Decide the business before you design the brand
I help CPG founders lock direction before it gets packaged and paid for.
What we fix
In CPG, ambiguous decisions don’t stay abstract.
They show up as packaging that says too much. Retail buyers who don’t know where to place you. Agencies exploring directions that should have been ruled out. New SKUs that stretch the story instead of strengthening it.
Most brand work stalls because the hard calls were never made.
Are you premium or accessible? Built for velocity or depth? Narrowing the line or expanding it? Who are you for right now, and who are you not for?
If those answers shift under pressure, execution drifts with them.
And once it’s packed and printed, it’s expensive to redo.
How it works
Find the fracture
We identify the decisions splitting your focus.
Where the audience is too broad. Where the tier signal is unclear. Where claims stretch beyond what you can own. Where SKU growth is masking positioning drift.
Not surface symptoms. The decisions creating downstream confusion.
Lock the direction
We define the committed position your brand will build from.
Who you serve now. What you will not chase. How you show up in buyer conversations. What your packaging must make obvious without explanation.
This becomes the fixed point your creative partners build from. No moving brief. No late pivots because something “doesn't feel right.”
Build the brief
We turn those decisions into a clear working brief for designers, writers, and agencies.
What must stay fixed.
What has room to flex.
What is off the table.
Creative work moves faster because it’s solving the right problem.
What shifts downstream
You’re no longer guessing.
The core decisions are made. The direction is written down. The brief is fixed.
Your packaging brief stops being a mood board and starts being a mandate. Designers know what the pack must communicate and what it must not. Revisions drop because the target stopped moving.
Retail buyer conversations get shorter and sharper. You walk in knowing your category story. You stop pitching and start placing.
Agency engagements stop opening with discovery. You arrive with a position, an audience, and constraints. They execute. You approve. It lands faster and costs less.
Your team stops reopening the same debates. Who are we for. What do we charge. Do we launch this SKU or kill it. Those questions had no answer because the foundation under them was missing. Now it's not.
Growth stops multiplying doubt.
Every new market, retailer, or product line is driven by a decision you already made.
How to get started
If you’re preparing for a packaging redesign, retail expansion, new SKU launch, or agency engagement, this is the moment to pressure-test your direction.
We’ll spend 20 minutes identifying the decisions shaping your brand right now.
If there’s no real issue, I’ll say so.
If there is, you’ll see exactly where it’s costing you—before it gets packaged and paid for.
No prep required. No pitch decks. No follow-up spam.