There’s A LOT of misunderstandings when it comes to recessions. While it may seem counterintuitive, recessions aren't all bad news. The clouds that settle over the economy during a recession do in fact have a few silver linings…so I want to talk about the long-term impact of those within the context of the grocery business. And just so we’re on the same page, when I say grocery business…I’m talking about the CPG industry yes, but also grocery retailers, contract manufacturers, and agricultural b...
Jun 06, 2023•14 min
Pivotal is an interview-style segment that tackles topics in consumer packaged goods (CPG) and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) from the business leaders that live it EVERY DAY! This episode is a special one for a three reasons...(1) we recorded it in person at the "Carlsbad mecca of functional ingredients" aka Compound Solutions, Inc. headquarters (2) Matt Titlow gave us the FULL origin story from the company's inception to the major pivot points throughout the 25 years and where we are now. A...
May 30, 2023•41 min
CPG marketers are constantly trying to come up with ways to stop consumers’ infinite scroll, so why not utilize a remixed version of an 1860s military strategy, right? While most think about “shock and awe” as simply a massive application of firepower by the military, the real battleground is within the opponent’s mind. “Shock and Awe” accomplishes psychological victory by influencing the will and perception to get the adversary to do what the attacker wants. That might seem just a tad extreme f...
May 24, 2023•9 min
Pivotal is an interview-style segment that tackles topics in consumer packaged goods (CPG) and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) from the business leaders that live it EVERY DAY! Now, I don’t want to oversell this special edition episode, but it’s kind of a big deal. It would have been a big episode even during good times but consider the collective facts…I spoke with the founder and recently ousted CEO of Bang Energy Jack Owoc…at a time when the initial stalking horse bids were happening in tha...
May 22, 2023•46 min
The Vitamin Shoppe was just sold...again (technically)! What started as highly probable rumors became reality. In a deal that’s expected to close in the second half of 2023, The Vitamin Shoppe’s owner, Franchise Group, would be taken private through a $2.6 billion management buyout. The group buying the portfolio is led by current Franchise Group CEO Brian Kahn but includes a consortium of other investment banks and private equity firms. After the transaction is complete, the current Franchise G...
May 14, 2023•11 min
Are growth vibes at Celsius Holdings drying up…or is this desert oasis as lush as Greenland…or was it Iceland that’s green? (D2: The Mighty Ducks reference anyone?) This is the first quarter that Celsius energy drinks was fully integrated into the PepsiCo DSD distribution system after the August deal announcement. Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) had quarterly revenue of $260 million, which was up 95% YoY. According to IRI last 52-week data, Celsius was the number one brand driver of growth in th...
May 10, 2023•12 min
The gang’s all here again…which should be huge news for Premier Protein heading into the back-half of its fiscal year. But as I normally do with my performance update content of publicly-traded functional CPG brands, I will use the recently filled earnings report, earnings conference call, and any relevant publicly disclosed news, in this case it’s BellRing Brands (NYSE: BRBR) 2023 Q2 earnings release, to obviously update you on the performance of brands in that portfolio, but also use it as the...
May 10, 2023•12 min
What if I told you there’s a 23.75 percent chance the supplement industry will be unrecognizably annihilated in the next year? While I don’t want this to be a “sky is falling” moment that creates panic and mass hysteria, we do need to walk through a very scary…very plausible “black swan event” that would completely disrupt the supplement industry as we know it today. I’ve been modeling out probabilities of certain external threats to the functional ingredient supply chain for some CPG clients, o...
May 08, 2023•11 min
Glanbia is certainly making that cheddar…figuratively and literally, but which GPN brand has been cutting the cheese lately? Glanbia Performance Nutrition is one of two wholly-owned segments of Glanbia plc (LON:GLB), a multi-billion dollar global nutrition company. The brands in the Glanbia Performance Nutrition portfolio include; Optimum Nutrition, BSN, think!, Isopure, Amazing Grass, and SlimFast. I'll use the recent earnings report, earnings call, and associated news to update you on how Glan...
May 05, 2023•10 min
Love it or hate it…artificial intelligence (AI) has started to take over different areas of our lives and there’s no escaping it. While everyone is talking ChatGPT, I’ve been captivated by another AI revolution that has just started to impact the CPG industry. Did you know that some of the "influencers" you follow might not even be real? I mean its common knowledge by now that influencers are great at adding digital platform filters, using photo editing software, and understanding which angles o...
May 03, 2023•9 min
The Chapter 11 bankruptcy era of the beverage empire that Jack Owoc built has been wild. A LOT more has happened since I uploaded my last major Bang Energy bankruptcy explained update in mid-March (https://youtu.be/Kr_PMyydlCw). But that probably shouldn’t surprise you at this point, right? If you remember, I stuck my neck on the line and said that Monster Energy would end up acquiring its hated rival Bang Energy. Well...a few weeks later a well-respected equity analyst at Stifel put out a resea...
May 01, 2023•9 min
Maybe it’s a bit extreme to say that the global supplement market sees American industry stakeholders as disorder-level narcissists, but at one point in the not so long-ago history it was probably very true. As dynamic forces from borderless digital platforms and online marketplaces continue to disrupt the supplement industry, it’s more important than ever that brands with global ambitions must have a deep local respect towards tastes, requirements, culture and social norms, and consumer behavio...
Apr 26, 2023•56 min
It’s “spring cleaning time” at The Clorox Company…and unfortunately throwing away about a billion dollars’ worth of supplement brand acquisitions might make sense! My guess is A LOT of you didn’t even know that The Clorox Company owned a collection of supplement brands…let alone ones that in aggregate cost the CPG company just under a billion dollars to acquire. Why would a CPG portfolio that was built around an iconic bleach cleaning product be interested in supplement brands? Well…The Clorox C...
Apr 21, 2023•9 min
AB InBev has GHOST Energy. Molson Coors has ZOA Energy. Heck…Monster Energy acquired CANarchy craft brewing collective. And now the third-largest craft brewer in America, Sierra Nevada Brewing, has acquired a minority stake in the better-for-you energy drinks brand RIOT Energy. If you haven’t picked up on it…brewing companies are targeting pockets of beverage industry growth potential to replace the “beer occasions” that aren’t as prevalent anymore. The aptly named “Beyond Beer” strategy has ush...
Apr 17, 2023•58 sec
Grammy-nominated Hip Hop artist Jack Harlow recently invested in a beverage company based in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky…but did he choose the right one? When you think about Kentucky and CPG…what comes to mind? Bourbon, right? The dozens of distilleries that make up the Kentucky Bourbon Trail are visited by a few million annually and the State has more than 11 million barrels of Bourbon ageing in warehouses. But just like how Jack Harlow feels a responsibility to make sure people don’t...
Apr 17, 2023•8 min
If you look a mess, you are a mess. Right or wrong, books are judged by their covers and so are CPG brands. So, what does your products’ shelf presence say about your CPG brand? A LOT…actually! The store shelf is often a shopper’s first point of interaction with your products and its appearance can make or break the sale. But how do you keep everything looking tidy throughout the day at 1000s of store locations? If you’re a massive company like Hershey’s, you have an army of field employees that...
Apr 10, 2023•47 sec
With New Years revolutionists flooding the market, January is typically the best month for the two largest specialty supplement retailers. Yet, January 2023 might have been a bit different because both GNC and The Vitamin Shoppe had CEO departures. After more than four years, Sharon Leite left The Vitamin Shoppe to become the CEO of Ideal Image (North America’s market-leading aesthetic services brand). She is become replaced (maybe temporarily) by Franchise Group Inc. (parent company of The Vita...
Apr 07, 2023•13 min
Did you know there’s a new resident DJ…I mean CEO at The Simply Good Foods Company? And does that mean there’s about to be cake thrown at competitors of Quest Nutrition and Atkins Nutritionals soon? In this latest episode, I'll utilize the 2023 Q2 Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ: SMPL) earnings report, earnings call, and supplemental presentations that were filed on 4/5/2023 as the backdrop to provide broad nutritional snacking market insights. In Q2 of fiscal 2023, both Atkins Nutritionals an...
Apr 06, 2023•10 min
Pivotal is an interview-style segment that tackles topics in consumer packaged goods (CPG) and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) from the business leaders that live it EVERY DAY! As we close out another exciting quarter within the functional CPG space, it only seemed right that I ask my good friend and Market Insights Director at SPINS, Scott Dicker, to join me again. Instead of doing another broad-stroke Active Nutrition “State of the Union” type content piece, we decided to dive deep into one…...
Mar 31, 2023•49 min
Sway House was started in January 2020 after the TikTok talent management company, TalentX Management, essentially chose a handful of its influencer clients to live in a Bel Air mansion rent-free and collaborate on videos for the various digital platforms. While there were several Sway House members not listed on the lawsuit, I’m only going to only focus on those included names…which were Blake Gray, Noah Beck, Bryce Hall, Griffin Johnson, and Josh Richards. If you aren’t a member of Gen Z (whic...
Mar 28, 2023•12 min
If you believe sports supplements (e.g. pre-workout) must be packed to the brim with ingredients, or they shouldn’t be created at all...hopefully you'll have an open mind while consuming this content. In mid-January 2023, Gymshark announced on its social media that it created a branded pre-workout supplement. It would be available only to the UK market and for a limited time only (LTO). Obviously, that LTO time period was super short…because as of recording this in the back-half of March 2023......
Mar 24, 2023•12 min
What does a YouTube channel (NELK) that gained popularity from outlandish pranks and the supplement industry have to do with one another? NELK (and their lifestyle brand FULL SEND) are riding a trend that’s also fueling massive CPG industry success from the likes of MrBeast (Feastables), Emma Chamberlain (Chamberlain Coffee), and Logan Paul (PRIME Hydration). Everyone thinks the C in CPG stands for consumer, but they’re dead wrong. The most popular creators of today are becoming the biggest CPG ...
Mar 22, 2023•13 min
A LOT has happened since the parent company of Bang Energy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on October 10, 2022. If you checked out my previous comprehensive “Bang Energy Bankruptcy Explained” content about five months ago, you’ve likely been wondering what’s going on at the beverage empire that Jack Owoc built. Well…I've been watching everything closely and read most of those 1000+ court documents, that amounted to thousands of pages, in hopes that I can provide a comprehensive update...
Mar 14, 2023•17 min
What I’ve dubbed the “Bodybuilding.com hot potato game” is basically the best analogy I could create that describes what has happened to the specialty supplement ecommerce website over the last 4ish years. Bodybuilding.com has been involved in three confirmed mergers and acquisitions transactions since July 2019…with a fourth possibly happening soon. The first was a related-party transaction that happened between Liberty Expedia Holdings and Expedia Group. About a year later, Expedia Group was f...
Mar 11, 2023•10 min
Just like midnight changes everything for Cinderella, MusclePharm did something right before the start of the intellectual property public auction that also changes everything. While MusclePharm being the Cinderella “underdog story” of the sports nutrition industry might be a huge stretch, the company is certainly down on its luck and dreaming of a better life someday. To even have the chance at a better life, we must swap an important detail around in this Disney story. Instead of the fairy god...
Mar 09, 2023•13 min
With the help of PepsiCo, can Celsius Holdings knockout enough competitors in 2023 to reach $1 billion in revenue? This is the first quarter that Celsius energy drinks were integrated into the PepsiCo DSD distribution system after the August deal announcement. Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) had quarterly revenue of $178 million, which was up 71% YoY. For the 2022 full-year, the energy drink brand had $653.6 million in annual revenue, which was up a remarkable 108% YoY. According to IRI last 52-...
Mar 08, 2023•13 min
Did Optimum Nutrition just join an ultra-exclusive club within the supplement industry? Glanbia Performance Nutrition had 2022 revenue growth of 13.9% YoY on a constant currency basis from strong pricing increases. They also benefitted from the mid-2021 acquisition of LevlUp, a gamer (esports) nutrition brand. Glanbia Performance Nutrition is one of two wholly-owned segments of Glanbia plc (LON:GLB), a multi-billion dollar global nutrition company. The brands in the Glanbia Performance Nutrition...
Mar 07, 2023•14 min
When making that prediction in November 2022, I never imagined it would come true so quickly, but it’s time to explain what the life after Sharon Leite might look like at The Vitamin Shoppe. Taking over the CEO role at The Vitamin Shoppe will be Lee Wright (or at least he’s filling those shoes right now). I say that because he’s also the Chief Commercial Officer for the parent company Franchise Group. I'll run through his background and also explain the possible significance his previous employe...
Mar 02, 2023•14 min
Pivotal is an interview-style segment that tackles topics in consumer packaged goods (CPG) and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) from the business leaders that live it EVERY DAY! After years of keeping the industry in suspense, the FDA recently concluded that CBD can’t be regulated under existing frameworks for dietary supplements and foods/beverages. What? Why? Huh? While I read the FDA announcement both at face value and between the lines, the current state of CBD within the CPG industry is th...
Feb 24, 2023•38 min
Can you imagine living without peanut butter, sugary treats (e.g. candy or cake), breadcrumbs, or condensed milk? The fact is that these daily CPG staples and many more would likely not exist today if it wasn’t for the innovative minds of Black Americans throughout history. While this is not intended to be a definitive list of historically prominent Black Americans in the CPG industry, it hopefully will serve as a starting point on your own educational journey. One that I can actually help a bit...
Feb 22, 2023•9 min
