Hi my name is Joshua Schall and I’m here to apply for the GNC’s newly open position for CEO. Wait GNC no longer has a CEO? If you are a bit confused, that’s OK because the news of Ken Martindale not being offered a position with the newly emerged from bankruptcy specialty retailer GNC wasn’t exactly front-page news. Instead, it was actually buried in some SEC reports that probably few people read for fun like me. So, with no current CEO to run the biggest specialty retailer in the VMS category, I figured why not publicly apply for it.

My strategic transformation plan will include; ◼️ Define Exactly Who GNC Is Today ◼️ Redefine Role GNC Has in Customer Journey  ◼️ Reimagine the Frictionless Retailing Experience  ◼️ Put Yourself Out of Business ◼️ Cut Every Bit of Available Fat. 

Many of the things consistently blamed by GNC for its recent failures are external factors that cannot be changed by the retailer alone. They can only be adapted and strategized against to turn them into opportunities. What they can control is the omnichannel shopping experience they provide to customers. So, it comes down to defining "why should consumers unequivocally shop at GNC over the countless substitutes" and relentlessly be reevaluating that question regularly. The same problems that GNC is struggling with are being solved by businesses around them, so it’s time to take personal responsibility and do the hard work internally to make the retailer great again.   

If think that is brash, you’ll be surprised to find out that this is actually the third time I’ve publicly applied for the open CEO position at GNC since I started creating regular content on the space 5-6 years ago. If you aren’t familiar with those pieces of content and interested in them, here are the links; 

I consume a Rocky Mountain 14er level of content weekly...some of it good and some of it bad. Instead of keeping it all in the labyrinth they call my brain, I figured I would start highlighting five of the most interesting things I've read, listened to, or watched during the week. In the first episode, I share the following stories;

◼️ Goya Foods Uppercuts Cancel Culture  ◼️ Hipsters Rejoice Over Ability To Drink Weed and Keep Street Cred ◼️ Amazon breaks $10B in 48 Hours ◼️ Kraft Sends Noods and It Didn’t Go As Planned ◼️ Amazon Makes Me 15% Right on a Prediction

Walmart feels like the retail version of Rocky Balboa because every time you think they can’t overcome the odds, they seem to miraculously fight their way back. So, I guess if I’m going suggest Walmart is Rocky Balboa, I better define which retailer gets to be Ivan Drago is in the fourth edition of the epic movie series. I think the only logical choice would be Amazon (and they are enhanced with the “COVID-19” Effect” steroid). Amazon has been crushing its competition in arguably one of the most complex retailing environments in recent history, but as Rocky always says “life's not about how hard of a hit you can give... it's about how many you can take, and still keep moving forward.”

What you’ll notice when I’m breaking down some of their aggressive strategic moves is that Walmart took another piece of Rocky Balboa’s advice in “stop thinking the way other people think. You gotta think like you think” to be successful today. If Walmart can extend its brand promise to help people to save money and to live better in a way that means so much more than Amazon, it might just have a chance against its biggest rival.

What kind of milk to you drink? Whole, 2%, Skim, or do you not consume any traditional cow’s milk anymore? It wasn’t too long ago that this question would seem odd to ask. That's because Americans have historically drank a lot of fluid cow’s milk, but that’s not really the case anymore. Here lies the root of the problem for Dean Foods, the largest milk company in the United States, that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2019. It’s easy to spot consumption or sales data declines, but it’s a lot more difficult to understand the reasons why and ensure similar patterns become learning lessons for your business. The grocery stores are changing because consumers are changing, which creates this virtuous cycle that will only amplify over the coming years. Brands need to be constantly adapting within this market or they face becoming the next Dean Foods tragedy.

The “COVID-19 Effect” created health concerns to the highest levels I can remember in my lifetime and created economic hardships to the highest levels since the Great Depression. These will no doubt have major impacts on every aspect of the supplement industry for years to come. Fact is, this isn't a socioeconomic set-up that looks very appealing to most entrepreneurs, unless you operate within the supplement industry. These market dynamics created a defining moment for the supplement industry and I believe a meaningful sub-section of consumers realized the importance of preventive health, with many beginning or expanding their supplement regimens. Could it be that all this “bad” is actually “good” for the supplement industry?

Race to the bottom this, race to the bottom that. Listen to a group of active nutrition CPG industry professionals long enough and eventually they will blame the race to the bottom as a main reason causing their assessment of the deterioration within the industry. But, is it really as bad as everyone seems to think it is?

While the “race to the bottom” has several meanings depending on its socio-economic context, the active nutrition CPG industry usually refers to this as the competitive situation stemming from the lowering of various barriers of entry causing brand proliferation that caused negative pricing pressure and product quality.

While I acknowledge the race to the bottom can have some negative effects on stakeholders, it also provides massive opportunities for those that can understand it. As functional CPG categories naturally bifurcate towards either end of the spectrum, it will leave anything in the middle being washed out in the market. As a brand, you need to pick a side and stay close to those extreme ends. Being positioned as an economical and commoditized brand can be extremely advantageous…when there is consumer demand and retail merchandising support.

So, what am I talking about, where is this all heading? Dollar Stores!

What does Spotify have to do with Kraft-Heinz? Before you guess, I’ll give you a hint, it has nothing to do with new remix of Nigerian dancehall recording artist Ketchup by DJ Mustard.

Odds are when you think about the music streaming and podcasting company Spotify, you don’t easily connect it with the almost 150-year-old CPG conglomerate The Kraft Heinz Company, the owner of iconic food and beverage CPG brands, including namesakes Kraft & Heinz, Oscar Meyer, Kool-Aid, Jell-O, Lunchables, Planters, and Maxwell House Coffee. In all, they own around 100 global brands that sell in more than 50 individual fragmented CPG product categories.

The problem lies in the fact that in recent years, CPG products have become increasingly harder to fit into a categorical silo. Within massive companies like The Kraft Heinz Company that creates problems when you are trying to allocate resources to manage each separate product category in the most effective and efficient way. So, what does this have to do with Spotify exactly? While Spotify likely doesn’t know the first thing about categorical differences in shelf-stable dressings and their refrigerated counterparts, they have faced a similar issue in their own business. Spotify brilliantly attacked this problem by taking the original content-based category approach, which are grouped by genres or language or geographical boundaries and changed it to context-based groupings. Will this also work for The Kraft Heinz Company?

Can you imagine running a company that’s so massive that you have a segment called “other” on your financial statements that will do more than $20 billion in revenue this year? For those wondering, that would make the “other company” aka Amazon’s Advertising business segment around the 150th biggest American company. At that size, its bigger than all of Kohl's, two Ebays, or three Simon Property Groups (the biggest mall retailer). It also makes them the third biggest digital advertising company behind Alphabet’s Google and Facebook. I don't know Jeff Bezos personally, but my assumption is he doesn’t wake up each morning and congratulate myself on being the third most powerful digital advertiser, so as funny as it might seem to ask a $20 billion segment that is growing 45% YoY…what’s could be next for Amazon’s Advertising Segment? 

A common question I get asked by supplement brand owners is if third-party certifications are worth the investment? While my answer differs depending on the brand’s nuisance, I always mention one prediction that has marketing bending potential. What is this market bending potential and how likely will it happen? The answer to the latter part of that question might surprise you just how far along it already is...

Every industry has its behemoths. In packaged non-alcoholic beverages, it’s really a head to head battle between The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, but this isn’t a piece of content about the war between Red & Blue. It’s a piece of content about when any of the CPG industry behemoths enter a nascent functional category through internal product development of new offerings. Should this be seen as a net-positive or net-negative? 

The inspiration of this content came from the recent announcement that PepsiCo was launching a functional packaged beverage called Driftwell. This functional beverage would specifically be considered a relaxation beverage, which is a small segment in the overall functional water beverage category worth $2.97 billion in the U.S., that is anticipated to grow 5% this year. That small market size is what makes this launch so intriguing because it could have lasting implications on the nascent functional beverage category for years to come.