follower of my content because I’ve mentioned the active nutrition brand on a handful of separate occasions over the past year. These Huel mentions spanned M&A target commentary in Glanbia and MyProtein content (which I’ll drive deeper into at ...
Nov 30, 2021•13 min
Should active nutrition brands get ready for a “New Year, New Me” pull-forward effect? In the active nutrition industry, the first quarter is generally its version of the Super Bowl. There’s a front-loaded seasonality to the active nutrition industry that usually sets the tone for how well the active nutrition brand’s year is going to shape up. This is because almost half of all adult Americans (~120 million) make some type of weight loss or dietary/exercise regimen New Years Resolution goal eac...
Nov 29, 2021•17 min
Will the launch of energy drinks help MusclePharm diversify away from the challenging protein markets that left the "Athletes Company" badly beaten up this quarter? In the third quarter of 2021, MusclePharm (OTCMKTS: MSLP) saw its net sales decline 25.6% YoY. While that declining sales trend is alarming, it's nothing compared to gross margins that declined 3090 basis points YoY to 0.2%. So, why did MusclePharm lose $3.5M operationally (mostly stemming from COGs) this quarter? About half of Muscl...
Nov 23, 2021•14 min
Is Post Holdings (NYSE: POST) bailing out its former wholly-owned Active Nutrition brand portfolio? BellRing Brands (NYSE: BRBR) is a portfolio that owns a collection of convenient nutrition brands like Premier Protein, Dymatize Nutrition, Powerbar, and Joint Juice. Consumers are looking to purchase better nutritious products and improve their overall health. The “COVID-19 Effect” created a huge sedentary period that consumers are now trying to fight back against. This has resulted in the increa...
Nov 22, 2021•15 min
As the premium coffee market built by Starbucks matures, consumers are craving “a fresh set of brands.” To stand out, these coffee brands aren’t attempting to take on the coffee giant directly, instead they’re carving out unique niches to speak to certain demographics or geographies. With extremely strong founder market fit, Black Rifle Coffee Company looks to be in the early years of a long-term growth story. Black Rifle Coffee Company is veteran led and veteran controlled, with approximately 5...
Nov 16, 2021•21 min
Is the Glanbia Performance Nutrition brand portfolio still the gold standard in the sports, active, and lifestyle nutrition market? Glanbia Performance Nutrition 2021 Q3 growth was reported net revenues growth of 23.2% YoY on a constant currency basis from both strong pricing and volume increases (at 18% and 4.4% respectively). They also benefitted 0.8% from last quarter's acquisition of LevlUp, a gamer (esports) nutrition brand. Glanbia Performance Nutrition is one of two wholly-owned segments ...
Nov 15, 2021•12 min
Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) has reached another inflection point in its business, one which positions the energy drink brand for exponential growth and market share gains. This is above and beyond the recent brand popularity spike that has seen year-over-year quarterly revenue growth expand aggressively. In the last two years, Celsius Holdings have grown from two-tenths of a percent to now amassing a two percent market share in the energy drink category. As the brand hits critical mass with ...
Nov 12, 2021•18 min
Did the MyProtein "gain train" slow to a halt or was The Hut Group (THG) owned sports nutrition brand just slowing down briefly to pick up more supporters at the station? THG expects its THG Nutrition segment to sustain a 20% YoY growth rate in 2021, but the latest quarter only showed MyProtein up 13.4%. I believe this is just a short-term slowing, as the solid performance this quarter was against the highest growth quarter in 2020 for THG Nutrition. With over 80% of revenues coming from repeat ...
Nov 07, 2021•19 min
I'll utilize the 2021 Q3 Franchise Group (NASDAQ: FRG) earnings report and conference call, along with any relevant publicly disclosed news to provide you with segment-level details on the recent business performance for The Vitamin Shoppe. That will include a range of insights and surrounding how The Vitamin Shoppe is navigating the current supply chain and economic challenges, update on franchising activity, merchandising updates, and possible M&A activity. I will also breakdown why a rece...
Nov 05, 2021•18 min
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the supplement industry supply chain situation will get much worse, over at least the next 6 months, before it gets better. I know that’s a bit of an ominous introductory statement, but you don’t consume my content to be fed bullshit positive fake news. It’s been about four to five months since I gave a proper update on the supplement industry supply chain situation. I recently took part in a SupplySide 365 webinar panel discussion with Mark Glazier (C...
Oct 25, 2021•39 min
The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ: SMPL) just became an official member of an elite club of active nutrition CPG brand portfolios. So, which club is that exactly? With the company just finishing up its 2021 fiscal year, The Simply Good Foods Company reached $1 billion combined in total net sales between its Atkins Nutritionals and Quest Nutrition brands. In Q4 of fiscal 2021, both brands had strong retail takeaway growth, with Quest Nutrition specifically had more than 50% greater growth tha...
Oct 24, 2021•15 min
As the post-pandemic active nutrition industry starts to normalize, it’s time to discuss what benefitted, rebounded, paused, and was damaged by the “COVID-19 Effect." It's irrefutable that the “COVID-19 Effect” changed almost everything about the active nutrition industry and most professionals are naturally a bit lost. The market is evolving quickly, as consumer interest in the space has never been higher. The active nutrition industry has become a key gateway to the $1.5 trillion global wellne...
Oct 20, 2021•29 min
Will market leadership in the $2 billion global coconut and plant waters category be enough to push The Vita Coco Company towards stock market gains? At the end of September, The Vita Coco Company (aka the portfolio previously known as All Market, Inc.) filed its S-1 document with the SEC showing its intention of selling shares through an initial public offering and becoming a publicly-traded company. The IPO date is set for sometime during the week of October 18th and will be traded on the NASD...
Oct 15, 2021•20 min
I’ve always believed that Hip Hop and CPG entrepreneurship are linked together. Firstly, Hip Hop is seen as counterculture to other music genres, which is similar to CPG entrepreneurship in today’s “technology” filled founder landscape. Additionally, Hip Hop and CPG entrepreneurship are both centered around salesmanship and the ability to hustle. Moreover, Hip Hop music is rooted in remixing (or sampling) previous music, and this iterative innovation process is also core to the CPG industry. Fin...
Oct 14, 2021•17 min
What does a series of popular children’s books from the 1980s and 1990s have to do with today’s frictionless omnichannel retailing environment? If you’ve consumed enough of my content by now, you know I love to find historical linkages or possible root causes that can explain current trends in consumer behavior. One such major consumer behavior trend, that was strengthened by the “COVID-19 Effect”, is that consumers are increasingly expecting retailers to be omnipresent. Today's consumers have t...
Oct 12, 2021•11 min
Keurig Dr Pepper (NASDAQ: KDP) expects to have $20 billion in M&A capacity over the next three years, so I thought it would be fun to put on my CEO hat and go shopping! In January 2018, KDP was created when Keurig Green Mountain (owned by JAB Holding Company) agreed to combine with Dr Pepper Snapple Group. At the time of the deal, it was said to “unlock the opportunity to combine hot and cold beverages and create a platform to increase exposure to high-growth formats.” Over the last several ...
Oct 11, 2021•23 min
Something interesting is happening in the grocery retail industry...there are actually new retailers emerging and it should galvanize every CPG brand. While new grocery retail concepts pop up all the time around the country, more times than not, those grocers stay local/regional and have a non-material impact over the entire CPG industry. The last "new" grocery retail chain created that made a material difference was Sprouts Farmers Market that was founded in 2002. Most market leading grocery ba...
Oct 06, 2021•14 min
Have you noticed more functional food and beverage, and supplement brands are advertising on television lately? So, why have so many functional CPG brands jumped into the “grand daddy of them all” advertising format? Well, most of them technically haven’t if we are only categorizing the upper echelon of advertising formats as traditional linear TV only. Most of these supplement and active nutrition CPG companies are riding the connected TV (CTV) advertising wave. CTV advertising investments in t...
Oct 06, 2021•22 min
Did you know that the “world's first internet-controlled fitness equipment" was launched more than two decades ago? iFIT Health & Fitness pioneered the technology that drives the trending connected fitness space today. When the pandemic closed gyms across the country last year, millions of Americans purchased billions of new connected fitness equipment pieces and drove headfirst into online home workouts. iFIT Health & Fitness is the market leader in the U.S. market of large fitness equi...
Sep 28, 2021•17 min
Jeff Bezos famously said “your margin is my opportunity” but is there a new opportunistic business model in the CPG industry that’s looking to steal his shine? You’ve heard of B2B, B2C, and C2C, but what about C2M? C2M stands for consumer-to-manufacturer, and it should be obvious that this business model removes various intermediaries (or middlemen) enabling consumers to buy higher quality products at lower prices. Manufacturing companies are peering through the window of opportunity. With margi...
Sep 25, 2021•13 min
Will the supplement industry see a resurgence of CrossFit targeted supplement brands, as the fitness regimen evolves under new ownership? Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat...sports nutrition products for bodybuilders and sports nutrition products for CrossFitters are essentially the same thing, the main difference comes down to marketing strategy. With the viability of CrossFit marketed supplements obviously being closely tied to the popularity of the workout regimen (and overall s...
Sep 23, 2021•16 min
Pokémon Go was one of the biggest viral phenomena of the latter part of last decade, but maybe it’s biggest positive effect on society was overlooked. Five years ago, something magical happened to the millions of Americans. They took incremental steps to improve their health, while also chasing Charizards and Squirtles (whatever the heck those things are). In 2016, Pokémon Go had 233 million global active users and it was estimated that 19% of those were in the U.S. market. Just to give you a se...
Sep 21, 2021•13 min
Is this the perfect business environment for MyProtein to accelerate its growing share of the global supplement market? I believe the answer is yes. With global supply chain constraints, inflationary cost pressures, and labor shortages, the current business environment is arguably one of the toughest in several decades. While I’m sure THG (like other competitors) would love an easier situation, it’s actually the heightened level of complexity that hurts competitors more than THG. This is because...
Sep 20, 2021•18 min
We live in a non-branded search world, but what does that mean for key active and sports nutrition categories? It’s plain and simple, the rise of non-branded search has disrupted the sports and active nutrition industry. So, what’s going on? I attribute it to a combination of (1) the low barriers of entry causing brand/product proliferation (2) strength of marketplaces like Amazon needing more selection to feed its flywheel (3) consumers realizing quality products exist everywhere and having a w...
Sep 12, 2021•15 min
The “COVID-19 Effect” caused a unique shift in the economic landscape, forcing many of today’s CPG brands to pivot. While those lessons will eventually be written about, I wanted to share a list of the greatest CPG industry brand pivots of all-time. Sometimes a CPG entrepreneur has a terrible first idea that doesn’t hit the market. Other times they think they have the perfect product and it flops. While others do have a great product, but it’s marketed wrong or positioned in the wrong sector. I’...
Sep 08, 2021•13 min
Have you heard that the trending hard seltzer category is now dying? Everyone that’s been around the block a few times in the alcoholic beverage industry knows that category is notoriously trendy. The problem is that today’s six-second attention span internet gurus and CPG industry pundits seem to write off trends faster than a college kid can shotgun a White Claw. After Molson Coors announced they would discontinue production of Coors Seltzer and Boston Beer Company warned everyone that the dem...
Sep 07, 2021•14 min
WTF have I been up to lately in my personal life? Over the last year, things have changed a lot and it's long overdue that I provide an update. I guess I’ll start at the trigger of this all, the “COVID-19 Effect.” Everything lately seems to trace back to this event that impacted everyone and everything in different ways. For myself and my then girlfriend and now fiancé Leena, one of the areas that it touched us was in making us think differently about our place of residence. With us both being f...
Aug 31, 2021•13 min
If you spend enough time in the functional CPG niche communities across the internet, you’ll likely hear members saying, “there’s no innovation anymore in the space.” I disagree. I think there’s actually an oversupply of innovation. Consumers don’t know how to fit all of it into their lives. Whose fault is that though? It’s surely not the consumers. The problem is that brands are using an outdated product development process. Supply Side Innovation, paired with the lower barriers of entry across...
Aug 30, 2021•9 min
