Hey ho folks! It’s been a bit of a busy spring. One upside of our “new normal” is many companies have reached out to support the CPG industry with free, high quality, online presentations. Enjoy the sun while it lasts and get excited about the next stay-in-weather day when you can browse these gems:
I have written many times about my work with Tera Johnson of the Food Finance Institute at U of Wisconsin. I’m on a weekly call with her as a consultant and she suggested this workshop on pricing your product for distribution to retail:
https://www.foodbizsuccess.com/profit – it’s $97, two hours, and absolutely worth it. Sari Kimbell is a former buyer for Whole Foods and she really understands retail distribution. She has many other workshops, which after this first taste I think you will be ready to select from. Sari also has her own YouTube channel with some free videos here: https://www.youtube.com/FoodBusinessSuccess/
In the Pricing For Profit video, Sari shares the screen with Shannon Roddy of Marketplace Seller Courses: https://www.marketplacesellercourses.com/
Shannon shares a really valuable overview of selling on Amazon.com. I have seen consumer products not pay attention to Amazon while they focus on distribution. When they turn their attention to Amazon a year later they discover it’s a wild west: Their own product for sale from half a dozen resellers doing varying degrees of an acceptable job of presenting the product and making it a nightmare for the would-be customer. This really is a case of investing less than a day, total, now, will save you days and many dollars down the road. Take the Pricing For Profit Course, check out Shannon’s website where there are two free promo videos, and draft a plan for Amazon whether you are ready to execute or not. Tera says 50% of online food sales are from Amazon. Shannon reports that Amazon can deal with frozen or meltable, but not refrigerated. (and shelf-stable, of course!)
Another hot tip from Tera: The Specialty Food Association (hosts of the Fancy Food Show) has been putting on weekly webinars about working with buyers, as well as Continuity and Risk Planning. “All webinars are free to the whole industry” and prior webinars are currently available for replay here. Thanks, SFA! https://www.specialtyfood.com/shows-events/summer-fancy-food-show/education/webinars/
The webinar series I’ve manged to catch a couple of is from The Hirshberg Institute. COVID hit just as they were about to do their annual Entrepreneur Bootcamp. Instead they did a webinar series called Tales From the Trenches – leaders from all kinds of food companies talking about how they built their companies. They’re not currently recording new ones but past webinars are available online. Check it out here: https://hirshberginstitute.com/webinar-series/
Hang in there! Pivot, don’t pause! It feels like disaster but it’s actually disruption – breathe deep, look for opportunities, don’t be ashamed of realities, and care for yourself.