Starting a food & beverage company isn’t so hard. Then you get to Day 2.
We get it, because we’ve been there. Literally hairnet-in-every-pocket, 50 mile drive to pick up one ingredient, answer every Karen email with kindness: been there. We are entrepreneurs at heart who are turning our love of the industry into hands-on hustle for our CPG community.
Aligning to your brand’s North Star, we build a strategic roadmap for innovation that aligns a scalable, well-positioned product with clear, defensible and engaging messaging that resonates with your target customer.
Let’s turn your creative vision into a crave-worthy thing.
Impact
Storytelling
for
Visionary Brands
You make something awesome. But before we can even show that the proof is in the pudding, how do we get anyone to buy the pudding? Outside of a live demo opportunity or a sampling event, CPG products cannot and do not “sell themselves.”
They way you connect with consumers through packaging communication and visual expression help validate your product’s market positioning, spark interest against competitors and drive sales.
The continuous work as a sustainable brand is to understand our consumer from the inside out, to resonate with their needs, and present an irresistible solution that delivers on its promise and delights the palate.
For CPG brands, packaging is the primary platform and the most essential tool to communicate our brand vision, our values, our mission and our product experience promise. Starting our strategic work with a comprehensive packaging audit often unearths key points of confusion, ambiguity, cliche and non compliance that point back towards a North Star that needs to be wrangled in or polished. Packaging can also help us identify magical and differentiable strengths about your brand expression or your product philosophy that deserve to be amplified. Let’s give your voice the power to cut through the noise.
Universal Brand Strategy
Brand & Product Positioning
Brand Vision & Mission
Brand Voice & Vocabulary
On-pack Communication Strategy, Information Hierarchy & Impact Messaging
On-pack Romance Copy for Product Lines, Individual SKUs or Flavor and Functionality Highlights
Content Mapping: Creating the Spoken and Visual Universe for collateral, press releases, marketing & media
Define target consumer, competitive landscape & market opportunity.
Establish product positioning aligned with brand vision
Identify qualified claims, core differentiators & value proposition
Benchtop Formulation Assessment: new concept or cottage industry transition
Better-For-You Re-formulation: keto, paleo, vegan, GF, low sugar, etc.
Flavor Portfolio: develop uniquely memorable, on-trend, on-brand profiles
Communication: assess on-pack messaging for clarity, consistency & impact.
Construction: boost shelf life, user experience, sustainability, channel strategy & margins.
Compliance Audit: Label review for FDA & licensed third-party regulations
Co-packer Outreach Strategy: Assist in reviewing co-packer landscape and identify co-packers aligned with your growth goals for facility certifications, capabilities, capacity & line time.
Process Audit: Flag existing or anticipated production issues & develop game plan to address or troubleshoot
Raw Materials Specification Database
Supply Chain Build Out: Assist in vetting raw materials vendors for scalability and alignment with product philosophy, including making introductions to wholesale vendor network
Line Trial Prep: Participate in Co-packer communication in preparation for pilot trial at manufacturing facility
On-Site Pilot Management: ensure QA/QC & formulation standards are maintained, and record anomalies for future improvement. Troubleshoot process issues with co-packer team as representative of your brand.
"Working on product innovation with the Sherpa team has been a pleasure. Product innovation can be a challenge, and we knew that we wanted to work with a group of people that would feel like a natural extension of our own tight-knit team. From identifying the market opportunity for true innovation, sourcing the best co-packers and ingredients to crafting unique marketing messages, they were quick to problem-solve and effective with strategizing throughout the entire process. They also brought a unique brand of excitement and passion to their work that is evident in the final product. We are thankful and recommend them to brands looking for innovation!"
- Rebecca Remley and Briana Lawrence, The CEO and Director of Marketing for Wedderspoon.