THE SYMPTOM:  Your days are full of activity, but not productivity.  Scattered and uncoordinated effort leads to inconsistent, if any, meaningful results.

THE SOLUTION:  As a neutral third party, we evaluate your readiness for retail.  Through a combination of interviews and research, we'll provide a plan to get you from where you are to where you need to be.

THE SYMPTOM:  You believe in data-driven decision-making, but the information you've already invested in gets lost or forgotten, with limited application.

THE SOLUTION:  We systematically collect, compile and review your existing knowledge assets to create a repository of what you already know so you can better answer existing questions before investing in new insight.

THE SYMPTOM:  You are concerned with how well your corporate strategies align with how retailers are managing your category, and you're not confident they will deliver the results you need.

THE SOLUTION:  We discover and enlarge the common ground where your company has a capability, the retailer has a need and the shopper has a desire.  This overlap represents the only sustainable opportunity.

THE SYMPTOM:  You're in search of big ideas or new ways to grow sales, but the ideas you're holding onto today represent incrementalism (not innovation) at best and are based on unproven assumptions.

THE SOLUTION:  Bringing experience from 150+ categories combined with a natural curiosity gives us a unique ability to discover overlooked or ignored ideas to drive new sales in any category.  Fresh eyes lead to fresh ideas.

THE SYMPTOM:  You are so consumed with your own product and internal issues, you've lost a broader category perspective beyond rudimentary metrics you can pull from POS or syndicated industry reports.  You're trying to be a product expert before you are a category expert.

THE SOLUTION:  With a detailed understanding of total category dynamics (including demographics, habits, attitudes, the product selection process and sources of dissatisfaction), we provide new perspective that puts your products or brands in a whole new context while giving you fresh credibility as an expert.

THE SYMPTOM:  You use averages when describing almost anything related to your shopper or customer while five people at your office will give five different definitions of who your prime prospect is, using descriptions focused on little more than general demographics.

THE SOLUTION:  Every category is made up of unique sub-groups that represent different needs, different opportunities and different potential value.  Through building segmentation models and doing deep profiling, we're able to identify and understand who matters most to your business and what it will take to win them over.

THE SYMPTOM:  Key decisions related to branding, packaging and product design are based on subjective preferences or assumptions.  Little effort has been made to ask the shopper or consumer what they want.

THE SOLUTION:  We develop data-based principles that guide better brand, product, package, program and shelf designs to fit with the shopper's existing evaluation and selection process.

THE SYMPTOM:  Shopper-facing stimulus (branding, packaging, label design, etc.) has never actually been put in front of unbiased prospects.  There has been no steady process of refining and improving your offer, and you have no data to quantify the desire or demand for your particular product.

THE SOLUTION:  Through a learn & test approach, initial concepts are refined to improve their value proposition and their preference versus competitive benchmarks in pursuit of increased sales potential.

THE SYMPTOM:  Your line review doesn't build credibility or sell your story because it lacks the insight buyers need to bet on your product instead of dozens of competitive offers.  Your meetings feel like monologues that never engage the buyer in a conversation.

THE SOLUTION:  We craft an insight-based selling story focused on how your product fits the retailer's shopper profile and delivers incremental sales.   Greater distribution and retail support is gained by giving buyers more confidence to say yes to you and no to competitive items.

THE SYMPTOM:  You think that gaining distribution is (or was) the hardest part.  You don't realize (or are just realizing) how difficult it is to maintain sales momentum into year two and year three as the competition responds to any early success you have.

THE SOLUTION:  We develop new insight to guide how your product or brand matures into year two and beyond with a heavy focus on identifying and correcting early missteps, finding ways to accelerate sales moment and being positioned to fend off competitive response.

THE SYMPTOM:  You don't have the time, money or motivation to figure out a true omni-channel strategy that is right for your business because, you argue, 97% of your sales are still brick-and-mortar so it isn't a big deal.  Yet somewhere below the surface, you fear missing a big opportunity that your competition might be figuring out now.

THE SOLUTION:  We study how the profile, motivations and behaviors of omni-shoppers differ from core brick-and-mortar shoppers for your category.  We use this understanding to determine how you need to approach product distribution & fulfillment as well as the creation and sharing of custom content that ensures you enjoy greater influence with prospects.