We get it. The pressure for topline growth, continued pricing dynamics, competitive challenger brands, high fiscal expectations from shareholders, and retail stakeholders is real. Both BASES volume forecast users and “How Brands Grow” devotees know that distribution is the #1 driver of brand size. For brands in limited distribution, expanding into new channels to access new customers may represent the #1 growth opportunity. However, it’s not as simple as putting “expanded distribution” on a strategy one pager. Simpactful’s team of brand and retail experts has worked on dozens of channel expansions across categories from Shave Care and Prestige Skin Care, to Snacks and Health Care Products. Success requires an expansion game plan for the brand as well as the capability to execute and sustain the expansion. Below are just a few of the steps we include in the Simpactful distribution expansion practice:

  1. Learn the Landscape: Go deep on the 5 Cs to determine what is required to be competitive immediately and longer term – and then take a hard look at you own brand, business model and corporate competencies to understand where changes is needed. Simpactful Senior Partner, Neal Dellett, adds: “An effective Landscape Assessment process is critical. Sometimes, this work reveals shift in shopper behavior, MAP requirements, trade investment realities, new competitive intelligence or even supply capacity opportunities. It is always best when Leadership Teams understand the 5Cs and can proactively work plans to get ready to expand ahead of making retail pitches.”
  1. Get Expert Retail Insights to Build a Better Pitch: It’s one thing to say you want to go after retail distribution – but another to reposition your brand and your business to make it appealing enough to take space away from someone else in support of your buyer’s Category Growth Vision in a specific retailer. Brands that drive more distribution start by understanding how buyers are measured and how they can show up in a way that creates immediate and long-term value. At Simpactful, we include retail experts on our strategy teams who are quickly able to use their primary knowledge and connections to provide critical insight around retail priorities, Merchant KPIs, channel costs to serve, and more. This insight, when combined with multi-functional brand expertise, can help you uncover the menu of levers for further assessment. Simpactful Senior Partner, Marcy Selva, spent her career becoming an expert in Market Strategy, Sales and Planning and shared this example: “Simpactful was engaged by a Private Equity-owned healthcare company to transition an RX brand to OTC. With just eight weeks before the National Association of Chain Drug Stores show, the client needed a strategy, assortment, pricing, supply plans, and retailer-ready pitch decks. Our first step was leveraging our team of retail experts—including former senior merchant executives from Walmart and Target’s Health & Wellness category—to define the key elements of a successful pitch and work backward from there. By streamlining the process, we condensed 18 months of work into just nine weeks. The result? Legal- and regulatory-approved pitch decks, customized for each retailer, led to successful meetings and a strong market entry.”
  1. Be Sure Your Brand is Ready: The most successful products and brands sell themselves off the physical and digital shelves. This means the shape, form, branding, assortment, shelving, signage, and copy/claims are all working together to help shoppers find, navigate, deselect and select the right products in the context of each retail environment. In the past 2 years, Simpactful has been retained for two full brand restages. We have led the work from strategy development, agency selection and briefing, through the design process, qualification with consumers, and even execution. Simpactful Partner, Heather Burgess has led numerous brand restages in her career. “At Simpactful, we have been thoughtful about the resources and talent we bring together for these projects and how we can create value versus what most companies have in-house. We combine Brand Management best practices with deep consumer and retail understanding, skilled creatives, and technology to drive success. Our teams and agency partners are trained to consider how shoppers make decisions using insights from cognitive and behavioral science. We are using AI to accelerate and elevate the design process (like claim-storming sprints), as well as the latest testing methodologies to build internal and retailer confidence in the case for change.”
  1. Execute with Excellence: Once you have a clear vision and retailer buy-in, it can be tempting to rush to get the new product onto the shelf or into new doors. However, the devil is in the details. Simpactful’s team of practitioners has managed through executional details like inventory run-down plans, the start of production, retailer engagement, store, and online transitions, hard vs. soft conversion details, and financial modeling. This work can be the difference between a restage that delivers the required brand and financial improvements or failure, for you or for your retailer.  Simpactful Senior Consultant, Tuan Tu, offers a recent example. He leveraged his extensive Beauty experience to help a recent client prepare to launch in Specialty Beauty. “We assessed merchandising events, planned launch events, evaluated retailer media tools, developed a joint PR plan and put together a comprehensive Marketing plan to drive demand to ensure strong momentum out of the gate to build retail confidence.”
  1. Plan to Sustain Your Success: The minute you have buy-in, your buyer will already be planning ahead for the next merchandising cycle. Simpactful Senior Partner and Food/Beverage expert, Stephanie Borselli, is emphatic. “In an omni-channel environment, barriers to entry have fallen with most categories experiencing a proliferation of challenger brands competing with incumbent brands for pace. As a result, the bar continues to go up and you’ve got to have exciting plans in place to continue to create joint value. This can look like sustaining innovation plans, new sustainability measures, ways to improve margin, ideas to improve operating efficiency, or exclusive ways to create incremental shopper value.  Starting on these early is key to building confidence and maximizing retail momentum.”

Watching your brand come to life in a new retail environment and delight more shoppers is incredibly gratifying. With the right understanding of the landscape and critical elements for success in place, expanding distribution channels can provide access for more shoppers and be an exciting driver of brand growth! Our team of Simpactful experts has helped many brands through the process of assessing the options, positioning for successful pitches, and executing both launch and sustain plans.

Do you need help with your brand expansion? Simpactful can help! We are happy to roll up our sleeves with you to do the work and train your teams. Contact our team today at contact@simpactful.com or 925-234-6394. Visit www.simpactful.com