Ramping Your Brand: How to Ride the Killer CPG Growth Curve

In this book, I outline a 4-Part approach to thinking smarter about growth as a CPG entrepreneur. It is based on years of anthropological research into how and why consumers pay for premium-priced CPG items and intensive 4P pattern analysis among an elite club of premium CPG brands that all reached $100M+ in less than a decade.

Part 1. Designing to Command a Premium This is where many founders fail without realizing it. There is a cultural logic behind premium products that grow extremely fast. You should learn it.

Part 2. Managing A Small Experiment Don't hit the gas too early. Successful CPG startups manage a rolling, iterative experiment until key KPIs appear. You should learn this art.

Part 3. Fine Tuning the Conversion Playbook Steady velocity growth is essential to ramping your brand.Your team needs to learn the art of sustaining it in key geographies, so that you don't have to buy premature distribution to obtain growth.

Part 4. Accelerating to Scale: There are three best practices in acceleration. Two of them are counter-intuitive to CPG veterans, not experts in the ramping of premium CPG businesses. You need to learn how to deploy them.

Dr. Richardson is the founder of Premium Growth Solutions, a strategic planning consultancy for emerging consumer packaged goods brands. As a professionally trained cultural anthropologist turned business strategist, he has helped over 150 CPG brands with their strategic planning, including: Dude Wipes, Once Upon a Farm, Dr. Squatch Soap, Trü Frü, Earth Breeze, Dr. Bronner's, Happy Egg, Made Good and many others. James also hosts his own business podcast -Startup Confidential -on YouTube, Apple, Spotify and most major podcast platforms. And he writes a Substack publication on contemporary social issues - Homo Imaginari - every week. He lives in sunny Tucson, AZ with his family and dogs.