CPG retail strategy firm Basemakers spent nearly a decade building the foundation of its business. Now it’s finally building the house.
Since its founding in 2015, the CPG sales agency, specializing in retail execution for emerging brands, has grown to over 100 clients in 35 states, with 85 full time employees and plans to expand the team to over 100 by January 2025. The firm works with companies such as Olipop, Poppi and Guayaki, among others.
That work is now the springboard for Basemakers’ next phase as a full service provider for brands with a new sales management and brokerage division opening next month, and plans to eventually branch into investment and in-house brand development.
According to founder Max Baumann, the inspiration to evolve was born from partner brands’ frustration with traditional broker models.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of brand partner calls that I get on and they’re just complaining relentlessly about their broker,” Baumann said. “They call them a necessary evil, they say that you need them to set up the meetings and to get the promos going, but most of them either they’re good in maybe a couple of retailers here or there, or they’re bad everywhere or, they just don’t see the same level of value. So that, I believe, is the opportunity gap.”
Basemakers’ aim, he explained, is to work more closely with brands and avoid the “shell game” aspects that he believes some brokers employ, such as grouping dozens of brands’ services together and “over-leverage” their key account managers instead of providing teams dedicated solely to a single brand. The division will provide sales strategy, distribution management and key account management.
However, being more attentive and focused on individual clients also means being more selective. Basemakers will be leaner “both in terms of the team, but also in terms of the brands we take on,” seeking to work only with the “best of the best” in emerging brands.
To help lead the division, Basemakers has hired former UNFI director of grocery merchandising Ken Erickson as VP of distribution, who brings over three decades of experience in grocery and retail services. The company is also recruiting a senior director of sales strategy and category management, who will be responsible for collecting data and providing category and strategic insights to clients.
“The goal of the broker should not only be to help the brand succeed, but also to make the category manager’s job easier, and to bring in deep insights from a variety of different sources of data,” he added. “And to be frank, that’s not being done at a high level right now across these different brokers.”
He acknowledged the first year of the program will be operating at a loss in order to afford the expanded team, as well as providing a deep discount for the first five new brands to join the program. But the short term financial hit has been carefully factored into Basemaker’s long term strategy.
But brokering is just the first step for Basemakers ultimate goal of being a full “house” of CPG retail services, content creation and brand development.
Later this year, Basemakers plans to launch a podcast which Baumann will host alongside Midnight Ventures co-founder and partner Ryan Springer. The show will feature interviews with founders from Basemakers’ partner brands as well as other business partners. The goal is to provide additional insights into brand building and raising capital for entrepreneurs while also positioning Basemakers as a content creation platform.
“I think the podcast will force myself and also Ryan, to have those deeper conversations and find the insights, and then share those, obviously, with the world,” he said.
The ultimate goal, however, is for Basemakers to add DTC marketing services and a venture capital arm and in-house brand innovation lab and brand development studio.
Further additions – specifically DTC marketing services, a venture capital arm, an in-house brand innovation lab and brand development studios – are still at least a few years out, Baumann said, but the base is already in place.
“We don’t care about being a billion dollar business, that’s not a goal of ours. But we want to be able to successfully scale brands to become billion dollar brands.”