The Craftory Secret to a Successful Exit
How to achieve over five times growth in three and a half years
This week we exited Edgard and Cooper to General Mills, and it’s a major deal for all parties involved. To give you some measure of scale: Last year (2023) Edgard and Cooper’s estimated retail sales were in excess of €100M. This represents over five times growth during the three and a half years they were part of the Craftory portfolio.
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Recipes for challenger success in challenging times
How to keep partying like it’s 2019
Ah, the halcyon days of the twilight twenty-tens, when consumers cared about cause, iOS allowed tracking without opt-in, money was cheap, and CPG incumbents were clueless.
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The trap of “status quo risk” vs. “change risk”
When staying put is the most dangerous thing you can do
Human nature is to fear risk. We abhor it. Almost as much as we loathe change. In an evolutionary ideal world, homo sapiens finds contentment in going about our merry business the same way, day after day, safe in the knowledge that all is well with the way things are.
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Of rates of change, and letting go
How founders can lead best during their ventures’ tricky teenage years
Parenting, it is often said, is a thankless task. Children are born as the fruit of effervescent optimism, but the daily grind of changing diapers, sleepless nights, strained marital relations, and adolescent moodiness is often enough to make the very best of us forget why we produced the little terrors to begin with.
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Love is in the actions you take for someone other than you, not in the big speeches …
Laura’s field notes from this year’s B For Good Leaders Summit
The B Good Summit from another perspective, that of Laura Tran Investor and Craft Partner for ESG. How did our in-house expert feel about the 2023 summit?
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FIELD NOTES FROM THE B FOR GOOD LEADERS SUMMIT 2023
JP’s reflections on this year’s B For Good Leaders Summit, Beurs van Berlage, May 10/11/12 Amsterdam 2023.
Finding the actionable middle ground (without giggling at dream state doomers, or throwing sharp objects at dead end bankers).
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Why wasting a ton of money is the only way to build a challenger brand for the ages
Ernesto explores the economics and strategies of brand building.
Is it time to embrace the slow build of real brand power and ease up on the crack cocaine of performance marketing?
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Why looking out the window with their feet up is the best thing challenger CEOs can do
The consequential difference between busy work and formative work
Inherent in many founders' preference for action over reflection lies a widespread misunderstanding of how businesses grow, and the crucial role played by the CEO in the enablement thereof.
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Distribution into 6,000 Wal-Marts? Just say no.
Why succumbing to retail cornucopia is often the ultimate own-goal
In the halcyon days of my confident youth, I got to enjoy - first-hand - the intoxicating power of the shelf. As a director at Tesco (then the world’s third-largest retailer), I witnessed the streams of clammy-palmed growers, producers and account executives coming to tender deference and offerings before their category buyer chieftains.
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The Deceptive Attractiveness of “Non-Consumer-Noticeables”
Shining a light on the slippery slope challenger brands know not to go down.
Beware the attractiveness of corners cut, even if everyone else seems to be cutting away with carefree abandon.
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Beware... the Ring of Fire
How not to build your challenger business
The tell-tale signs of a digital challenger brand in trouble are usually unmistakable: sales growth is triple-digit-stellar, margins are high, ROIs are dizzyingly positive – and more often than not the business can boast of delivering all this while remaining just about profitable, too. Conventionally this might be judged a spectacular report card, prompting investors to queue around the block. However peer one level deeper, and chances are the Lookalike Devil may have been doing his ugly worst.
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The Packaging Pickle
Why physical and digital retail shelves demand fundamentally different brand executions
Just how to stand out amongst the 40,000 products stocked by the average supermarket is a problem that is well understood - if not consistently well addressed - by the design conjurers of Big Brands the world over… The woe for insurgent challenger brands is that most of the design rules that make packaged brands win on the physical shelves of Wal-Mart achieve the opposite on the digital shelves of D2C ecommerce.
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Corporate Venture Capital - Deathtraps exposed.
Taking corporate money is a perfect way to limit your valuation and exit options …
The third in our series of short films for challenger entrepreneurs: A candid take on the corporate money death traps every rebel entrepreneur should know.
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Growth Death Traps - Finding The Right Skills
This is a film for successful cause-minded entrepreneurs who want more than just capital.
The second in our series of short films for challenger entrepreneurs: How trad investors can BS you with all kinds of mentoring promises, and how The Craftory is designed to be different.
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VC Money - Death Traps Exposed
Avoid toxic VC and find the right investment partner for your challenger business.
The first in a series of short films for cause-driven entrepreneurs, here’s our candid take on the risks traditional venture capital presents to ambitions challenger brands.
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Price. Boldly.
Why the future lies in saying goodbye to discounts and hello to charging unapologetically.
Mankind’s nature is both conservative and incrementalist. We fear the consequence of change, and we venture out of our comfort zone with endearing timidity, one small step at a time. We might admire the boldness of “damn the torpedoes” trailblazers – but, by definition, that admiration is projected from the angle of our own evolutionary cautiousness, and instinctive preference for staying with the pack.
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Partying with Mephistopheles
Why no D2C challenger brand can ignore Amazon
In Goethe’s 1808 magnum opus, “Faust – A Tragedy”, the eponymous hero strikes a pact with the devil to show him the wonders of the world, in return for selling his soul. Fast-forward 211 years and countless tortured German schoolchildren later, and the same Faustian bargain is one faced by every righteous modern challenger brand: to strike a pact with Amazon, or not?
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Zippy, Lithe and Disposable
Why turning new product development on its head is the challenger way
Back in the inebriated days of 2003, when Yahoo ruled search and Myspace was all the rage, technology products were mostly developed like the Pyramids of Giza: grand designs springing from a founders’ visionary foresight, long in planning and epic in the build. Fast forward to the present, and it’s widely accepted that grand designs and waterfalls are not the way to build technology products that consumers love. Remarkably, the same is emerging as the knock-out model for challenger brands in consumer goods.
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Weniger ist Mehr
Why 3 German words are the only challenger brand strategy you’ll ever need
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a famously difficult man to get along with. Arguably one of the finest architects of all time, he was cantankerous, mercurial and intimidatingly bejowelled, forever blowing plumes of thick smoke from one of his beloved Cuban Robustos. Other than a string of exquisite buildings, he gifted mankind an enduringly poignant insight, delivered with fitting clarity: “Weniger ist mehr”, he bellowed, “Less is more”.
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Stores We Love
What DTC brands can learn from great stores around the world
It’s great direct to consumer (DTC) brands are opening a small number of new physical stores around the world. But a lot of them could be better. Stores can feel soulless and vacant, displays don’t survive first contact with customers, and so on. We identify things we can learn from a handful of great stores around the world.
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