With the rise of e-commerce, social media, and digital technology, we now live in a “move fast and break things” world. No wonder so many start-ups and entrepreneurs focus on launching quickly instead of planning for business growth.
To help you scale your business and gain credibility, here are three tips to help you design an effective business growth strategy.
Entrepreneurs usually have no problem expressing their passion for their business and their products. Looking back, many founders realize that focusing on operations and efficiency from the start can help. It can create a stable business, control costs, attract important retailers, and improve forecasting.
For example, making inventory management a part of your startup’s product-led growth strategy can help you prepare to sell your products across multiple channels. Whether you choose to sell direct-to-consumer (DTC) or to, to a distributor, or work directly with a retailer, being aware of your product levels and location helps to ensure you can meet orders on time and avoid out-of-stocks. This has a major impact on long-term success and brand loyalty. Even companies with the best marketing growth strategy can’t sustain their business too long if the products aren’t available to satisfy and delight their customer base.
To sell on multiple platforms, you need to find partners that can help you with things you can't do yourself.
Many entrepreneurs begin their businesses in their homes. They often need help from outside sources like manufacturers, distributors, and software companies to grow. These partnerships help brands focus on long-term growth instead of just day-to-day operations.
The GS1 US Solution Partner Program offers a vetted network of trusted strategic partners with services, hardware, software, business intelligence, and database applications that can help start-ups scale efficiently. Their solutions can help with barcoding, product data management, easier data transmission with distributors and retailers, and more. In addition, their services can be the key to unlocking additional goals for your company, such as boosting sustainability or traceability in your supply chain.
Defining and understanding your target market audience is essential in today’s competitive retail world. For example, small consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands have thrived in recent years by targeting specific niche markets with unique needs such as dietary restrictions and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) values. According to the “CPG Growth Leaders” report from IRI and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which spotlights top-performing CPG companies, small brands gained approximately four sales dollar share points from 2018 to 2022, going from a 20.4 share in 2018 to 24.6 in 2022. Meanwhile, large brands (greater than $6 billion in sales) lost approximately 3.7 share points over that same period.
Your business growth strategy should include a deep demographic analysis and detailed buyer personas and then align those findings with the retailers, distributors, foodservice operators, marketplaces, and other sales channels that can offer you lasting connections with your target market audience. To gain entrance into these types of business relationships, you will need a GS1-sourced barcode to ensure your products can be sold on a mass scale.
A properly set up UPC barcode is an important part of establishing yourself as a credible, legitimate global brand. Most retailers and marketplaces check the identification number from a UPC in the GS1® database to make sure your product is specifically linked to your brand, and not someone else’s. If the two don’t match, you may be rejected, or you might need to relabel your products—both will cost money and delay your company’s growth.
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Most successful entrepreneurs design a growth strategy that allows them to keep innovating and growing their product lines. In fact, a recent McKinsey study found that the top 10% of companies earned almost twice as much revenue from products and services that didn’t exist a year before.
For businesses that have a strong growth strategy and a big-picture mindset, the GS1 Company Prefix option can provide the ability to assign 10-100,000 UPCs to your products as you grow. It will also help you create other types of identification numbers for cartons and pallets that may be required of your retail partners to ship products. Preparation for expansion is key to becoming an established brand.
Keeping the information tied to your UPCs up to date is critical for growth and for being a good partner to retailers, marketplaces, and distributors. As you make branding or packaging updates or find you need to adapt to regulatory changes, you might ask, “Do I need to change my UPC?”
Consider these three principles when introducing changes to an existing product:
If any changes to a product are significant enough that consumers or partners can tell the difference from its predecessors, you need to label it with a new UPC.
Example: Producing a limited-edition team jersey for one season, with a special patch that will not be available on current jerseys and will not be available next season.
When you have changes that necessitate a regulatory or liability disclosure to consumers or trading partners, you should assign a new UPC to ensure transparency.
Example: A snack brand has a new recipe that includes gluten, whereas the previous one did not.
A change that significantly affects the efficiency of the supply chain—such as alterations in shipping, storage, or receipt of the product.
Example: Any fresh product that is now being shipped as a frozen product—different types of shipping and storage are now required.
To facilitate this decision-making process, brand owners can utilize the GS1 Decision Support Tool, which provides a walkthrough to determine if a new UPC (also referred to as a GTIN) is needed.
Ultimately, for those entrepreneurs with big plans for your products and company, business growth strategies are a “must” if your goal is to become an established brand with loyal customers. GS1 US and our extensive network of partners can help support your growth with tools and guidance to create efficiency, boost your credibility, and open up new sales channels.
Barcodes from GS1 US® provide an authentic way to uniquely identify your products and locations in the supply chain and in e-commerce.
A GS1 Company Prefix allows businesses to get multiple barcodes at a single time as well as identify locations and mixed cases, create coupons, and create higher levels of packaging like a case or pallet.
Barcodes issued by GS1 US uniquely identify a single retail product online and in retail stores around the world. If you have only a few products that need barcodes, this might be the most cost-effective option for your company.
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