the Joshua Schall Audio Experience

Is the Glanbia Performance Nutrition brand portfolio still the gold standard in the sports, active, and lifestyle nutrition market? Glanbia Performance Nutrition 2021 Q3 growth was reported net revenues growth of 23.2% YoY on a constant currency basis from both strong pricing and volume increases (at 18% and 4.4% respectively). They also benefitted 0.8% from last quarter's acquisition of LevlUp, a...

Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) has reached another inflection point in its business, one which positions the energy drink brand for exponential growth and market share gains. This is above and beyond the recent brand popularity spike that has seen year-over-year quarterly revenue growth expand aggressively. In the last two years, Celsius Holdings have grown from two-tenths of a percent to now ama...

Did the MyProtein "gain train" slow to a halt or was The Hut Group (THG) owned sports nutrition brand just slowing down briefly to pick up more supporters at the station? THG expects its THG Nutrition segment to sustain a 20% YoY growth rate in 2021, but the latest quarter only showed MyProtein up 13.4%. I believe this is just a short-term slowing, as the solid performance this quarter was against...

I'll utilize the 2021 Q3 Franchise Group (NASDAQ: FRG) earnings report and conference call, along with any relevant publicly disclosed news to provide you with segment-level details on the recent business performance for The Vitamin Shoppe. That will include a range of insights and surrounding how The Vitamin Shoppe is navigating the current supply chain and economic challenges, update on franchis...

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the supplement industry supply chain situation will get much worse, over at least the next 6 months, before it gets better. I know that’s a bit of an ominous introductory statement, but you don’t consume my content to be fed bullshit positive fake news. It’s been about four to five months since I gave a proper update on the supplement industry supply cha...

The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ: SMPL) just became an official member of an elite club of active nutrition CPG brand portfolios. So, which club is that exactly? With the company just finishing up its 2021 fiscal year, The Simply Good Foods Company reached $1 billion combined in total net sales between its Atkins Nutritionals and Quest Nutrition brands. In Q4 of fiscal 2021, both brands had s...

As the post-pandemic active nutrition industry starts to normalize, it’s time to discuss what benefitted, rebounded, paused, and was damaged by the “COVID-19 Effect." It's irrefutable that the “COVID-19 Effect” changed almost everything about the active nutrition industry and most professionals are naturally a bit lost. The market is evolving quickly, as consumer interest in the space has never be...

Will market leadership in the $2 billion global coconut and plant waters category be enough to push The Vita Coco Company towards stock market gains? At the end of September, The Vita Coco Company (aka the portfolio previously known as All Market, Inc.) filed its S-1 document with the SEC showing its intention of selling shares through an initial public offering and becoming a publicly-traded comp...

I’ve always believed that Hip Hop and CPG entrepreneurship are linked together. Firstly, Hip Hop is seen as counterculture to other music genres, which is similar to CPG entrepreneurship in today’s “technology” filled founder landscape. Additionally, Hip Hop and CPG entrepreneurship are both centered around salesmanship and the ability to hustle. Moreover, Hip Hop music is rooted in remixing (or s...

What does a series of popular children’s books from the 1980s and 1990s have to do with today’s frictionless omnichannel retailing environment? If you’ve consumed enough of my content by now, you know I love to find historical linkages or possible root causes that can explain current trends in consumer behavior. One such major consumer behavior trend, that was strengthened by the “COVID-19 Effect”...

Keurig Dr Pepper (NASDAQ: KDP) expects to have $20 billion in M&A capacity over the next three years, so I thought it would be fun to put on my CEO hat and go shopping! In January 2018, KDP was created when Keurig Green Mountain (owned by JAB Holding Company) agreed to combine with Dr Pepper Snapple Group. At the time of the deal, it was said to “unlock the opportunity to combine hot and cold...

Something interesting is happening in the grocery retail industry...there are actually new retailers emerging and it should galvanize every CPG brand. While new grocery retail concepts pop up all the time around the country, more times than not, those grocers stay local/regional and have a non-material impact over the entire CPG industry. The last "new" grocery retail chain created that made a mat...

Have you noticed more functional food and beverage, and supplement brands are advertising on television lately? So, why have so many functional CPG brands jumped into the “grand daddy of them all” advertising format? Well, most of them technically haven’t if we are only categorizing the upper echelon of advertising formats as traditional linear TV only. Most of these supplement and active nutritio...

Did you know that the “world's first internet-controlled fitness equipment" was launched more than two decades ago? iFIT Health & Fitness pioneered the technology that drives the trending connected fitness space today. When the pandemic closed gyms across the country last year, millions of Americans purchased billions of new connected fitness equipment pieces and drove headfirst into online ho...

Jeff Bezos famously said “your margin is my opportunity” but is there a new opportunistic business model in the CPG industry that’s looking to steal his shine? You’ve heard of B2B, B2C, and C2C, but what about C2M? C2M stands for consumer-to-manufacturer, and it should be obvious that this business model removes various intermediaries (or middlemen) enabling consumers to buy higher quality product...

Will the supplement industry see a resurgence of CrossFit targeted supplement brands, as the fitness regimen evolves under new ownership? Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat...sports nutrition products for bodybuilders and sports nutrition products for CrossFitters are essentially the same thing, the main difference comes down to marketing strategy. With the viability of CrossFit marke...

Pokémon Go was one of the biggest viral phenomena of the latter part of last decade, but maybe it’s biggest positive effect on society was overlooked. Five years ago, something magical happened to the millions of Americans. They took incremental steps to improve their health, while also chasing Charizards and Squirtles (whatever the heck those things are). In 2016, Pokémon Go had 233 million globa...

Is this the perfect business environment for MyProtein to accelerate its growing share of the global supplement market? I believe the answer is yes. With global supply chain constraints, inflationary cost pressures, and labor shortages, the current business environment is arguably one of the toughest in several decades. While I’m sure THG (like other competitors) would love an easier situation, it...

We live in a non-branded search world, but what does that mean for key active and sports nutrition categories? It’s plain and simple, the rise of non-branded search has disrupted the sports and active nutrition industry. So, what’s going on? I attribute it to a combination of (1) the low barriers of entry causing brand/product proliferation (2) strength of marketplaces like Amazon needing more sel...

The “COVID-19 Effect” caused a unique shift in the economic landscape, forcing many of today’s CPG brands to pivot. While those lessons will eventually be written about, I wanted to share a list of the greatest CPG industry brand pivots of all-time. Sometimes a CPG entrepreneur has a terrible first idea that doesn’t hit the market. Other times they think they have the perfect product and it flops....

Have you heard that the trending hard seltzer category is now dying? Everyone that’s been around the block a few times in the alcoholic beverage industry knows that category is notoriously trendy. The problem is that today’s six-second attention span internet gurus and CPG industry pundits seem to write off trends faster than a college kid can shotgun a White Claw. After Molson Coors announced the...

WTF have I been up to lately in my personal life? Over the last year, things have changed a lot and it's long overdue that I provide an update. I guess I’ll start at the trigger of this all, the “COVID-19 Effect.” Everything lately seems to trace back to this event that impacted everyone and everything in different ways. For myself and my then girlfriend and now fiancé Leena, one of the areas that...

If you spend enough time in the functional CPG niche communities across the internet, you’ll likely hear members saying, “there’s no innovation anymore in the space.” I disagree. I think there’s actually an oversupply of innovation. Consumers don’t know how to fit all of it into their lives. Whose fault is that though? It’s surely not the consumers. The problem is that brands are using an outdated...

The Coca-Cola Company recently did something frankly a bit odd, but could that strange product development be signaling a future strategic shift? Like its "captain obvious" marketing slogan from 1941 “Coca-Cola is Coke”, the the third largest (in terms of revenue) beverage company in the world (at least in the U.S. market) is singularly focused on packaged and foodservice beverages. The Coca-Cola...

Just when MusclePharm had profitability on its mind, the sports nutrition company gets slammed back down to face its historical reality. In this episode, I'll provide you with various insights pulled from the MusclePharm (OTCMKTS: MSLP) 2021Q2 earnings report, earnings call, and additional publicly-disclosed information released by the company. They will collectively be used to update you on the s...