Building a great functional CPG company today requires more strategic alignment than strategic vision. While all the strategic variables can easily be found throughout the coffers of the Age of Information, understanding how each is aligned together is what makes the magic happen over a materially long period of time. I could probably make a 12-week course on the importance of strategic alignment in the functional CPG industry today, but for this piece of content I want to focus on one extremely important area...Channel Strategy. This is an area that I see functional CPG entrepreneurs miss on way too much lately and it’s likely because they haven’t considered its increased importance in the last half-decade.

The functional CPG industry of yesteryear generally focused on building their business through specialty retail and they didn’t have to think about any further steps unless they struck gold and a large brick and mortar retailer was interested in carrying a few products. That isn’t the case today with functional CPG brands having endless distribution intensity models, including one strategy that has become extremely viable...Amazon only (or mostly defined as over 80% of business).

Why does it matter that you can build 8-figure functional CPG businesses on Amazon only today? It becomes extremely attractive to lean heavy into Amazon for your channel strategy, but the entrepreneur must make that conscious choice early in the brand development to align all business strategy accordingly. My hope for this piece of content is that it can serve as a sort of guide for functional CPG entrepreneurs considering their channel strategy comparing;