How is the American economy doing? According to the Federal Reserve July 15, 2020 Beige Book, the outlook remains highly uncertain...  

You might be asking yourself WTF is the Beige Book and why should I care about what it says about the economy?   

The Beige Book is a Federal Reserve System publication about current economic conditions across all 12 Federal Reserve Districts. It characterizes regional economic conditions and prospects based on a variety of mostly qualitative information, gathered directly from District sources.  

Why you should care is that the qualitative nature of the Beige Book creates an opportunity to characterize dynamics and identify emerging trends in the economy that may not be readily apparent in the available macroeconomic data. Because of that, the Beige Book can potentially help you with regional insights that can be applied to create advantages in your business. To save you time from reading the whole document, I thought it would be valuable if I started a video series where I take five highlights that I found most insightful from the Beige Books and share it with you guys…along with some additional commentary on how it could potentially impact you.

It looks like even Quest Nutrition couldn’t overcome this abominably complex retailing environment from 3/1 to 5/30.

This podcast episode will breakdown the FY20Q3 earnings report for The Simply Good Foods Company (SMPL) filed on 7/8/2020. This is the second full quarter of sales data from the late 2019 acquisition of Quest Nutrition. This episode breaks down the financial performance of The Simply Good Foods Company brand portfolio, covering how Quest Nutrition and Atkins Nutritionals performed against the COVID-19 retailing environment. Finally, I discuss some strategic themes in the report and future thoughts on how the protein snacking brands will do in the back-half of 2020.

If you are interested in the visuals from this episode, please watch this YouTube video - https://youtu.be/5sZVk-wXnrk

This episode of the podcast highlights a wellness (or wellbeing) CPG portfolio, that now has over $500 million in annual revenue (over $1.4 billion in consolidated revenue), yet very few supplement industry stakeholders in the United States speak about them. The company I'm speaking about is The Hut Group, which is a digital-first, global, consumer brand and technology group, powered by a unique and proprietary end-to-end e-commerce technology and operating ecosystem called Ingenuity.  

What you'll notice is that The Hut Group is a billion-dollar business that is built to be a future mini-Amazon. Ingenuity reminds me of AWS because it was built for internal usage, but has been recently white-labeled to be sold and deployed by mega brands like Nestle, Walgreens, and Procter & Gamble.

If you are looking for accompanying graphics in video format, please watch my YouTube video here - https://youtu.be/5-kXqg4O_5c

Every one of the 3 biggest American stock exchanges just had their best quarterly performance in more than two decades. So, why does the Wall Street establishment have their proverbial panties in a bunch over a rookie day trader that never bought or sold stocks until pandemic started?

Let's just say he is proving out a model for the future and that should make a lot of people on Wall Street nervous...

The rookie day trader of reference would be Dave Portnoy, better known as the founder of the media company Barstool Sports. The same Barstool Sports that was sold to Penn National Gaming for $450 million right before COVID-19 started making a huge impact in the United States, but that amount of wealth has nothing to do with why the Wall Street establishment hates him.

If you aren’t familiar with this story, a few questions are likely popping up in your mind;

After 2-3 years of making content about the nutritional supplement specialty retailer GNC, that referenced a future that most-likely ended in bankruptcy, it finally happened...

GNC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and I’m happy for them!

Within this podcast episode, I will cover;

Is it time for American supplement brands to start allocating resources towards Alibaba?

As egocentric Americans, we tend to get caught up with our own lives, own business, own market, and our own economy. We can tell you many facts and opinions on Amazon, but know little about the Chinese equivalent Alibaba. I've honestly kept this content idea on the back-burner for quite some time, but decided to finally create it after I saw an announcement in the latest Alibaba Group earnings report last month that stated they would be hosting a series of virtual Trade Shows aimed at getting small-to-mid-sized U.S. businesses to buy and sell products on its e-commerce platform.

…and it just so happened that the first category-specific B2B event would be supplements and nutrition.

Link to Alibaba U.S. Trade Shows - https://bit.ly/3hS3UYW

Do you remember in Game of Thrones when Jon Snow died in the Season 5 finale, but was brought back to life in the next season by the Red Woman? Did that just happen with Ultimate Nutrition? 

For my sports nutrition industry followers, you might remember the saga that happened on August 17th, 2019 with Ultimate Nutrition abruptly closing their doors and leaving over 150 employees without a job. The 41 year-old legacy sports nutrition brand went silent, but it actually never fully went away and now it has resurrected itself. In this podcast, I will cover...

Slow and steady wins the race, right? While the overconfident GNC is sleeping mid-race, The Vitamin Shoppe continues to push ahead one slow step at a time.

The Vitamin Shoppe’s parent company Franchise Group finally released its 2020Q1 earnings on 6/18/20 and the CEO gave us some additional Q2 insights on the conference call that should prove valuable to functional CPG stakeholders.

Check out my breakdown on this podcast episode. 

What does a 102-year-old rental car company have to do with an 85-year-old nutritional supplement retailer? Nothing much yet, but that could quickly change because a decision Friday by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware gave Hertz permission to sell as up to 246.8 million unissued shares...marking an unprecedented move! A move that might be copied by GNC as it continues to extend the runway further for the possible Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

How much are large consumer packaged goods portfolios willing to pay when developing direct-to-consumer (D2C) capabilities? How about $700 million? You might be gawking at that price tag, but what if I told you that was cheap compared to the reported $1 billion that Unilever paid for Dollar Shave Club...

In March of 2018, The Clorox Company announced it was acquiring Nutranext for $700 million. In this podcast, I will explain why that decision was more about gaining knowledge for the digital channel, then it was to buy a collection of nutritional supplement companies that did $200 million in revenue the calendar year prior to acquisition.