Fractional Chief Commercial Officer for founder-led CPG and Consumer Brands
Your commercial engine is working.
Just not together.
Founder-led CPG and consumer brands don’t usually break because demand disappears.
They slow down because channel growth creates commercial complexity faster than the business can align around it.
Growth should be easier than this.
You’ve built something real. The product is strong, the team is capable, and the effort is there. But somewhere along the way growth got harder, slower, and more exhausting than it should be.
The playbook at $500K won’t work at $10M or $25M, no matter how much effort or manpower you throw at it. And the market isn’t making it easier: tariffs, consolidation, margin pressure, shifting consumer behavior.
That’s when complexity starts outpacing clarity.
The pattern
Does any of this feel familiar?
If more than two of these are true, growth complexity is starting to create drag.
Sales & Marketing aren’t using the same plan
Missed opportunities you weren’t ready for
Growth is getting harder to predict
You can’t confidently prioritize the work
Too much time spent on fixing instead of growing
The team is reactive instead of proactive
The measurable cost
This isn’t just a feeling. It’s measurable.
The pattern you’re recognizing shows up in the research. Founder-led consumer brands are losing measurable revenue to the exact drag you’re feeling. It’s rarely the market, the product, or the team. It’s the misalignment underneath all of them.
55%
of CPG companies say they are slowed by internal friction and functional silos
75%
report they can’t consistently execute at retail because they lack operational infrastructure
61%
report difficulty executing promotions on schedule, even after trade budget is spent
47%
say the field is executing without the pricing, trade, and GTM support it needs
50%
can’t confidently say which trade investments are working
Source: Promotion Optimization Institute, 2026 State of the Industry Report
The upside
$1M – $2.5M
what a $25M brand can add in the next 12 months simply by improving alignment – without changing product, market, or team.
McKinsey research
Three areas of strain
Most brands are held back by one of three areas.
Strategy. Ownership. Operations. Each engagement is scoped around the primary source of drag.
These are the lenses we use to diagnose where the commercial function is breaking down.
01
Strategic Alignment
When the commercial strategy hasn’t kept pace with the market: underperforming channels, unclear priorities, capital spread too thin.
02
Ownership Architecture
When the business has outgrown the playbook: undefined swim lanes, recycled decisions, too much depending on too few people.
03
Operating Rhythms
When strategy breaks down in the handoffs: misaligned functions, inconsistent execution, spending more time firefighting than building.
The Chief Commercial Officer role, defined
The connective tissue between every function that drives growth.
A CMO owns marketing. A CRO owns revenue. A Chief Commercial Officer owns the full commercial function: sales, marketing, trade, channel, and the systems and alignment that let them execute together.
Commercial systems – CRM, marketing automation, demand gen infrastructure, financial visibility – are part of the commercial function, not adjacent to it. When your systems are the constraint, we’re in that work with you.
Proven across categories
Experience that spans growth environments.
Built from real operating experience across growth stages, channel models, and leadership challenges.
Who you’re working with
Marshall Welch
I’ve led and rebuilt commercial systems across enterprise and emerging brands, especially where growth outpaced coordination. I’m particularly strong with craft beverage, natural/specialty, and founder-led brands navigating channel complexity.
I’ve built demand generation engines at $2B enterprises, rebuilt CRM instances so automation actually delivers value, stood up financial modeling functions with CFOs to track program profitability, and have built marketing fundamentals from scratch for craft brands. It’s an operator background, which matters when you’re deciding who should be in the work with you.
Ready to move forward?
See what’s creating the drag – and what to address first.
The free Trail Finder assessment takes a few minutes and gives you a clearer read on what’s holding growth back.
It’s the fastest way to see what to focus on first.
We work with a limited number of clients at a time – by design.