12 Months /
OVERVIEW
The board of a new national retailer asked Peter and the current partners at Rapid (employed by the company then) to create a line of personal care products that would provide high-efficacy relief for pain and sleep. We also were charged with creating distribution through multiple channels, including direct-to-customer, retail, wholesale, and licensing.
In only six months, we created a 200 SKU line of topical and edible products across three brands that utilized soothing botanicals, CBD, CBN, and Melatonin. We launched direct-to-consumer, then opened retail locations in 200 of the top malls in the United States in another six months, partnering with developers that included Simon Property Group and Westfield.
We achieved $11 million in revenue at a 70% + margin in the first full quarter of operation (Q4 2019), making us the world’s largest CBD brand.
STORY
Step 1 – We conducted extensive travels, accumulating samples of every product in the category. We built a competitive library where we noted ingredients, packaging, price, formulation, smell, taste, and feel. Our team included former members of a multibillion-dollar market leader in the personal care segment, with product development, merchandising, manufacturing, and marketing skills. We saw white space for products with a high concentration of critical ingredients, fair prices, a familiar feel, fragrance, and taste.
Step 2 –We set out with a target line list of products, ran test batches, and then collected consumer feedback on efficacy, feel, fragrance, and taste. We also met with large national retailers, from apparel to groceries to pharmacies, to gauge their interest in carrying our products and registering their wants, needs, and concerns.
Initially, we included soaps and shampoos because these represented most of the personal care space revenues. Still, we quickly settled in on end-use formulations addressing pain and sleep relief.
We quickly moved from pilot lab quantities to full-scale production and implemented best compliance practices under FDA and EU manufacturing standards.
Step 3 –Measure everything. We built actionable reporting and KPIs by leveraging decades of experience analyzing large, complex businesses. Leveraging some of the best minds in specialty retail, we used weekly merchandise and promotional calendar meetings to read and react to customer demand signals, adjusting the forward-on order so that by the time we reached 200 locations, we had shuffled the assortment to match sales demand.
RESULTS
We achieved a $44 million annual revenue run rate at a 70% + margin in the first full quarter following the launch. Customer feedback was extremely positive. The packaging was clean, prices affordable, the fragrance and feel were pleasant, in line with the favorite mass beauty brands, and we were bringing new formulations to the marketplace that were previously only found in alternative shops, with inconsistent formulations and high prices.