Field Notes
A weekly essay on go-to-market and product for startup founders and operators. One sharp idea at a time.
- W18 The Biggest Account Can Become the Least Negotiable
A dominant account changes more than revenue concentration. It can reshape terms, production, product decisions, and the team's willingness to say no long before the risk appears in a forecast.
- W17 A New Pack Can Make an Old Customer Start Over
A package refresh can sharpen a brand or erase the cues shoppers use to find it. The operating job is to improve the pack without forcing loyal customers to relearn the shelf.
- W16 Your Online Price Is Negotiating With Every Retail Buyer
A marketplace price does not stay online. It follows you into buyer meetings, changes how shoppers read the shelf, and can make a retail partner question the economics you asked them to support.
- W15 Map the Rights Before You Move the Formula
A scaled product is a bundle of assets, not one recipe. Separate background IP, new improvements, specifications, batch records, confidentiality, licenses, and transfer duties before production begins.
- W14 The Cut Decision Starts Before the Review Meeting
An annual category review is a scorecard, not a fresh pitch. A brand can lose its shelf before the deck is opened because the buyer has already seen how the item performed and how much work it created.
- W13 A Broker Opens Doors. Someone Still Has to Own the Account.
Broker and in-house sales models solve different problems. The right choice depends on the work your accounts need, the economics of covering it, and who retains control when the relationship gets complicated.
- W12 The Discount Becomes the Price You Have to Defend
Every product has an everyday price and a promo price. When the exception appears too often, shoppers and buyers begin treating it as the only price that counts.
- W11 Your First Forecast Is a Boundary, Not a Bet
With no sales history, a first production run can feel like a guess dressed up as a plan. The useful forecast sets a floor, a ceiling, and clear reasons for moving either one.
- W9 Scaling the Recipe Is Where Founders Lose the Brand
The move from your own kitchen to a co-packer forces run minimums that force pack and formula changes. Those changes restate your nutritionals, which restarts your label. Protect the product through the cascade, not after it.
- W8 Run Demos for the Repeat, Not the Day
A demo that moves forty units and creates five repeat buyers is worse than one that moves fifteen and creates twelve. The economics of sampling live in the repeat rate, not the register tape from that afternoon.
- W7 Distribution Is a Tier You Earn, Not a Door You Open
Direct accounts, regional distributors, the big national distributors, broker-managed national retail. It's a ladder, and every rung demands velocity proof. Chasing a rung before you can feed it ends brands.
- W6 Trade Spend Is Rent on the Shelf
Slotting, free fills, promotions, demos, deductions, and spoils are a second P&L hiding behind your first one. Most early brands never model it, so they fund growth that costs more than it earns.
- W5 Velocity Is the Only Number the Buyer Trusts
Getting on shelf is not the win. Turning is. Units per store per week, measured against the category and not against your own hopes, is what earns the re-order and the next door.
- W4 The Panel Has to Be Legal. The Front Has to Sell.
A label does two jobs that pull against each other: satisfy a regulator who reads the back, and convert a shopper who reads the front. Most brands nail one and discover the other in a buyer meeting, which is the worst possible place to learn it.
- W3 The Cash Gap Will Kill You Before Your Competitors Do
Every case you ship is an interest-free loan to your distributor, repaid late and short. You didn't mean to start a lending business, but you're financing the whole channel out of your own undercapitalized balance sheet.
- W2 Margin Is Designed at the Formula, Not the Price Tag
By the time you're setting a shelf price, your margin is already decided. It got engineered (or destroyed) back at the formulation table, in the pack size, and in the co-packer's run minimums.
- W1 The Shelf Positions You Before You Speak
A category manager's planogram decides what your product means before a shopper ever picks it up. You don't pitch your way out of the wrong set. You earn your way into the right one.