336. The $15M Opportunity Hiding in Stores They Already Had.

0:00More doors will not fix the wrong assortment. I found a$15 million growth gap inside a brand that was already in the stores. They did not need another retailer. They needed the right products and the retailers already had. And here's the painful part. The wrong assortment was not only leaving distribution on the table, it was making their promotions weaker, hurting velocity, and putting some of their distribution that they'd already earned at risk. If your brand is chasing more doors before fixing this, you may be paying to scale the problem. Ready to hear more? I'm Dan Lohman, and this is the Bulletproof Your CPG Brand Podcast.

0:37There's always a free guide at the end of every episode to help you go deeper into topics we cover. Now, let's roll up our sleeves and get started. Let me show you what we found, because I see versions of this mistake all the time, even with big brands. This was an energy bar brand with 16 SKUs. They were growing and shoppers loved the brand. They had retailers, they had brokers, they were running promotions. From 30 ,000 feet, this looked like progress. But when I looked at store by store sales, I saw something very different. The brand had effectively allowed retailers and brokers to decide which flavors each store would carry.

1:13So one store might have five of the brand's products and may be still missing some of the products shoppers in that category look for first. Think about how a shopper enters the category. In energy bars, there are familiar flavor platforms shoppers already understand. Things like chocolate, peanut butter, vanilla, and cookies and cream. Those are entry points. A shopper may love cashew, raspberry, pecan, or other specialty flavors. Those products can absolutely make the brand distinctive. But if the shopper comes to the shelf looking for a familiar peanut butter or chocolate option, and your brand does not offer that choice at the store, you can lose that consideration before the shopper ever discovers what makes your specialty items interesting.

1:55That was the problem. The brand technically had distribution, but the distribution was inconsistent enough that the brand could look incomplete from store to store. And that creates three expensive problems at once. First, it weakens your competitive posture. Second, it makes velocity harder to build. Third, and this is the part most brands miss, it makes your trade promotions work much harder than they should. Imagine paying for a promotion. When the store does not carry their products, shoppers are most likely to use to enter your brand. You're now asking the promotion to do two jobs. It has to convince shoppers why to try your brand, and it also has to convince the shopper to try an unfamiliar flavor at the same time.

2:38That is a much harder sell. Trade and marketing can amplify a strong assortment. It can also subsidize a weak one. And if the core assortment is inconsistent, the promotion can create awareness the shelf is not prepared to convert. That is one reason a promotion can increase shipments or even increased sales and still failed to build the business the way you expected. The problem may have started before the promotion ever ran. So I built a very simple view. First, identify the product shoppers in the category most consistently buy, the flavors. Then identify the brand's strongest products that align with those shopper entry points.

3:14Then overlay the brand's actual distribution, store by store, retailer by retailer. Now the white space becomes visible, not theoretical white space not should we be in more stores white space productive white space where we are already doing business but failing to give the shopper the core choices they expect from us in this case the gap was roughly 15 million dollars again that was an identified opportunity gap not a claim for 15 million dollars to automatically fill in the brand's bank account but it changed the decision the first growth priority was no longer how do we get more doors. It became, how do we make the doors we already have work harder?

3:54That is a much better retail question. This is productive distribution. The KPI strategy I recommended was straightforward. Before we keep layering in specialty items, make sure the retailer carries the brand's priority core assortment first. That exact number will vary by brand and by category. In this case, think of it as a core group of roughly five priority items. Those items are in first position in the selling story. Then the specialty flavors become the next layer. The products expand choice, create discovery, and make the brand unique after the core is protected. That gave the sales team and the broker a much clearer assignment.

4:31Instead of, how many of our 16 items can you get? The assignment became, protect the core items first, close these gaps, then earn the right to expand the rest of the assortment. That is a strategy someone can actually execute today. And notice Notice what happens to the promotion once you fix the shelf? Now when you invest trade dollars, the promotion reaches more shoppers with products they already understand. A shopper may enter their brand through a familiar flavor. If their product delivers, that trial gives the specialty assortment a better chance on the next trip. So the core items do more than generate their own sales.

5:07They become a trial mechanism for the rest of the brand. That is what I meant when I say one SKU can work harder than the number printed on the sales report suggests. Its job may be to make the promotion work harder. This is why I get nervous simply because someone wants to swap or cut an item simply because a metric makes it look weaker. The metric may be accurate. The decision can still be incomplete. There was another warning sign in this case. Before I started working with the brand, I could see distribution beginning to erode. Some retailers were at risk because the brand was not consistently meeting the velocity threshold required to justify the shelf space.

5:46Think about how dangerous that is. Think about how costly that could be. The loss of a retailer and their shoppers. The team is celebrating new doors while existing doors are becoming less secure. They are spending money to expand while the core is quietly weakening. That is not growth. That is complexity wearing the growth costume. And I have seen this pattern at larger businesses too. New items are exciting. Innovation gets attention retailers want something new sales teams want another reason to call the buyer but if the new item replaces one of the core products shopper by first you can make the assortment interesting and the business weaker at the same time this is why i separate distribution from productive distribution distribution tells me you got the yes productive distribution tells me the shopper can find the right product the assortment makes sense the retailer benefits the economics work, the promotion has something solid to amplify, and the brand can support the business well enough to repeat it.

6:44More doors are useful when the system underneath it can carry the weight. So before you chase your next retailer, I want you to run a very simple four-part check. First, identify the category entry points. What are shoppers most likely to look for first when they enter the category? Second, identify your core brand's items. Which of your products best meet those familiar needs and recruit shoppers into the category and the brand. Third, overlay the actual distribution. Which stores are missing the core even though they already carry your brand? And fourth, pressure test your trade plan. Are you spending promotional dollars in stores where the shelves are prepared to convert the demand you are paying to create?

7:26That is the work. It is not glamorous, it's not complicated, but it can be worth a lot of money. And this is where I want to challenge the way the industry talks about growth. We celebrate the retailer win. We celebrate the distributor. We celebrate new geography. We post the store account, but the brand does not get paid for collecting doors. The brand gets paid when the right shopper buys the right product often enough to support the brand. That is a very different scorecard. Sometimes the fastest growth opportunity is not the retailer you haven't landed yet. Sometimes the money is hiding in the stores you already have.

8:02It is in missing the core skew, the shelf placement nobody checked, the promotion running against the wrong assortment, the distribution gap your dashboard quietly averaged away, the deduction everyone accepted as a cost of doing business, the broker assignment no one made clear. Those are the retail equivalent of finding free money in the couch cushion. Except the couch cushions can be worth tens of thousands or in the right situation, millions. That is also why I built the Build Your Retail Muscle Founder Problem Finder. After more than 335 episodes, you should not have to search an archive and guess which conversation might help.

8:38Hear from top CEOs and interest thought leaders. Scott Jensen with Rhythm Superfoods said listening to half a dozen of your podcasts with the depth and breadth as many as there are, you can listen to half of those and get an MBA and Entrepreneur Show. start with the problem sitting right in front of you maybe it is I've got the yes now what maybe my promotions are not paying me back maybe my product is not moving at shelf or I have the reports I still do not know what to do pick the problem and I will point you to three conversations to start with one practical action and a next resource if you want to go deeper it's free no email required Go to RetailSolved.com forward slash guide 33.

9:20And here's a thought I want to leave you with. If you're trying to grow distribution, do not begin by asking, how many more stores can we get? Ask, are we making the stores we already have productive enough to deserve the next ones? Protect the core. Make the shelf easier to shop. Give the promotion the right products to amplify. Use the specialty items to expand the relationship after the shopper as a reason to trust the brand. then grow one skill, one item, one retailer, one better result, then build the next muscle. If this episode changed the way you think about doors versus profitable distribution, share with the founder looking for an edge.

10:00Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Your CPG Brand Podcast. You can download this week's free guide and the show notes at retailsolved.com forward slash session 336.