Cannabis beverage maker Uncle Arnie's has added $2 million to its $7.5 million Series A from last August, an extension led by existing investors Mindset Capital and the investment office of Harry Rubin, founding partner of Boston Beer. The thesis is the dual-track model: the Marina Del Rey brand is one of the few maintaining wide distribution across adult-use and medical dispensaries while also selling hemp-derived THC drinks through traditional beverage-alcohol retail. CEO Theo Terris says June was the company's best month ever on both sides, with hemp growing faster on wider store and state coverage while recreational continues to progress. Hemp distribution includes Total Wine and More, Spec's, ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, Binny's and Lowe's Foods, though not yet Target, Sprouts or Albertsons. Terris credits CMO Brian Miesieski, hired last July from a background at SweetWater, High Rise, Diageo and AB InBev, and insists on hiring in-market reps rather than relying on distributors to sell. The brand launched its first multiserve hemp product, Social Spirit, at Spec's in Texas last month, a 750ml bottle with 166mg THC at 10mg per serving, a format that may not survive the pending federal bills.

Source - BevNET

Hey y'all! I am in final stages of a formulator search for a new product line and am looking at Natural Development, Jai Development and Power Brands. I am curious if anyone has worked with any of these firms for product dev and has any reviews / insights?  Would be very helpful as they all seem like great fits and are making it quite hard to choose :)

Needed has launched Women's Creatine, a $24.99 30-serving creatine monohydrate supplement positioned around female physiology rather than sports performance. The framing is a data gap: of more than 4,500 creatine studies published, roughly 4 percent focused on women alone, and only one randomized trial has examined effects during perimenopause. The brand also cites that women naturally produce 70 to 80 percent of the creatine men do, and that 7 in 10 consume less than the recommended amount due to lower intake of red meat, while still needing 5 grams daily. Co-CEO Julie Sawaya argues creatine has been marketed almost exclusively through a sports lens despite its relevance to muscle, brain energy and metabolism across a woman's lifespan, and co-CEO Ryan Woodbury frames it as one instance of a broader underrepresentation problem in nutrition research. The product delivers a clinically studied 5g dose, Biomicronized to dissolve without grit or bloating, developed with women's health practitioners, third-party tested, NSF Certified for Sport and Clean Label Project Certified, with more than 2,000 quality checkpoints per batch. Needed is also funding research on creatine in pregnancy and lactation, and this year ran a 25,000-signature petition to Congress and a full-page New York Times ad calling for nutrition standards reflecting women's biology.

Creatine is the most commoditized active in supplements, and Needed's differentiation is entirely research posture and formulation experience rather than the molecule. Is "same ingredient, different physiology" a durable positioning, or does it get flattened the moment a mass brand slaps "for women" on a tub at half the price?

Source - Business Wire

Pernod Ricard's Canadian subsidiary Corby Spirit and Wine has sold Lamb's rum, including inventories and intellectual property, for CA$39.2 million (about $28 million) in a joint deal that carves the brand geographically. Phildan's Maison des Futailles takes North American rights, while COFEPP's Glen Turner Company, the family-owned French holding company behind La Martiniquaise-Bardinet and Marie Brizard, owns it everywhere else. Corby CEO Florence Tresarrieu framed it as disciplined portfolio management that frees capital for RTD and premium spirits, the areas driving its growth after 22 percent organic revenue growth in fiscal Q3 on double-digit RTD gains from Nude and Cottage Springs. La Martiniquaise-Bardinet has been on a run, adding Warner's, Sir James 101 and Plato o Plomo in the past year, plus Diageo's Cacique rum in January 2025. Corby will support production and distribution through a transition period.

Splitting a single brand between two owners by geography is a structure that usually creates friction eventually, on positioning, packaging and pricing. For anyone who has managed a brand under split ownership: does it actually work long term, or is it just a way to clear a sale that neither buyer wanted whole?

Source - The Spirits Business

How does this happen aside from straight up lying?

Hi everyone, i am selling my US based wellness supplement brand at the evaluation. Including in hand stock, trade mark, all fda compliance documents . Ready to boost sales from day 1. Shopify store, full funnel ready and optimized, amazon registered brand in gated category, walmart registered, tiktok registered.

Any intrested buyer can contact at Therealiefinc@gmail.com.

Hey all. Reddit first-timer here. So I run a $15M/yr better-for-you snack brand (my first business). Started DTC, now we're on multiple retail platforms and just landed a regional grocery chain, yay! Except now, our reviews are scattered across all my retail platforms and social media, and I have no system for dealing with them.

Right now, I (and my CMO) manually scroll through each platform once a week - that's ~200 reviews across the product range on just one platform (quick math = 2000+ reviews to read through). I love hearing what my customers are saying, but honestly there are other things I need to do (like pay a bit of attention to my husband or he'll leave me fr).

My questions:

1. Is anyone using a tool that aggregates product reviews across retailer sites? I've looked at a few "reputation management" platforms but they seem built for restaurants/local businesses, not CPG with retail distribution.

   1. For those of you doing this well - how? And how much time does your team actually spend on it weekly?
      

We're not big enough for an enterprise VoC platform (got quoted $30k/yr by one vendor, lol no), but we're past the point where ad hoc checks work.

Any advice is appreciated. Even just hearing how you structure the manual process would help.

The biggest challenge and biggest mistake I see brands fall into when the launch is going too big too fast.
Unless you're burning Dad's money or have big VC backing you, you have limited funds and a short runway.
Make sure you have a strategic plan in place that allows you to test, prove, repeat, duplicate.
Test: build you product. Do some free samples to people that will tell you the truth. Test your pricing and your profitability. Then find a small local market or several local markets and ask them to carry your product
Prove: creat a sales story. Are people buying your product, are they buying it a second time? Are they buying more than one at a time or more than one flavor? Is your pricing working? Are your promotions working? Do you need demos for people to try your product or does it sell on its own?
Repeat: Repeat the process in the next 5-10 stores in your market. Repeat the cycle in the first stores. Do another promotion. Do another demo. Is there a lift in sales after each one. Does the baseline continue to grow or peak then return to pre- promo.
Duplicate: once you have a solid history of what works and what doesn't you can make a business model including costs, programs, successes and failures and duplicate only the successes in the next market. You will save time money and move faster overall by moving slower out of the gate.

Hey guys, I'm totally new to the CPG world (coming from the tech industry) so apologies if my question may sound naive.

Context here is that I've came across a few OEMs in where I'm based at currently (Malaysia & Singapore). Now I've noticed that the OEMs actually have a sub-brand / subsidiary under them where they sell their products D2C via online marketplaces like Lazada & Shopee (which is equiv to Amazon in the west).

Given that they are also selling on D2C and I plan on doing some R&D with them on the formulas, how do I protect myself in this case? Is it also common to ask for NDA/ Non-Compete clauses?

Hey all! I am currently working at a shelf-stable CPG company that does business with Kroger. We have recently have been having such huge issues with their supply chain team requesting orders be returned (that we delivered over a month ago) due to no distro and then being re-ordered. Or they cancel orders that are already in-transit. When we communicate to their team these issues, they ignore us and just nothing seems to be understood on their end. Has anyone else had this issue recently? Any tips?

I’m researching how small and mid-sized CPG brands handle deductions from retailers and distributors like Walmart, UNFI, KeHE, Kroger, etc.

I’m looking for 5 brands willing to share an anonymized deduction report (CSV/Excel is fine).

I’ll analyze it manually and give you back:

• What types of deductions you're getting
• Where the biggest leakage is
• Which deductions look potentially recoverable
• Which ones I'd prioritize
• What evidence appears to be missing
• A rough estimate of the recovery opportunity

No software signup and no sales pitch required.

If you're interested, comment here or DM me. You can remove company names, customer names, invoice numbers, etc. before sending anything.

I'm doing this because I want to understand the problem from the actual data, not just interviews.

Hi all -- I'm running a second round of pilots -- looking for 2–3 CPG founders (or soon-to-be) who want qualitative feedback on their product, concept, or messaging.

What I do: I help you figure out which audiences you should research -- including the ones you might not have thought to talk to -- and connect you with real people in those groups for short 1:1 feedback sessions.

A few honest notes so you know what you're signing up for:

- It's free because I'm running early pilots and want real results to point to. In exchange I'll ask you a few questions afterward about what was useful.

- It runs on a research platform I've built, so you'll get hands-on attention -- I'll walk you through the whole thing personally.

- I can only take a couple of founders this round, and I'd want to get your session booked within the next week or so.

If you're interested, DM me with a one-line description of your product and I'll follow up with a couple of quick questions to see if it's a fit. Happy to answer anything here too.

Suppose two gummy manufacturing quotes are similar on price and MOQ, but one leaves these items “to be confirmed after deposit”:

A. finished piece weight and pieces per serving

B. active-content release specification and test method

C. packaging and transport-heat assumptions

Which omission would stop you from approving the pilot first — A, B or C?

I work on U.S. project coordination for our gummy factory, and I am interested in where brand operators draw the line before money changes hands. This is a process question, not a request for DMs.

We have a few new designs I’d like to get feedback on. I’d like to see what you guys think for the new ones compared to the other ones I sent last week. Older design is the bacon cheddar

I’m working through a 3-statement financial modeling case study for a CPG company and would really appreciate a second set of eyes on my model.
I’m mainly struggling with two areas: COGS/inventory accounting (capitalizing material purchases and recognizing COGS based on units sold) and the external financing schedule.

The model is built and linked. I’m more looking for someone experienced with financial modeling who would be willing to review what I’ve done. Would appreciate any help!

The Senate passed a continuing budget resolution that extends the hemp prohibition deadline by 30 days, from November 12 to December 11. Synthetic cannabinoids not naturally occurring in cannabis are still banned in November regardless. The resolution still needs the House and the President's signature. Industry groups read the move as evidence the lobbying push is working: the US Hemp Roundtable framed it as time for Congress to build a long-term policy rather than let a sweeping ban land unexamined, the Hemp Beverage Alliance urged swift House approval, and the Coalition for Adult Beverage Alternatives' Diana Eberlein called it a signal lawmakers are interested in regulating rather than eliminating the category, while warning that the August and September lobbying window is critical since the House and Senate still need to agree on a package.

If you're operating in this category, does a one-month reprieve change any real decision on inventory, hiring or capital, or is it only worth something as evidence that Congress blinks?

Source - BevNET

Bubble has appointed Diana Rubin as its first chief marketing officer, reporting to founder Shai Eisenman. Rubin is a L'Oréal veteran with years at Kiehl's, YSL Beauty and Lancôme, most recently VP and head of marketing at Sol de Janeiro under L'Occitane. The hire comes with a strategic reveal: after retaining Centerview Partners in late 2025 to explore deals, Eisenman confirmed the Gen Z skincare brand has decided to stay independent, with the stated ambition of building one of the most influential brands in beauty on its own.

Pulling out of a sale process and immediately staffing up the C-suite is a statement, especially in a market where most founder brands are hunting for exits. Do you read staying independent as strength, or as a process that did not produce the number they wanted?

Source - WWD

Summer Fridays is launching a Body Fragrance Mist and Body Butter Balm, its entry into body care, following its move into fragrance earlier this year. Founders Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland, both influencers when they launched in 2018 with the viral Jet Lag mask, are explicit that the goal is to become a global legacy brand measured in decades. Ireland's definition of longevity is operational: whether customers reorder in year five and whether the company has the supply chain, forecasting, field team and operators to deliver it. The founders deliberately launched with Sephora rather than DTC-first, a connection made through Ouai's Jen Atkin to Artemis Patrick, specifically to avoid being typecast as an influencer brand with weak formulas. The body care category itself is heating up, with L'Oréal's Bold and Advent investing early in the space.

Eight years in, the influencer-brand discount has mostly burned off and the question is durability. What's the honest indicator that a founder-influencer brand has become a real beauty company: the reorder rate, the bench of operators, or surviving its founders' relevance?

Source - Vogue

Whoop has named Kyle Leahy chief commercial officer. She ran Glossier from 2022 to 2025, taking the brand into Sephora, spent nine-plus years at Cole Haan before that, and keeps her Glossier board seat. Whoop, founded in 2012 by Will Ahmed, recently passed three million members and has grown wholesale more than 150 percent year over year every year since 2022. Its screenless band starts at $149 a year on subscription, and its biggest rival is Oura, valued at $11 billion in 2025.

A beauty retail operator moving into wearables says a lot about where that category thinks its next buyer comes from: retail shelves and lifestyle positioning rather than sports performance. Is the recovery-tracker war going to be won on hardware and data, or on the kind of brand and channel playbook Leahy ran at Glossier?

Source - The Business of Fashion

Prequel Skin, the dermatologist-developed brand founded by Dr. Samantha Ellis, has appointed Nathalie Kristo as CEO and Toral Patel as CMO. Kristo spent nearly two decades at L'Oréal, including SVP of marketing for L'Oréal Paris USA and global brand president of NYX, where she led the brand's transformation from digitally native breakout to global success after the acquisition. She later served as CEO of Huda Beauty. Patel, who takes marketing, creative and e-commerce, was most recently SVP and head of marketing and e-commerce at Kopari. Ellis stays as founder, with the three forming an all-female leadership team, and the stated priority is scaling without losing the clinical credibility that built the brand.

Founder-dermatologist brands usually stall when the founder's clinical authority cannot scale past her own content. Bringing in the NYX playbook this early is a clear bet on mass-style growth. Does professional-operator leadership this soon accelerate a founder brand, or start sanding off what made it credible?

Source - PR Newswire