1st Phorm isn’t like other supplement brands and that’s by design. Since 1st Phorm doesn’t fit neatly into a box, it seems to cause a level of ignorance by supplement industry pundits and media companies that has always seemed downright disrespectful to me. What does Sal Frisella (President of 1st Phorm) think? Capitalism at its best Around 31:43 of the YouTube video, you heard Sal Frisella mention something about being able to hold their own against competitors in any traditional capitalistic metric. Generating profitable revenue matters, and 1st Phorm is one of the best in the sports nutrit ..read more

As in-person trade shows come roaring back harder than Mike Tyson hitting you with an uppercut, it’s the perfect time to talk about how you can make an impact at these events without spending 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars exhibiting… Importance of Trade Shows to CPG Brands While there’s numerous valuable components to CPG industry trade shows, it really can be dumbed down into two important buckets: networking and product sampling. Networking While your “great product” is critical to being successful in the CPG industry, who you know is also an integral part of the process. Networking p ..read more

This is my fifth annual list of supplement industry trend predictions. Many of you know that I cut my teeth in the sports nutrition space…plus I’ve always believed the best and brightest companies in sports nutrition (active nutrition) are the influential epicenter for the entire CPG industry. So, there’s always an extra layer of self-generated pressure that I put on myself to come up with insightful and impactful trend predictions in this particular content piece. For those that are newer to my content, I only have one big rule for these annual trend prediction lists… Rule #1 = I don’t allo ..read more

What’s the current state of supplements within the convenience sales channel? Well…I might be a bit biased considering my professional background, but I've always believed the best and brightest of specifically the sports/active nutrition space could compete against any large CPG incumbent when it comes to functional food/beverage. And if you walked around this year’s NACS Show expo, you undoubtedly felt the below meme playing out IRL… Observations (NACS Show 2022 vs. 2023): The sheer volume increase of exhibitors that would be considered “birthed/incubated within the supplement industry ..read more

Pop Quiz Time - How many different licensed SKUs have been commercialized throughout the active nutrition CPG categories since 2016? If you said more than 290 and counting…you’d be correct! Did that number surprise you? Well…it surprised the heck out of me and that’s coming from a deep practitioner inside the active nutrition industry. Are you interested in seeing the comprehensive list? I created a supplemental database that provides details on every licensing agreement executed across the active nutrition CPG categories. I’ll be updating that free resource frequently, so make sure to bookma ..read more

How many times have you ordered items on Amazon that originate from another country? How many individuals do you follow online that live internationally? With our daily lives revolving more and more around digital platforms and digital marketplaces, both occurrences are common because they’re borderless. But have you ever considered how that affects your functional CPG brand…and if there was a strategy to take advantage of it? Global + LOCAL = GLOCAL We live in wild times! With an internet connection, credit card, and a few clicks of your mouse, you can… create a global retail distribution ..read more

SPACalicious definition make them CPG investors go crazy…it [was] hot, hot! Fergie probably never envisioned a world where her song would be used to describe the SPAC trend, but whatever… SPAC 101 SPAC = Special Purpose Acquisition Company SPACs aren’t exactly a new thing with the first being formed in 1993. Moreover, SPACs are safeguarded versions of the 1980s "blank-check corporation" that had a terrible reputation and eventually became prohibited in the U.S. markets. Despite SPACs being 30-years-old, they remained unpopular until 2020… The creation of a SPAC flips the traditional initial ..read more

Cash rules everything around me…CREAM…get the money…dollar dollar bill y’all… If that introduction confused you, please open up Spotify, Apple Music, or Pandora (if you’re still in the internet ice age), and listen to the 1994 classic Hip Hop record C.R.E.A.M. by the Wu-Tang Clan! Now that you got a small nostalgic taste of my childhood, let’s jump 10 years ahead where I’m in the first few years of my getting my accounting degree at Kent State University. At that time, my world revolved around banking, debits, credits, and company financials, and I was dreaming of a life that I would be Josh ..read more

Did you know that the specialty supplement retailer GNC had a venture investing platform? Surprise! I’ll get to all the details around GNC Ventures a bit later in this article, but first I want to broaden everything up a bit and properly explain this investing trend. CVC is Red Hot Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) is essentially a practice where a large corporate entity takes an equity stake in a small but innovative or specialist company with the objective of gaining a specific competitive advantage. As an alternative to traditional acquisitions, companies are making more of these minority in ..read more

Condition-specific versus multifunctional. This juxtaposition in product development approaches has been on mind for a while now. There are so many considerations at play here coming from both the brand-level and supply side of the supplement industry, but also with how it all interacts to consumer behavior. So, what’s the future of product development within the supplement industry heading towards? Condition-specific or multifunctional formulation approaches? Condition-Specific = a supplement that targets a health condition. There are dozens of health conditions that supplements might prov ..read more