For years, emerging founder-led brands have struggled to compete against multi-billion-dollar CPG giants that are equipped with massive teams dedicated to human resources, accounting, sales and marketing. Today, however, that dynamic is changing rapidly, thanks to artificial intelligence.
Indeed, at recent ECRM Food & Beverage Sessions in Dallas, several brands I spoke with were already leveraging a variety of AI tools for everything from marketing copy and packaging design, creating mockups of their products on store shelves and even for help in applying for RangeMe Immediate Opportunities.
One brand, Mija Tortilla Factory, even went so far as to develop its own AI platform, tracecorefood, which uses AI agents to provide operational traceability for food manufacturers. (Watch my video interview with Mija Tortilla Factory’s Enzo Lihard).
Also at the Dallas Sessions, Wildflower Insight’s Tia Ellis gave a presentation about how emerging CPG brands can leverage AI tools to level the playing field against the national CPG brands. Ellis has extensive experience as a retail broker and formerly served as the president of US sales for a global CPG brand, and during her talk shared how founders can – by integrating artificial intelligence seamlessly into their workflows – bridge the labor gap, generate high-level retail analysis, and ultimately secure lucrative purchase orders from major retailers.
I sat with Ellis to discuss some takeaways from her presentation. You can watch our full video below, and find all of our videos on the ECRM & RangeMe YouTube channel.
The Harsh Reality of Buyer Psychology
One of the biggest mistakes founders make is misunderstanding their audience when entering a pitch meeting. Many founders spend their time boasting about their product’s features, claiming they have the best sourdough chips on the market. However, Ellis warns that buyers quickly grow bored of hearing founders claim they are the best.
“The most important thing that so many founders don’t realize until it’s too late is that the retail buyer is not most of the time your customer,” says Ellis. “They are somebody who is doing a job, and that job is to choose brands that are going to perform well in their stores.”
Buyers are corporate employees driven by specific metrics, Ellis notes. When they perform their jobs well, they often hit key performance indicators (KPIs) or earn bonuses. Therefore, they are highly motivated to select brands that will win on the shelf, which directly translates to high sales velocity and customers consistently putting the product into their baskets.
“As a founder, your job, your number one priority going into any of these buyer meetings is to help the buyer succeed, help the buyer look good to their boss and help them with their career advancement,” says Ellis.
By reframing the presentation to focus on filling white space on the shelf and advancing the buyer’s category, founders can completely change the tone of the conversation and dramatically increase their chances of winning.
Surviving ‘AI Slop’ and the 80/110 Rule
AI is not a magic bullet, however. While AI offers immense leverage, using it improperly can actually harm a brand’s image. Ellis recalls an interview she conducted with David Rogier, the Founder of Masterclass, who noted that while AI can do 80% of the work, individuals today need to be operating at 110% to truly stand out.
The danger for founders lies in what Ellis calls “AI slop.” This refers to the lazy, copy-and-paste generation of content that makes every brand sound identical. For example, on platforms like LinkedIn, users can spot AI-generated posts by the overuse of certain stylistic choices, such as excessive em-dashes or highly predictable phrasing. (Unfortunately, I have always been a huge fan of using em-dashes in my writing – now AI has ruined it for me!)
“It’s not that people are lacking with using AI, it is that they are using it and then stopping,” Ellis points out. “If you just use AI and it’s just copy and paste, it’s not going to be impressive. It’s not even going to be good because everybody is doing it.”
To combat this, founders must utilize AI for the heavy lifting – such as research, analysis, and drafting initial competitive edge slides – (there are those em-dashes again) but they must also manually inject their own personality, industry mastery, and human connection into the final product (as I just did). Ellis even admits to intentionally adding minor imperfections, such as altering punctuation, to her AI-assisted writing to ensure it retains an authentic, human feel.
Tia’s Four-Step AI Implementation Framework
To help overwhelmed founders integrate these tools, Ellis has developed a highly effective four-step implementation framework designed to reclaim lost time.
- Identify the Time Drain: Inspired by entrepreneur coach Dan Martel, Ellis recommends conducting a rigorous time audit. Over the course of two or three workdays, founders should write down every single task they perform in 15-minute or 30-minute intervals. This helps identify whether time is being wasted on low-value tasks like repetitive emails or excessive context switching.
- Document the Work: Once the drain is found, founders need to thoroughly analyze and write down the exact nature of these tasks. It is crucial to separate the low-value $10 tasks from the high-value $1,000 tasks.
- Hand Over the Tasks: Founders must recognize which tasks do not require their specific expertise and actively choose to delegate them.
- Create Processes and Agents: The final step involves outsourcing these delegated tasks by creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) or deploying custom AI agents to handle the workload automatically.
By following this framework, founders are freed up to focus on revenue-generating activities that move the needle for their business. Utilizing AI for administrative busywork, for example, allows a single individual to accomplish the output of what would have taken several people just a couple of years ago.
Revolutionizing Retail Analysis with Specialized AI Agents
Perhaps the most exciting development for CPG founders is the creation of specialized AI agents built specifically for retail strategy. Ellis recently partnered with Alibaba to launch an AI agent through its platform, Accio Work. This tool is custom-designed to help founders understand complex retail analysis.
Ellis provided a practical example of how the Accio agent transforms this process. If a founder is trying to pitch a new popsicle brand to Florida grocery chain Publix, they can plug their scenario directly into the agent. They can ask the AI to identify the existing players on the shelf, analyze price points, and discover the exact white space their product can fill.
Crucially, this agent performs a function that sets it apart from basic data pulls: it analyzes private label. “A lot of times when you’re doing the research, they’re only analyzing branded products,” Ellis says. “It’s not pulling private brands like Kirkland or Great Value. When you are trying to understand if you can get on a retail shelf, you have to understand the entire picture.”
Furthermore, the agent acts as a strategic partner. It might analyze the Florida market and suggest that the founder add a hydration element or vitamins to their popsicles to appeal to kids playing outside in the sun, thereby differentiating the product from the five other brands already on the shelf. Founders can even set up these agents to conduct research overnight, waking up to fully generated reports every single morning.
The End of Excuses: Leveling Access to Labor
The advent of AI represents a historical shift in business equality. Ellis points out that while the widespread adoption of the internet leveled the playing field regarding access to education and information, artificial intelligence is now leveling the playing field for labor.
“When you have a solopreneur or you have somebody that is building something by themselves, they don’t have a team of a hundred or a thousand,” says Ellis. “AI is making it so that you don’t even have to have that anymore.”
Because of this unprecedented access to automated labor, Ellis believes a harsh truth has emerged for modern founders. Five to fifteen years ago, a lack of resources was a valid barrier to entry. Today, failing to compete simply indicates a lack of effort in building or utilizing AI agents. “I don’t think it’s an excuse anymore to say, ‘Well, I don’t know how to do that, or I don’t have a team, or I’m not as big as the large billion dollar player in my category,'” she says.
For founders feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, or Accio, Ellis offers simple advice: just start. She recommends opening a platform, introducing yourself and your company, and simply asking the AI to explain things to you as if you were a five-year-old. You can even ask the AI to generate a 30-day learning plan to help you become proficient step-by-step.
The Irreplaceable Value of Human Connection
Despite the immense power of artificial intelligence, Ellis points out that it does have a limitation: it cannot build authentic human relationships.
While AI can write flawless emails, pull complex market data, and generate brilliant design mockups, it cannot shake a buyer’s hand at a trade show or ECRM Session. It cannot follow up with genuine human warmth or navigate the nuanced social dynamics of a networking event. Retail buyers are human beings, and at the end of the day, people prefer to do business with people they genuinely like. “Relationships with retail buyers, that’s the one thing where AI is not going to be able to do, or it’s going to be the very last thing that AI gets done,” Ellis notes.
Ultimately, AI should be viewed as a powerful partner, not a total replacement for the founder. By offloading the tedious, time-consuming grunt work to artificial intelligence, CPG founders can reclaim their schedules. They can dedicate their energy to the tasks that truly matter – refining their pitch strategy, understanding their buyers, and fostering the invaluable, face-to-face community connections that will ultimately secure their place on the retail shelf.
Executive Summary
- The retail buyer is not the end consumer: Buyers are motivated by corporate KPIs and bonuses. A founder’s priority should be helping the buyer succeed and look good to their boss.
- Avoid “AI Slop”: Artificial intelligence can handle 80% of the work, but founders must put in 110% of the effort to stand out. Simply copying and pasting AI-generated content is no longer impressive.
- Implement a Four-Step AI Framework: Founders should conduct a time audit to find tasks draining their schedule. Then, they must document these tasks. Next, they should hand over those repetitive tasks. Finally, they need to create processes and AI agents to outsource the work entirely.
- Leverage specialized AI agents for retail analysis: New AI tools can analyze specific retail shelves and competitive sets, including private label brands. This allows founders to present highly educated pitches to retail buyers.
- AI levels the playing field for labor: While the internet democratized access to education, AI democratizes access to labor. Solopreneurs can now accomplish the workload of a massive corporate team.
- Human relationships are irreplaceable: AI can handle tedious administrative work, but it cannot replicate genuine human connection. Founders must use the time saved by AI to focus on networking and relationship building.