I often tell CPG founders participating in their first ECRM Session that when their product ends up on a retailer’s shelf, it is often different from what they originally pitched during their first buyer meeting. The buyer may want a different packaging design, a tweak in the ingredients, or different pricing options. This is normal, and part of the journey to the shelf.
In fact, brand owners should want this feedback. They should treasure it. During EVERY buyer meeting they should seek out constructive criticism on what they can improve. Nobody is perfect. The buyers are the experts on their shoppers and their markets, and the insights they can share are gold.
Brands that solicit this feedback and act on it tend to do very well.
Indeed, the most valuable asset a CPG founder can possess is not just a great idea, but a profound willingness to listen to retail buyers and dynamically reshape their packaging, pricing, and product development to accommodate them. Here are a few examples of brands that have done this, from interviews I’ve done over the past year.
Bessie’s Best Lactation Cookies: The Walmart Reality Check
For Brittany Hausmann and the team at Bessie’s Best Lactation Cookies, the product’s quality was never in question. As a small company, they operated under a simple, confident philosophy: if they could just get a cookie into a buyer’s mouth, they could get it onto the shelf. Their taste profile was their ultimate differentiator.
However, when they received the coveted invitation to Walmart’s Open Call from their RangeMe submission, they hit an unexpected roadblock. While the Walmart buyers loved the taste of the samples, they delivered a blunt piece of feedback: “We don’t love the packaging.” Up until that moment, the brand’s packaging had simply been “what it was” for a very long time. It was a wake-up call that product excellence alone isn’t enough if the visual presentation lags behind.
Instead of pushing back, Bessie’s Best chose to be completely adaptable:
- Collaborative Iteration: They took Walmart’s initial recommendations on what to include on the label and began making adjustments.
- Mock-up Reviews: As they progressed through the selection process, they presented new packaging mock-ups to the buyers, who provided ongoing support and structural feedback.
- The Final Reward: By actively collaborating with the retail giant, Bessie’s Best finalized a vibrant, color-popping package design that earned them placement in Walmart stores.
The ultimate validation of this pivot came shortly after during an ECRM Baby & Infant Session, where the newly minted packaging received a wave of positive feedback from a completely new room of retail buyers.
Eco Bandage: Balancing Ideals with Shelf Realities
For Kiowa Kavovit, the creation of Eco Bandage was a decade-long labor of love. She had meticulously developed a flexible polymer liquid bandage with a unique cellulose base and built-in antiseptic — a highly functional FDA-approved alternative to traditional liquid bandages that crack or dig into the skin.
When Eco Bandage first prepared for the market, the brand was fiercely committed to a “zero waste” ideology. They envisioned selling the product purely in a sleek glass bottle with no secondary packaging whatsoever. It was an admirable, eco-friendly vision. However, when Kavovit stepped into her first ECRM Health Care session and began pitching major retailers, buyers immediately raised two massive red flags that the brand hadn’t anticipated: theft and shelf presence.
Without an outer box, a small glass bottle of premium liquid bandage was far too easy for shoplifters to slip into a pocket. Furthermore, the bottle alone lacked what buyers refer to as billboard space. In a crowded first-aid aisle, consumers need to understand what a product does in a split second. A tiny bottle offered zero room to educate the passing shopper.
Taking this buyer’s input to heart, Kavovit didn’t abandon her sustainability ethos; instead, she innovated around it. Eco Bandage pivoted to a sustainable paperboard box that provided the required billboard space to shout its value proposition while mitigating theft. In doing so, they also stumbled onto a happy accident based on buyer preferences – a two-bottle “value pack” option. This gave the brand a larger physical footprint on the shelf while actually using less packaging material per bottle.
By actively pivoting based on buyer realities, Eco Bandage didn’t just survive the feedback loop; they secured a Drug Store News Buyers Choice Award, gained placement with Meijer and Sobeys, and ultimately landed a coveted Walmart Golden Ticket, ultimately getting into thousands of stores..
SneakERASERS: Creating a Knockoff of Its Own Product
If Eco Bandage is a masterclass in packaging adaptation, Kevin Consolo and the team at SneakERASERS provide a legendary example of adapting product development and pricing architecture.
SneakERASERS entered the market with a patented, pocket-sized pre-moistened sponge designed to instantly clean the white mid-soles of casual footwear. Originally, their flagship products were packaged and assembled in America, carrying a retail price point between $4 and $10.
During an ECRM Impulse, Front-End & Checklane Session, Consolo noticed a national discount retail chain on his schedule. His first instinct was to cancel the meeting, assuming his premium price point was a fundamental mismatch for their bargain-hunting shoppers. He chose to take the meeting anyway – a decision that changed the trajectory of his company.
The buyer loved the product’s effectiveness but was blunt: the current margins and price point would never work for their stores. They asked if SneakERASERS could engineer a solution specifically for their demographic. Consolo didn’t give up. He caught a flight overseas, sourced alternative manufacturing partners, altered the physical composition of the product, and adjusted the margins to meet the retailer’s strict constraints.
The result was a custom-tailored line called Shoe Eraser. When the retailer tested it, it sold out entirely within two weeks — an unprecedented velocity that led to a multimillion-dollar hit and propelled the brand to the No. 2 spot for shoe cleaners nationally. Indeed, as Consolo told Kevin O’Leary on Shark Tank, they successfully created a knockoff of their own product.
This single piece of buyer feedback unlocked an entirely new operational mindset for SneakERASERS. They realized retail buyers were an unparalleled source of R&D insight. When another buyer asked if the technology could clean cars, they developed AutoERASERS. Insights from other categories birthed GolfERASERS, PurseWIPES, and SneakERASERS Soak laundry detergent.
Most recently, their agility allowed them to secure a massive licensing partnership with the Rugged Shark footwear line at Walmart, creating custom dorsal-fin-shaped cleaning sponges for a Shark Week promotion. By treating a buyer’s constraint as an invitation to innovate, Sneakerasers transformed digital sourcing briefs and RangeMe Immediate Opportunities into thousands of retail placements.
Osia: Failing Fast and Iterating from the Trunk
For Isabella Hoag and Gabriel Walsh, the founders of the beverage brand Osia, feedback didn’t just come from high-stakes corporate boardrooms; it came directly from the pavement. Osia, which makes clean, lightly functional sparkling beverages utilizing real fruit juice and botanical tinctures like rhodiola and ginseng to elevate moods, began organically in a Denver kitchen.
Before scaling nationally, Hoag and Walsh spent months driving around Colorado with cases of Osia in the trunk of their car. They walked straight into independent grocers, local boutiques, and regional beverage retailers, pitching managers and buyers face-to-face.
This hyper-local, boots-on-the-ground distribution model served as a real-time testing laboratory. Direct feedback from retail managers allowed the duo to “fail fast and iterate quickly.” When buyers noted that pressure-sensitive labels looked too amateurish for a premium beverage or failed to withstand ice-bucket condensation, they upgraded to beautifully printed aluminum cans. When local merchants explained how consumers bought functional beverages in packs rather than singles, they carefully engineered sleek, understated but elegant four-pack boxes designed to pop on a crowded shelf.
By the time Osia transitioned from their car trunk to a digitized national strategy on RangeMe, their packaging and product presentation had been completely forged in the fires of real-world buyer critique. Because their digital storefront perfectly reflected a polished, retail-ready brand that had already answered every buyer objection, they swiftly captured the attention of Total Wine & More and secured a KeHE Golden Ticket win.
The Golden Thread of Retail Success
These insights highlight a vital truth for any emerging brand: retail buyers are not gatekeepers to be defeated; they are collaborative partners to be heard.
Whether it is adjusting secondary packaging to fight theft like Eco Bandage, re-engineering a product’s composition to hit a critical price point like SneakERASERS, modifying labels based on expert design notes like Bessie’s Best , or refining materials to survive the store fridge like Osia, the brands that dominate the shelves are those that treat feedback as a gift.
The ultimate metric of a CPG brand’s maturity isn’t how flawless its initial launch is, but how beautifully it listens, adapts, and evolves to meet the market where it actually stands.