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When & How to Find the Perfect Contract Manufacturer for Scaling Your Brand

Many of the brands I’ve interviewed over the years have followed a similar journey. They started making their products at home, typically in their kitchen or basement (as Nat’s Nuts did), then eventually moved up to a commercial kitchen space (or using a local church kitchen as in the cases of Molly Bz Cookies and Teddy’s Tallow). Finally, after growing distribution enough, it was time for a contract manufacturer. 

In many cases, this involved hundreds of calls and dozens of meetings, trial and error and dead ends before the right contract manufacturer was found. Fortunately, in today’s digital age even the process of finding the perfect contract manufacturer has been streamlined with platforms like PartnerSlate, which bridges the gap between emerging brands and an extensive network of contract manufacturers and co-packers. And via PartnerSlate’s partnership with RangeMe, brands can leverage this platform for little or no cost.

I sat with Vincent Tseng, the CEO of PartnerSlate, during the recent ECRM Center Store Grocery Sessions in San Diego to discuss how emerging brands can determine when they are ready to take the step to a contract manufacturer, what to consider when choosing one, and how to take advantage of the PartnerSlate/RangeMe …

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The Long Game of Scaling Distribution: How Independent Retail Builds a Solid Foundation for Growth

Retail history is filled with brands that expanded quickly and disappeared quietly. Rapid placement created visibility. It did not create resilience. Distribution is not a campaign. It is a construction process. And the strongest structures are built deliberately. Independent retail remains the most reliable environment for playing the long game of distribution.

Long-term success in wholesale depends on reorder behavior, margin preservation, operational stability, and brand relevance. Independent retailers support all four. Their partnerships are built on purchasing decisions rooted in communication. Their merchandising reflects intent. Their customer relationships drive loyalty.

This ecosystem favors manufacturers who prioritize durability over immediacy. National retail often accelerates exposure while compressing economics. It introduces volume alongside structural deductions. It amplifies demand alongside administrative weight. It expands presence while reducing control. Over time, these pressures compound. What appears to be growth begins to resemble dependency.

Independent retail reverses this dynamic. Growth follows demand. Expansion follows performance. Investment follows margin. Brands develop infrastructure in step with opportunity rather than in anticipation of it.

Independent retail networks provide stability

At Mr. Checkout, long-term experience across independent retail distribution channels has consistently shown that the most stable brands are those that matured within independent networks before pursuing broader …

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Retail moves faster today than ever before. Driven by social media viral trends and rapid consumer shifts, new products are launched daily. Yet, retail merchants are often trapped under an avalanche of chaotic pitch emails, LinkedIn messages, business cards collected from expos and unvetted supplier inquiries. Sifting through this mountain of information to find suppliers that are not only on-trend but that also have the capabilities needed to support a retailer’s category needs can be a daunting task. 

If only there was a way all of this information could be captured, stored and presented in a way that’s easy to organize and evaluate.

Fortunately, there is – for retailers that are RangeMe Enterprise Partners! For Enterprise Partners, all supplier submissions are collected in RangeMe and stored in the cloud with all of the information needed for buyers to easily review and evaluate whether a product is a fit for their category. And what’s more, this information can be transferred when a buyer switches desks. In addition, Enterprise Partners can host Immediate Opportunities for specific category needs, unlocking a wealth of new product innovation with the click of a mouse.

I sat with RangeMe SVP of Retail Wayne Bennett to discuss …

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DEFI-ing the Odds: This Former CPG Exec Scores Quick Retail Wins With Her Healthy & Indulgent Snacks

Defi Snacks has certainly hit the ground running. Just launched last year, the healthy snack brand has already landed on the RangeMe Top Brands in Food & Beverage charts three times (October 2025, January 2026 and April 2026), and was recently named one of six winners of the Nourishing Change Conference Emerging Brands Competition, which will see its products on the shelves of 500 Kroger stores. The brand inked a deal with Hy-Vee, as well. 

Leading the charge for DEFI (which stands for Delicious Energizing Fitness Indulgence) is Founder and CEO Tatyana Jones, who previously spent years climbing the corporate ladder at global Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) giants like Mars, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and Bausch & Lomb. 

Looking at Jones’ background, it becomes clear why her brand has seen so much success so fast. While DEFI is Jones’ first entrepreneurial venture, her CPG background has more than prepared her to win as a business owner. She was a classically trained brand director, fresh off managing a massive $ 100 million marketing budget and launching high-profile national commercial campaigns for pharmaceutical brands like Miebo.

I caught up with Jones shortly after her Nourishing Change win, and she broke down her journey, from …

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From Feedback to Fortune: How Smart CPG Brands Pivot Their Packaging and Products for Retail Success

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 …

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What Brands Need to Know About the Amazon/Whole Foods Market Worldwide Grocery Private Brands Biz

In January 2026, Amazon and Whole Foods Market enacted a major structural realignment by formally consolidating their separate private label divisions into a single, unified Worldwide Grocery Private Brands business. Led by Jen Coccaro, a nine-year Whole Foods Market veteran, this newly integrated organization brings five distinct corporate brands – Amazon Saver, Amazon Grocery, 365 by Whole Foods Market, Whole Foods Market, and Whole Foods Market Kitchens – under a centralized leadership structure. 

The strategic move is designed to merge Whole Foods Market’s historical expertise in food quality, strict sustainability, and animal welfare standards with Amazon’s unmatched global tech infrastructure, rapid operational speed, and massive physical and digital scale.

Coccaro

In a fireside chat with ECRM SVP of Retail Wayne Bennett during ECRM’s Private Label Sessions, Coccaro detailed the intricate dynamics of managing this high-profile integration. While Whole Foods Market’s private brands represent highly mature, established market leaders focused on optimizing historical consumer trust, the proprietary Amazon grocery brands are operating in an agile, fast-paced “builder mode” requiring immediate scale. 

For the commercial supplier community, this operational shift represents a major unlock of volume opportunities, establishing a streamlined single point of contact per category across all five core brands. However, …

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