Connecting Manufacturers and Retailers Online – a Conversation with Brandon Leong

This is CPG Insiders, the podcast that helps consumer packaged goods companies survive and thrive in business. Now your hosts, Mark Young and Rob Taylor. Welcome everyone to this edition of CPG Insiders. I'm your host, Mark Young. And you know, this is the show that is meant for people who are in the consumer packaged goods space. I gotta tell you, I want to really thank all the people that have been emailing us and contacting us with comments asking for advice. We love hearing from you and we love people asking for help with their CPG business. Today we are going to talk to Brandon Leong. Now, Brandon is with a company called RangeMe. So, Brandon, welcome to CPG Insiders and tell us about RangeMe. What does that, what does RangeMe do for the people who are not familiar with it?

Hey, thanks a ton for having me on the show. Appreciate it. So, just a quick overview. Rangem is an online platform that helps facilitate the sourcing of products from both retailers and suppliers. We have about 65% of the top 100 retailers on our platform looking for new products. We also work with them in a very unique fashion. So the Albertson Safeways, the Whole Foods, GNC Vitamin Shop, Petco, Ulta Beauty, Walgreens, and we actually just helped facilitate Walmart's open call for US suppliers. So what we do for them is we work in a very unique fashion. If you go to like, let's say Whole Foods website and you're looking for a product, looking to get your product on the shelf there, Arrange me is a way you do that. So essentially you put your products onto our platform and we route it to the correct category buyer at the retailers. Now on the other side, because we have so many great retail partners, we have over 150,000 product suppliers and manufacturers on our platform. Those are individual businesses and that represents nearly half a million brands and nearly a million products. And what RangeMe is for suppliers is essentially a tool. It allows them to facilitate their current sales and marketing activities. So just like how LinkedIn replaced the resume and how you get a job, same thing as what arrangeme has done for the CPG industry. This is your new digital sell sheet. It is the industry standard that buyers and retailers like to see information on products and it gives you the ability to have a home run point for all your B2B activities as a supplier.

Would I use RangeMe if I was a new manufacturer with some new SKUs, or would I use this even if I'm an established consumer packaged goods company.

It would be both. So we see the whole Entire kind of gamut of suppliers in our platform. So you know, having about 13 to 14% of the entire adjustable market on RangeMe, a bulk of them are brand new suppliers. And the first time they've ever even seen or gotten onboarded have the right questions asked to them that buyers want to see is on RangeMe. So we look at ourselves as almost like a farm system. Right. You have your single A, your double A and your AAA and then your major leaguers. We have them all on our platform.

Now how does this work out with, let's say I have a master broker or I have brokers. Do the brokers also work with range me or does this eliminate the need for the broker? No.

So we actually work with a ton of brokers, one of them being like Emerson Group. Right. You know what this does is it expands their breadth of what they can offer their suppliers as well. So because you think about brokers, not all of them have their hooks in every single retailer in every single category. They don't have hooks against the entire buying teams essentially. Right. What rangeme does is very unique. When we say we work with a retailer, we don't just work with one buyer, we work with the entire buying team. So this expands what a broker can do for their supplier partners. And it's actually, we actually work very, very well with them.

Would this also be a place where if I'm a new brand, maybe I might be able to meet some new brokers through this?

We're going towards that. I think that there's a, there might be an option in the future. We did launch late last year, a really exciting initiative and that is what we've noticed is because we have so many new suppliers on our platform and they're essentially in all various life cycles, you can identify gaps. So we know when a supplier doesn't have insurance, we know when a supplier doesn't have shelf ready packaging because those are all the questions that buyers need to have answered before they source a product. So because of that, we launched something called Range B services. And that's just an easy way for suppliers to find the service partners they need to accomplish getting shelf ready. And as we continue along this path of fulfilling all the needs of the suppliers and getting all of essentially the entire ecosystem being able to have access to RangeMe and have access to the buyers and suppliers on the platform, brokers are the next logical step and we are working on solutions, extended solutions to work with them even deeper.

So walk me through the process, Brandon. Let's say I am a I've just invented, you know, some new cream for something and I'm new to the business and I don't have any distribution right now. Walk me through the process. I go to the website, what do I do? What does it look like? What kind of questions am I going to be asked?

Yeah, so it's actually very, very simple. I used the LinkedIn analogy in the past. When you look for the first thing you do when you look for a job, if you aren't on LinkedIn already, someone tells you they should go on LinkedIn, put all your information there to kind of replace your resume. This is similar. Right. So what's going to happen is you either come in to arrange me through a retail partner of ours as an inbound, or you come in through our website like you mentioned. And the onboarding process is very, very easy. Essentially what it is, it guides you through getting your first product onto the platform. And what I mentioned earlier is a lot of suppliers that we work with, this is their first foray into anything retail. This is the first time they've ever even seen a question asked of them, like, do you have general liability insurance for your brand? Right. So those questions are worth its weight in gold because for these suppliers now, they already understand the path to get shelf ready during the onboarding. We ask those questions during this process. Get your products on the platform, finish your brand page. And all the questions that we ask, all the minimum requirements that we request of all of our suppliers are essentially what we've built since working with all our retail partners in this many, however long range me has existed. So all of those things are what buyers actually want to see. It's very simple, it's very quick, you can get your first product on within minutes.

So I get on there, I start putting, I put the, I fill out the forms, do I have insurance? Do I have packaging? I'm sure it's going to ask me a lot of other questions. It's probably going to ask me if I have brokers or whatever the case is. Now what happens? Do, do buyers go on the system looking for new products? Does the buyer get a notification that a new product was just created? How does that connection happen?

So once a supplier gets their first product onto the platform, it unlocks everything, right? So essentially what happens is there's two kind of capabilities that it unlocks. One, in the vacuum of Ranger, right? So inside Ranger there are buyers who are proactively looking for products in their category. Right. And if you came through a retailer, once you get your first product up, that product and your brand is routed to the correct category buyer in that buying team, right? So they have a special way to view that. So that's what unlocks initially, right? So once you get your first product up, you're visible, you're viewable. The second thing that's the most important though is you're not going to stop doing the things that you're already doing. Ranger is a channel in that respect, right? But what you're going to be doing is you're still going to be going to trade shows, you're still going to be doing your cold calling, you're still going to be trying to meet buyers, you're still doing your local event, you're still doing all those things. What RangeMe does is help facilitate that. It's just like, like I said, just like how LinkedIn replaced the resume. Rangewee has replaced your digital sell sheet. So now this is your sell sheet. You can put it on your website. Your website that's meant for consumers. You can link buyers who want to come, who want to see your B2B information like margin and sensitive bits. You can link them to and give them permission to be able to access it. But essentially what you've created is your online profile, your online B2B profile where you do differently, right? You don't, you're not trying to be consumers with this, you're trying to do business with wholesalers, you're trying to do business with retailers.

Would I use my RangeMe profile as my or part of my presentation when I'm meeting with a buyer on a face to face level?

Absolutely. It should be. So the most important thing is this, to get the meaning. You should be using RangeMe, right? But one as a channel, as a vacuum and the other one as an introduction to your brand and your products, right? Presentation itself. Obviously you're going to be able to, you're going to have your own pitch, you're going to have your own, you're going to have your products with you and things like that. But the most important piece and the thing that always hangs people up is after that meeting, after that face to face interaction, after that person to person conversation is the follow up. It's so, so hard because what happens is everything gets lost. The number of products, number of suppliers that these buyers see and they meet is unimaginable, right? So to follow up with them, even if you have an amazing conversation is very difficult. Rangeme's built that in. Like, that was part of why we built rangeme is like when you follow up, you should be using something that is dynamic, that is live and that you can track. So one of the things that you can do is one you can upload, you can change product information, you can change your line, you can do all the things in the back end on range me, but that link will always stay the same for the buyer. So you don't have to try to rereach them again if you have a new catalog, you don't have to re reach them again if something else happens to your brand or you're having a sale. Things like that. Right. It's all dynamic through RangeMe. The second thing is we do just like LinkedIn does. We have a basic level and we have a premium level. One of the premium level things that we do is when you share your line sheet or when you share your profile with all your products on it, we'll tell you if the buyer has opened that email, we'll tell you that buyer has viewed your products, which products they viewed, how long they spent looking at them, what they clicked on, all of that. Right. So that's your sales and marketing tool. Right. That's essentially what it is, is you're not stopping your sales marketing. This is just helping enhance it. No one else is building tools for suppliers like this.

Yes. It really is a lot like LinkedIn where you could go and see a certain company visited your profile and took a look at you and so on and so forth.

Yes, absolutely.

Now talk to me about bigger brands. So you said, you said established brands also use this.

Yeah. So if you think about it this way, one of the hardest things to do is keep visibility. Right. A lot of the bigger brands that use RangeMe, they use RangeMe1 as a communication tool. Right. Like I mentioned, it's your sell sheet now. Right. It's just an easier way to link new retailers or current retail partners to your most updated line sheet or to your most updated product line. Right. But what it also does is just as a market. So I'm ahead of marketing here. And when we built this, it was really about putting yourself in the mind of sales and marketing for a brand. Like what are the things that we want to do, what are the things that we want to know? What are the things that we want to accomplish for these larger brands? Mindshare is very important. Right. They do retargeting, they do cost per click, they do Google, they do all that stuff. They have the money to do it. This is another channel for them. Right. They can stay relevant in front of buyers at all times, especially ones that they've never reached before. And if you think about also the amount of turn that happens or the amount of shuffling that happens on these buying teams, it's very difficult for large brands to stay abreast of that. Right. It's not easy. Right. This keeps them in front of the relevant buyers at all times.

Now, does it tell me who the buyers are? And if the buyers change hands or change seats, is that in there?

So what it tells you is this. If a buyer has viewed your profile, it will tell you which retailer that buyer came from. It won't tell you who the buyer is. However, if a buyer requests a sample, which happens directly on the platform, if a buyer requests a sample or asks for more information, all that information will be given to you. It'll open up a conversation directly on the platform and you're having a conversation with the buyer.

So one of the things that we try to explain to people is the concept of availability. And when we think of availability, people's minds immediately go to availability is how much product do I have? Or what stores have it? But you also have to make your product mentally available to make your product mentally available to the public. That's advertising. That's raising people's awareness so that when they think of toenail fungus, they think of your toenail fungus product. But buyers are consumers, too. They're just hyper consumers in as much as they're buying for, you know, 8,700 stores, if it happens to be Walgreens, but they still have the same attributes of a human, believe it or not, they are still humans. Sometimes that's been questionable. I've had cpg. People have questioned that. But they are humans, which means they are still given to certain behaviors. And one of those behaviors is keeping awareness to keeping availability in front of them. So if you have a product line that you're trying to launch and you're not in the stores you want to be to, pretty much any time that you can get an opportunity to be in front of them is usually going to be a positive.

Yes.

Doesn't mean they're going to buy today. But the more often they see your product, the more comfortable they will become with your product.

Yep, exactly like retargeting.

And the longer they see that product, the more they will start to establish, okay, these guys are for real. Maybe I haven't brought them in, but for two years I've been seeing the new XYZ cream and it's two years out and they're in these other locations and they still seem to be in business, so maybe they're worth looking at. The other thing I want to bring up in mind is, as you mentioned, when you're looking at these buyers, you have a buyer for one category. That buyer may be buying 150 to 300 SKUs. And if they're buying 150 to 300 SKUs, they're looking at 3,000 SKUs to narrow it down to that 150. They don't have the ability to remember you just because you sent them a sample once or you showed up to see them once. So we need to do whatever we can to be relevant, to get back in front of them without being a nuisance. I like where this is going because this is an opportunity for the buyer to land on me to be looking in his or her category to see what's new in a category. Oh yeah, I saw the XYZ cream. That's interesting. Maybe I'll look a little deeper at it. That's a much more organic experience and a much more positive experience. Then you've been emailing the buyer every week, trying to beg for a meeting and just filling up my inbox.

Just a quick note on that. Look, one of the things that we've all struggled with, right, and this is suppliers, buyers, everyone. A lot of these large retailers are bound by category reviews. They change out, they look for products once a year, twice a year maybe. Right. But discovery doesn't just happen once or twice a year. It has to happen all year round. We know that. We know that. Okay. Hey, you know what, you might be only going into your category in June, but it's December right now and you need to be start thinking about what's going to be in your category review. So we've built that functionality in for the buyers. The buyers are constantly looking at products all year round. That's the behavior that we've changed. We've made buyers now not look at that small window of their category review.

Right, the review period.

Exactly right. And now it's this expanded all year process for them that takes a little bit of time each day. But what it accomplishes is that like you said, the mind share that exists to earmark products that you've seen to be able to do that and the platform actually facilitates that. Suppliers can, I mean buyers can save for category, they can save products for later, they can look at products, they can earmark them, they can keep them on their dashboard. And then on the flip side for suppliers, what we've even done is a Lot of the retailers share their category review schedules with us. And so we put that into the platform so that suppliers can know when the best time to really be active is with these guys. So, I mean, we understand this and you hit the nail right on the head. Decisions aren't made all year round. However, the path to decision is constant.

Yeah, the thing to keep in mind, folks, what Brandon's talking about, we've talked about it on this show before and that is in most of these categories there is an annual review. So let's say that annual review is what we'll call planogramming in June. So let's say that my new planogram sets in June. That means all the new merchandise photographs of the new planogram go to outdoor location. And then my store managers have roughly two to four weeks to get the plan reset. So everybody has the same, if it's in June, product is shipping in April, which means purchase orders were made in February, which means the review process of when I was taking meetings and I was making decisions for my June planogram was in the previous year. It was probably somewhere between October and December when I was doing my plan review. Now also keep in mind that many of these categories, especially the bigger categories, have what's called a mid year and a mid year is the six month mark where I may swap out or change out maybe 5% of my SKUs. Now that's not a plan reset. That is an opportunity for me to say I have four products in my plan that are just dead losers. What can I plug in to? What can I replace these four absolutely stone dead SKUs with that might generate more income for me. So the buying process is, Brandon, it's telling you, yes, there's that 60 day, 90 day review process, but there's always consideration going on all the time. The other thing that I've had happen, Brandon, maybe you've seen this. I've had a buyer call one of our clients, let's say for a sample, because the buyer was an actual consumer that liked the promise of the product and needed the product and took the product home and used the product. And the product did everything as promised. And the buyer became a believer for the product when the review came around.

Yeah.

Because the buyer used it and actually knows it worked.

Yep.

So Brandon, you also have access to some pretty important data also, right?

Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things that we're very lucky to have is having such a robust marketplace with, you know, 6,500 plus buyers and you know, over 150,000 suppliers on our platform. We are a very unique data set. And really what that is is, you know, we have the ability to almost see into the future. Right. Iri Nielsen, you know, spins, they do a great job in collecting the data at point of sale. What products are hot right now at the shelf at the checkout line. Right.

But they're always looking in the rearview mirror. Yeah.

What rangeme has is very unique. We actually know what products are being sourced, what products are being looked at, what products are being searched six months to a year before they even hit the shelf. I'll give you a really cool example.

I've got a feeling it's going to involve cbd, but go ahead.

I'll use the same word. CBD was the top search term two years ago. Range.

Right now it's starting to become a thing.

Yes. I went to Expo west this past. This past quarter. Right. I think it was in March or February. I went to Expo west and the two hot topics were two hot things. Obviously, CBD was on the marquee, which is crazy. You have CBD companies on the marquee of exponents. No one ever thought that was gonna happen two, three years ago. Right. But the second thing was that I noticed keto. Keto is like a hot trend right now at the consumer level. We've been seeing keto for eight months as a search term on the platform. And it was. It was. They were talking about it at Expo west as one of the hot new things that's happening. But if you think about that. Right. That means we're looking before the category review and before things hit the shelf. Buyers are looking at products. Buyers kind of have an idea of what they need to put on shelf. They're just bound by the fact that the logistics of getting something on shelf is not easy. Right. But they're still searching for it, and on Rangeman is where that happens. So that's an exciting thing for us. A cool note for suppliers. Suppliers have access to some of this information, like what certifications are hot, what the average margin is in the category, little things like that, what the top search term in your category is. That's part of the premium package for RangeMe as well. But, yeah, I mean, this is a pretty exciting data set, and we're starting to gather more and more of it and talk about it a little bit more. But I just figured I'd give you guys at CBG Insiders an inside track on that. And hopefully you guys, when you guys have questions for me, on what's hot, I can come in and let you guys know.

See, that's great stuff. Because if you think about it, let's say, I'll give you an example, we have a client in the keto space who's a leader in this space. This would be an opportunity for them to not only see what's the trend look like on keto keto, but they could also look and see who's been looking at keto. So for instance, they could see what retailers have been spending time looking that up, right?

Well, they, if it went to, if.

It went to their profile, if it.

Went to their profile, see what retailers are looking at them. But this is a huge validation step, right. Because you can think something's hot all you want, right. Before you go off and make a keto line of anything, you can go and arrange me and see our buyers looking at this. And if they are, you're like, okay, that's a good decision. Right. CBD was exactly like that. We had a ton of brands come on, come onto the platform. And one and a half, two years ago, even three years ago, they're feeling around, they're kind of blind. They're feeling around. They know that it's buzzing in their own vacuum, in their own world. But what does everyone else think? They come onto the platform. C is the top search term. They're like, oh, this is real. Right? Buyers are actually finding interest in this. It's now is the time. So this is definitely when you talk about it, when I talk about CPG insiders. This is the inside track, right. This is what is hot right now before it hits the shelf.

This is a really good tool, folks too. If you're looking to, let's say you have a half a dozen SKUs. This is the type of data that you want to add to your decision making process about how to expand your, your product line. So let's say you make a topical analgesic and now you see all of this traffic about cbd. So maybe that's an indication. Okay, maybe we'll add a CBD SKU to our product line. Or we make meal replacement drinks and we say, geez, maybe we need a ketogenic meal replacement drink to be added to our other product lines because the buyers are interested. So if the buyers are showing interest, then when I go in for plan review, I want to walk in with almost like psychic ability.

Exactly.

I have a new keto meal replacement drink.

Wow.

We've been thinking about that.

We were looking for that.

Yeah. And here it is, and I happen to have one. And you can combine this kind of data. So you can take the data that Brandon has and you can combine that with some of the tools. So for instance, at our agency, we have social listening tools in our social media side. So let's say you go to Brandon's side and Brandon says, hey, keto seems to be heating up. Now you can go to the social people on our side, they can look at social media tools and they can go back and say, geez, look at the increase in people talking about keto and social media. Look at the increase people are doing in searches and Google Google for ketogenics. So now you have multiple data sets where you can look at what's the consumer looking at, what are the early adapters looking at, what's the buyer's looking at. Not only do you have that ability to know the buyer is looking at it now you can take that consumer data into the buyer. With your new sku, you already know the buyer is thinking about it. Now you can close the loop and reassure the buyer. This is what consumers are looking at. Look at, look at how many people are searching for this. Look at how many people are talking about this on Facebook and in social media and start to close the loop for the buyer and the fact that they're out looking. So they're researching now. Give them the data they need to make a good decision.

Yep. This is 100% competitive advantage for you.

It is. It's great. So I like what you guys are doing. The last thing I asked you about is if I'm on the platform, I'm a CPG company. Now, if I'm understanding this correctly, I can also find service providers or I can find, you know, people to help me work with this. So what type of service providers do I find on here?

So it's actually really funny because I mentioned the gaps that we were able to notice with CPG suppliers and we would identify those and guide them to the right place. In the past, what happened is this is a supplier come onto the platform, see all these questions and be like, oh, like they get stuck on one. Like I need barcodes. Crap, I don't have barcodes. Right. And then they would go off into the ether of Google and get lost and not know what's happening. Or the best example is insurance. Because if they go into the ether of Google when it comes to insurance, they have no idea what insurance to get. No one's trying to help them with that. Google's not going to tell you what to get right, you have to know what you're searching for. So when that happened we identified, okay, where are the problem areas, what are the gaps that are specifically unique to CPG that we need people, experts, service providers that actually like only work with or are experts in that specific even category. Right. So what we've done is we go, okay, you don't have your insurance, you've identified that here are insurance providers that specialize in CPPG products, specifically HBCUs, right? This guy can help you or these people can help you. And what we've done is we've gathered a group of service providers that are specifically tailored to helping suppliers get shelf ready or at the very least capable. Right? So we're talking about insurance, we're talking about packaging, talking about marketing, we're talking about image resolution, things like that. We're talking about shipping is one of them. We just did dropship capable is a big one. Right. We're in the midst of launching investments. So people who get a large po. What do I do now? Right, so there's all of these categories and all of these very, very unique CPG retail channels that people just don't know about. And we want to just make sure they have access to it in a very, very quick and easy way that's telling them exactly what they need. These guys don't, suppliers, you guys don't want to sit there and figure out what you need and then, and then after that figure out what the best price is and then after that figure out if it's the right solution for you. Right? You want to know, okay, here are all the people who provide what I need. I can shop, right? That's why it should be and that's what we've done.

Well, Brandon, I appreciate you being here. I think this is great. Repeat for again, what percentage of retailers do you have on the platform now?

We have about.

So we waited for acv, let's say since we know what ACV is fall into.

I would say we have about 65% of the top 100 retailers in our platform. We have thousands of. We have over a thousand total retailers on our platform. We have over 6,500 buyers on our platform. So that shows you there's a many to one aspect. We work with regionals, we work with independents as well. And those are like a one to one. But you know, it's very funny because when you work with these large organizations, all of them see buying in a different kind of a different way. Some of them have one buyer and that one buyer funnels everything to the category managers, Right. Some people have all the category buyers they buy for themselves and they don't funnel any of that. Some of them separate E commerce and brick and mortar. Some of them don't. Right. So I think the real victory here, I think for the suppliers is that we have the entire breadth of that. All of them are on the platform, right. If you're talking to, if you're working with a company like Albertson Safeway, if you're working with even gnc, right. You're working with all of their buyers, right? So it's not like, oh my gosh, do they have the right buyer that's in my category for that? No, it's not about that. It's about, okay, am I a fit for gnc? Am I a fit for Ulta Beauty? You know, here's where the buyers are going to be looking and I'm going to still do my thing on my side anyway. Rangewee is kind of the center of that, right? We're just the facilitator of all of the things that you can do to help your business get on shelf, essentially.

No, I think the platform is great, folks. If you go to the Show Notes, so if you go to the website CPG Insider, go to the Show Notes on the show with Brandon, you'll find a link to range me and links to anything else that you need to do. If you want to get in touch with him and you need to take a look at this. If you're in the CPG business, this, which obviously if you're listening to this program, you are in the CPG business. This is worth taking a look at. So, Brandon, I appreciate you being here with us and hopefully you'll come back and tell us any upgrades. Maybe when you start adding brokers and things to it, we can touch with you. So, folks, that's it for today with CPG Insiders. Remember, as always, you are more than welcome to reach out to us with questions. If you have questions for anyone at the Jekyll and Hyde staff, absolutely. You can either go to CPG Insiders or Jekyll Hyde Agency. And we love to hear from entrepreneurs. We love to hear from CPG people with your questions. And as always, we answer questions and we don't even charge people for that. Everybody's always afraid there's going to be a bill attached if they call and ask a question. And we don't do that because we just like trying to promote the business. Brandon, thanks for being with us, folks. We'll see you on the next episode of CPG Insiders. If you're looking to greatly increase sales on your CPG product, don't hesitate to contact us at Jekyll and Hyde Advertising and Marketing. By the way, the only advertising agency with a guaranteed result. Just go to jekyllheidagency.com or feel free to give us a call at 800-542 10.