Will Salcido, CEO & Co-founder Prosperity Organics, a growing butter-alternative company and creator of MELT® organic spreads, had built a strong business in the natural and specialty channel, but they were looking to expand into mainstream grocery. They needed a strong data-based selling story to prove themselves to major retailers–they had plenty of data, but needed to find the right insights.
Prosperity Organics came to software company Bedrock Analytics seeking a more efficient and effective solution for managing and analyzing their SPINS and Whole Foods data. “We were already analyzing our data, but now we have insights at our fingertips,” says Meg Carlson, CEO of Prosperity Organics. “It takes just minutes to build a report with Bedrock that took four to six hours before.”
Many companies in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry have the same challenges as Prosperity Organics. The industry is overflowing with data from syndicators, retailers and other sources. Each company has access to much of the same data, yet leveraging it in order to make the most compelling, fact-based recommendations to retailers can be time consuming and resource intensive. Retail category managers expect their vendors to make sales presentations and category reviews with coherent data stories to support their recommendations.
Bedrock Analytics is focused on supporting CPGs with cloud-based software that generates visually engaging selling stories, using data to show how a specific brand or product can drive a more productive shelf set or category. “There are thousands of brands in the market place that never figure out how to break out of the small regional specialty chains and into the national chains. Not because their products are lacking in quality or in sales performance, but because they may not have the time, resources or experience to leverage their data in way that convinces national chains to carry their products. Bedrock solves this problem for our customers,” explains Will Salcido, Co-Founder & CEO of Bedrock Analytics.
The reality is that everyone has the same data. What matters is what you do with it
Bedrock’s foundation was built upon decades of CPG and retail experience that the company’s core employee team shares. “Participating in over 150 headquarter retail calls in nearly all classes of trade during my CPG career, I found specific ways to communicate information that would connect with retailers,” says Salcido. With global experience in category management across several companies, including category captaincies, Salcido brings a unique perspective in understanding both the supplier’s and the retailers’ viewpoints. His Co-Founder & CTO, Alan Coleman, has over 20 years of experience in roles ranging from VP engineering to CTO building software development organizations in CPG, eCommerce, and Digital Marketing. Coleman was the CTO of DemandTec, the leading pricing optimization solution provider for the retail industry.
Simplicity is the core driver of Bedrock’s user experience as the company’s customers are often sales teams within CPGs that don’t have time for complexity. “We are frequently asked what makes us different from the competition or the syndicated data providers’ portals, and the key difference is that they built their software for analysts to explore the vast data they’ve paid for while Bedrock is designed to zero-in on helping sales managers sell products into retail. We’ve designed our software to move beyond data analysis and to instead focus on storytelling and recommendations. The reality is that everyone has the same data. What matters is what you do with it.” explains Salcido.
And it worked well for Prosperity Organics. Carlson noted, “Bedrock tells a better story than our old reports. It’s easy to set up a template and then repeat it for each retailer,” she explains. “We met with 14 retailers. Every one of them was super positive and ready to place orders.”
