Every founder I meet has a story about doing it all themselves. They built the product, found the first customers and figured out the website at two in the morning. That grit is how a brand gets started. It is rarely how a brand gets into retail and stays there. Retail is a team sport, and the brands that win are the ones that build the right team early.
I learned this in more than 25 years as a Fortune 500 consumer product executive. The launches that worked were never one person's win. There was a finance lead who knew the numbers cold, a sales lead who knew the buyer, an operations lead who kept the shelves full, and partners outside the building who opened doors we could not open on our own. When I started Rock Your Product®, I wanted founders to have that same bench without having to hire it all at once.
Why retail growth takes more than one person
Moving from DTC or Amazon into retail changes almost everything about how a consumer product brand runs. Your wholesale pricing has to leave room for retail margin, trade spend and freight. Your forecast has to hold up in front of a buyer. Your packaging has to sell from a shelf, not a screen. Your supply chain has to fill a pipeline across hundreds of stores, then keep them in stock once the product starts selling through.
Each of those is its own discipline. A founder can learn all of them, but not all at once, and not while still running the business. That is where a team changes the math.
The people working on your brand
Our core team brings decades of retail and CPG experience to every brand we work with:
- Ysa Mayorca, financial and forecast modeling. More than 30 years in consumer packaged goods, including Unilever and Sundial Brands. Ysa builds the retail P&L, pricing and forecast models so every buyer conversation is backed by real numbers.
- Felicia Ciaccio, retail readiness and relationships. A former Walgreens director and category manager for health and wellness. She knows how buyers think because she was one, and she preps our brands for the meeting before it happens.
- Katie Farinella, client experience and operations. More than 20 years in retail operations, keeping projections, inventory and execution on track from launch through reorders.
- Skye Hennings, operations and success. Keeps every engagement organized and moving, so follow-ups happen and nothing slips.
- Clayton Trevino, AI systems. Builds the RYPAI™ Retail Growth OS, the AI tools behind our retail research, buyer targeting and outreach.
An advisory board for the moments that call for a specialist
Some questions need a specialist. When a brand is heading into Walmart and Sam's Club, or needs Amazon marketplace strategy, CPG legal and IP protection, retail merchandising, beauty media or CPG finance, we bring in an advisor who has spent a career in exactly that lane. Our advisory board covers each of those areas, so a brand gets the right expert at the right time instead of paying for every discipline year round.
The partnerships that open doors
A retail plan is only as strong as the relationships behind it. Over the years we have built partnerships across the channels our brands sell in: retail buyers in mass, drug, grocery, club and specialty retail, the sales rep groups and brokers who carry brands into those accounts, and distributors such as KeHE, UNFI and McLane who move product to the shelf. We also stand alongside business leaders like Kevin Harrington, Original Shark on Shark Tank, who share our belief in helping product founders grow.
Those partnerships matter because retail runs on trust. A buyer takes a meeting more seriously when the brand arrives prepared and introduced by people they already know. A distributor says yes faster when the numbers and the plan are already built. Every relationship we have is one more door our brands do not have to knock on alone.
What this looks like for our brands
When Filterbaby needed a stronger retail proposition, the work covered packaging and pricing strategy, buyer materials, IP support and a trade show launch, and the brand went on to report a Target end-cap expansion. When CarpalAID needed a sharper category story, the team built the education, wholesale pricing and buyer narrative behind its move from a six-figure DTC brand into a seven-figure B2B business. Neither result came from one person. Each came from a team pulling in the same direction.
Build your team before you need it
If you are a consumer product brand doing well online and thinking about retail, do not wait until the first buyer meeting to find your people. Build the team, the plan and the partnerships first. That is exactly what we do at Rock Your Product®, through ROS Amplify™, our retail growth membership, and 1:1 Advisory. Meet the whole team on our About page, or find your retail path and let us show you what the right team can do for your brand.
