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 banners have been around for 40, 80, even 100+ years. That being said, there’s something different happening right now because these new grocery retailers have the kind of firepower that is extremely rare. Maybe its billions in investor funding or they are backed by trillion dollar market cap companies, but the grocery industry hasn't had this level of material new activity since Walmart focused on groceries in the late 1980s and Target in the early 2000s starting to focus on selling groceries. In this podcast episode, I'll explore this notion through examples like Foxtrot Market, Amazon Fresh, LIDL, GoPuff, and dark grocery stores through DoorDash and Instacart. Why should you care? Depending on the sales channel strategy of your CPG brand, this could mean a great deal in terms of new business opportunities or needing to adjust your models of existing grocery partnerships.

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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 the U.S. market grew by 41% YoY in 2020 and growth is expected to accelerate in 2021, as spending will reach ~$13.5 billion. What’s also helping the digital advertising trend is digital media companies like YouTube, Hulu, Amazon, and Roku have made it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to build, manage and measure their TV advertising campaigns. This is important because a recent survey found that 49% of consumers reported pausing their TV and shopping for a product online after seeing an ad on their TV streaming device. Since I'll be reacting to a collection of seven recent TV commercials from functional foods, beverages, and supplement brands, I run through the four qualities I believe make for great TV commercials. This was will the backbone to how I'll judge the following active nutrition CPG brands: Vital Proteins, Garden of Life, ZOA Energy, Optimum Nutrition, Quest Nutrition, GNC, and Athletic Greens.

Link to YouTube Video = https://youtu.be/N0JAdaCDP5E

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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 equipment, so it's no wonder the company more than doubled over the last year. On 8/31/21, iFIT Health & Fitness filed its S-1 document with the SEC, which is a signal that the company plans to go public. While the exact date of the IPO wasn't set at the time of recording, the company will trade on the Nasdaq under the appropriately chosen symbol IFIT. In this podcast episode, I'll cover the founding story of Weslo Design International (that eventually became ICON Health and Fitness and now iFIT Health and Fitness) and interesting timeline highlights that span the company being owned by fitness business icons Joe and Ben Weider. Additionally, I'll explain how heated competition against newcomer Peloton Interactive is driving iFIT Health and Fitness to new levels of innovation. Fitness has always been about connection, but now digital connectivity has made new experiences and business opportunities possible. We are still in the earliest stages of connected fitness, but the long-term winners will need to be great at four different pillars (hardware, software, content, and community) and I'll explain how iFIT Health and Fitnes stacks out against the connected fitness competitive landscape. Finally, the strength of iFIT's ecosystem (especially the community) can then be highly leverageable into adjacent consumer categories, and you might recognize a major strategy it plans to utilize with iFIT Nutrition. 

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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 margin being squeezed in every direction, something most give to satisfy Americans that have been drunk on low prices for decades. The C2M model is not without risk, as many manufacturers are not properly built with the needed core competencies to build successful brands in the market. That being said, it’s undeniable that C2M will become an important key of the American ecommerce landscape. I'll further explain this notion by presenting how business models have evolved overtime, the eureka moment in the U.S. market with the Amazon Accelerator Program, and how China and Pinduoduo is leading the global shift to C2M. 

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 sport) of CrossFit, it’s hard to explain the lifecycle of the first wave of successful CrossFit targeted supplement brands, such as Progenex, Nutri-Force and SFH, without detailing the rise and fall of CrossFit in its first two decades of existence. So, why do I think there might be a new round of CrossFit targeted supplement companies that will emerge? For the first time since 2018, CrossFit has seen increased participation in the sport. With new ownership passing its one-year market, plus new hires, new strategies, and a refocus on the CrossFit community it should mean additional growth in the future. Market growth breeds commercialization activity, so we will see if there’s a second wave of supplement brands targeting Crossfitters or if CrossFit corporate decides to extend its valuable brand IP into creating its own branded supplement line.

Throne HealthTech (Official Supplement of CrossFit Games) Content = https://youtu.be/_rwDlbDDjn0

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 sense of comparison, Pokémon Go had half the monthly active users as Instagram in 2016. Yes, these Americans were addicted to a video game, but they were also subconsciously opting into the newest fitness craze. This potentially makes Pokémon Go the world's most important game for a few reasons that have even bigger potential value today. While Pokémon GO won't suit everyone, the most important outcome is for people to find an activity they enjoy enough to continue doing, so that it improves personal health. Augmented (or virtual) reality location-based smartphone games that infuse fitness still a "huge potential" to be beneficial long-term. If this could be a key in getting Americans in better shape, why haven’t we seen numerous companies harness this unexpected game-meets-fitness and create copycats of Pokémon Go?

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 THG has a business model built for the current complex business model and also has vast internal capabilities that are honestly unmatched in the space. To help support my notion, I’ll be utilizing the recently released 21H1 The Hut Group (or simply known as the acronym THG) earnings report, presentation slides, and earnings conference call, along with any associated public news. I’ll also add strategic commentary that will provide additional value and insights to anyone interested in the overall global supplement industry. While my focus will be primarily on the THG Nutrition division that houses MyProtein, I will cover each of the other business segments at various lengths.

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 willingness to try them out. Meet the brand agnostic consumer that bring a broad and sophisticated range of purchase criteria with them when making decisions. Yes, occasions remain where brand is the prime driver, but it would be exhausting for consumers in today’s market to be passionate about all product categories. That means the sole focus on brands vanish in favor for product attributes as the definer of quality. Consumers today are searching for categories (with or without generic descriptors), rather than brands. 80% of keyword searches on Amazon are generic. That means most consumers are searching for “women’s pre-workout” or “chocolate whey protein” instead of Alani Nu or Optimum Nutrition. Since the bulk of search queries are now unbranded search, active and sports nutrition brands should be redefining their product differentiators. Fact is, almost all active or sports nutrition customers shop on Amazon. It’s basically a default utility in America today, so overlooking the consumer behavior of using non-branded search more frequently would be a mistake regardless of how strong you believe your brand is in the market. With the help of my data partner Stackline, I'll look at how four of the biggest sports and active nutrition product categories are being affected by the rise in non-branded search. 

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’ve been fascinated with business pivots since I read “Lean Startup” almost a decade ago and have applied many of its lessons throughout my consulting career in the CPG industry. Defined in the book, a pivot is a "structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth." There’s about a dozen or so different types of business pivots in total talked about in the Lean Startup and in this episode I’ll highlight a selection of them by breaking down some of the greatest used by CPG brands. These business pivot stories will include CPG brands such as, Bang Energy, Wrigley Company, Ben & Jerry's, KIND Snacks, and Coca-Cola to name a few.

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 demand for the company’s Truly Hard Seltzer was lower than expected, it sparked a flurry of headlines suggesting that hard seltzer’s meteoric rise was over. It was almost like people cheered the impending death of the category. Here’s the problem, the hard seltzer category isn’t “dying.” So, what’s going on and why do I believe you shouldn’t write off the hard seltzer category anytime soon? I'll dive into a handful of insightful areas to explain why hard seltzer has never been more popular than it is right now.