Martin & Pleasance North America Cites Revolutionary Benefits From Flamingo TPE Solution & Adesso Partnership

Rolling Meadows, IL. March 16, 2023 – We are proud to share recent feedback from the Martin & Pleasance North America team, enthusiastically shared with us at Expo West.  M&PNA has been a client for nearly a year & is beginning to recognize the true value of the Flamingo solution & Adesso partnership.

Natural products CPG manufacturers share the day-to-day frustration of managing distributor deductions & attempting to make sense of the pages & pages of backup documentation.  This administrative burden, along with recognizing lack of control of this spending, is typically the initial reason brands recognize the need for a trade solution.  However, companies quickly realize a trade solution addresses the critical need to gain a complete & detailed view of their trade spending at every customer at a granular level.  With this visibility, along with their deduction admin time dramatically reduced, the key benefit is they are now able to analyze & evaluate the effectiveness of each promotion, which provides the advantages of tailoring trade plans to eliminate ineffective promotions that do not drive sales & customer loyalty, thus utilizing trade spending more strategically to grow the business.

Richard Pollock, President & CEO at Martin & Pleasance North America said, “Partnering with Adesso & their Flamingo solution has truly been revolutionary for our business.  Of course, deduction management was the first issue, but we quickly moved to analyze which deals were working & which were not.  We have made major changes to our spending based on the information in Flamingo, as well as recommendations from Adesso leadership.  These folks know the business in and out, have been successfully leading natural companies for years, listen to us & are real partners.  In my opinion, if you are an emerging manufacturer & have a need for a partner to assist with these deductions & trade, I’d definitely call the Adesso team.  As recently as Expo West, they have been sharing new areas they are addressing for future benefit – they are here to make us successful!”

“We highly value the partnership we have with the M&PNA team,” said Fred Schroeder, President & CEO at Adesso.  “It is an extremely bright & diligent group of people, and their setup process quickly led to their Flamingo solution generating a recognizable return on their investment.”

To learn more about Flamingo TPE, Adesso’s complete trade solution for natural-specialty & small-midsized CPG, please contact us at info@adesso-solutions.com or AdessoSolutions.com/Contact.

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Getting Ready to Grow

The Neglected Cost Center for a New CPG Manufacturer… 

As you may know, we at Adesso, focus within the emerging area of the natural channel. Many emerging CPG companies enter this complex arena with an understanding on how to address payroll (rather straightforward) and the entire Cost of Goods area, ranging from raw materials, to production costs & planned logistical areas. Seems pretty simple as they enter into what seems to be a rather straightforward sales channel with QuickBooks as a financial system & Excel as their basic analysis platform. 

Then they secure a distributor, gain some distribution in retail stores (many call it ‘doors’), get excited & send an invoice. They have an agreement with the distributor, but it is quite complex – most do not read it nor do they align their GL accordingly. While not looking to be crude, in about 20 or so days, when payment arrives, they hit a bit of a ‘holy shit’ moment. 

They receive 20%, 30% or sometimes even a negative amount in return on the invoice and the challenges & confusion begins – why did they not pay the total amount? Not just that, but they paid next to nothing. Then another order arrives, and another – all with this level of short-payment – and the cycle continues. 

We get calls weekly on this. 

The Reality is as Follows & is Not that Complex

There are 3, not 2 major cost centers for a new CPG manufacturer – COGS, payroll (probably #3) and Trade Spending. 

Trade spending has been a part of the CPG industry for over 40 years. We have a term for this here at Adesso; it’s not terribly clever, but it is accurate. We call it ‘consistent complexity’. It is the same for everyone entering the space & everyone has dealt with it for decades. 

It can be relatively simple to solve, but you need to be open to some change & rely on a solution partner with deep industry experience. Our group has dealt with this for over 10 years as a team here, and we all have countless years (well into the hundreds) in the industry from large sales agencies/brokers, CPG manufactures, experts in trade management technology & infrastructure – and, yes, we have exemplary client service references. That is because our clients drive what we do every day.

What we can tell you is that working with us will reduce your internal admin time, you will know what you are spending & where you are spending it very quickly. Then, if someone owes you $ (yep they do) you will have the information to get it repaid, and as you move forward with us as partners, you will clearly understand what works and what is not working in your trade promotions – we do this better than anyone!

If this sounds like what you may need, please contact us.

Bare Bones Selects Adesso’s Flamingo TPE to Optimize Trade Results & Save Trade Management Time

Bare Bones BrothRolling Meadows, IL. December 1, 2022 – We are excited to welcome Barebones Ventures, LLC, a San Diego-based food company and tastemaker of healthy pantry staples for cooking & sipping, to Adesso’s client community. As a leading innovator in the bone broth space, the company offers a full line of nourishing broth products in traditional liquid and instant powder formats.

Being able to analyze promotion effectiveness to enable continual strategic improvement of promotion planning was a key objective of Bare Bones, typically one of the main challenges CPG manufacturers experience when initially managing trade using spreadsheets. The Bare Bones team selected Adesso’s Flamingo TPE solution as it will immediately enable full visibility into their trade spending and significant time savings when settling deductions.  Additionally, having all trade data in the system ultimately leads to powerful analysis, which empowers their team to optimize trade spending for improved results.

Katherine Harvey, Cofounder & CEO at Bare Bones said, “Trade spend in this industry is notoriously difficult to control and leverage effectively, so we’re excited to partner with Adesso, a solution provider that understands the natural products space. I’m confident their tools will enable us to drill down to analyze and understand exactly what we are spending, and where we can improve promotion effectiveness to grow the business.”

“Our Client Effectiveness team is passionate about our client partners’ success, and we have been working closely with the Bare Bones team to guide them through their setup process,” said Claudia Winegar, Sr. Director of Client Effectiveness at Adesso. “We were excited for another rapid setup & assisting them in making a significant change to their business very quickly. That is our mission here.”

To learn more about Flamingo TPE, Adesso’s complete trade solution for natural-specialty & small-midsized CPG, please contact us at info@adesso-solutions.com or AdessoSolutions.com/Contact.

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Five Emerging Natural Products Companies Among Many Who ‘Get’ the Value of a Trade Solution & Are Taking Action Now

Rolling Meadows, IL. June 9, 2022 – We are extremely proud to announce the addition of five new emerging natural products companies who have joined the Adesso TPE Community!  We welcome Daily Crunch Snacks, Farin’UP USA, Flackers, Lisa’s 1973, and OLYRA Foods – adding to the natural brands we help relax: amazing superfood infused sprouted nuts snacks, quick & easy premium baking and breakfast mixes, delicious nutrient-rich Flaxseed crackers and seed crisps, ultra-clean dressings, as well as organic & nutritious breakfast biscuits.

Although manufacturers typically understand the need to better manage trade spending, the number two expense item on their P&L, they are now beginning to recognize that waiting to act only postpones the year-1 savings, and the opportunity to use trade dollars more strategically to grow their business. 

Flamingo TPE addresses all opportunity areas within trade spending and deductions for emerging CPG companies. With a new setup process that guides the clients through a logical journey, the connection to QuickBooks is quick, and Adesso’s new Setup Wizard takes all the stress out of getting the key information into the solution to be live and gaining value from their investment. Additionally, it enables Adesso’s Client Effectiveness team to work closely with each partner to ensure that each step was successful and that they are ready to proceed with the next. 

“We’ve focused extensively on the natural segment over the last 10 years from a solution and process perspective, and more and more companies understand the importance and urgency to address trade,” said Fred Schroeder, President & CEO at Adesso Solutions. “We look forward to assisting these five new clients and sharing their results with the community.”

To learn more about Flamingo TPE and our thorough, rapid approach for emerging natural products companies, please contact Karin Souren, Director of Marketing, at ksouren@adesso-solutions.com or call 847.342.1095.

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