Now accepting founding member applications — invite-only · free to join · limited spots

The operator community for growth-stage CPG

Where brand builders talk straight.

CPG Exchange is a curated Slack community and toolkit for founders and operators at growth-stage CPG brands — the people navigating retail pushes, line expansions, and the gap between where they are and where the big players are.

Apply for founding member access Free · Invite only
or
Get your brief — free as PDF, $39 to own Free as PDF · $39 as your Google Doc
CPG Exchange · founding members
Channels
# intros
# sales
# marketing
# finance
# operations
# asks
# intros
S
Sarah K. Head of Marketing · 9:14am
Hey everyone — just joined. Running marketing at a $15M better-for-you snack brand. Currently prepping for our first Whole Foods sell-in. Excited to be here.
M
Marcus T. Founder · 9:22am
Welcome Sarah! We just came out of a Sprouts review — happy to share what worked if it helps your Whole Foods prep.
K
Karen H. CPG Exchange · 9:31am
Great to have you Sarah. Jump into #sales when you're ready — there's a good thread on WFM category incrementality framing that's directly relevant to where you are.
✦   Founding member community · Now forming · Invite only   ✦
Who this is for

Built for the operators doing the work — not the ones talking about it.

🏗️
The founder-led brand
You're running marketing, sales, and product while trying to build the systems that let you stop doing all three.
$5M – $30M revenue
📈
The growth-stage operator
You have a small team and enterprise-level expectations. The blank page problem is costing you real time every week.
$20M – $75M revenue
⚡
The fractional leader
You're serving multiple brands simultaneously. Tools and frameworks that travel across engagements are worth real money.
Multi-brand operator
🏦
The PE-backed team
You need to move at portfolio company speed without a full agency stack. Commercial-grade documents, fast.
Post-acquisition operator
The community

A room where the real conversations happen.

Not a LinkedIn comment section. Not a conference hallway. A curated Slack community where CPG operators share what's actually working — and what isn't.

#
intros
Who you are, what you're building, where you're at. The first stop for every new member.
#
sales
Retail push strategies, buyer meeting prep, broker relationships, sell-in windows, and distribution wins.
#
marketing
Briefs, campaigns, agency relationships, creative feedback, brand strategy, and what's actually working.
#
finance
Margins, trade spend, fundraising, unit economics, and the numbers conversations most communities avoid.
#
operations
Co-mans, supply chain, packaging, lead times, and the operational complexity that never shows up in pitch decks.
#
news
What's happening in the category — retailer moves, market shifts, competitor launches, and trend signals worth paying attention to.
#
asks
The most important channel. Real questions, honest answers, no spin. If you need help, this is where you ask.
#
vendor-hub
Vetted agencies, brokers, co-mans, and service providers recommended by members who've actually worked with them.
Founding member access

Be in the room first.

Founding members shape the culture, the conversations, and the direction of CPG Exchange. This is a curated community — we review every application to make sure the room stays valuable.

  • Early access to the community before public launch — be in the room first
  • Direct access to Karen for questions, brief reviews, and strategic feedback
  • Input on channels, topics, and who else gets invited
  • A founding member cohort call — one live session with the first group
  • Permanent founding member recognition in the community
  • One complimentary brief on us — yours to own, white-labeled
Apply for founding member access →

Free to join · Invite only · Limited spots

The toolkit

The brief that thinks with you.

Not a template. Not a generator. A thought partner that works through the decisions with you — surfacing conflicts, asking the follow-up questions you forgot, and producing a brief that's actually ready to use.

01
Tell us what you're working on
A focused intake built around what a brief actually needs to accomplish — not generic fields, but the specific decisions that determine whether your brief gets the right work out of an agency, a team, or a retailer.
5–10 minutes
02
Work through the decisions
As you answer, the system flags contradictions, surfaces tensions you haven't resolved, and asks the follow-up questions a senior operator would ask. Price vs. positioning. Audience vs. channel. Claim vs. reality. Nothing gets papered over.
Thought partner, not autocomplete
03
Get a brief that's actually ready
Free version delivered as a branded PDF — professional and shareable. Paid version delivered as a white-labeled Google Doc with your logo, fully editable and ready to send.
PDF free · Google Doc paid
The product

One brief. Four types.

The brief is where most CPG launches succeed or fail — before a single piece of creative is made, before the agency sees anything, before the retailer is pitched. Get it right here first.

📋
The Brief
The brief that thinks with you. Not a template you fill in — a thought partner that works through the decisions, flags what's unresolved, and produces something an agency, internal team, or co-man can actually act on.
Free as branded PDF · $39 as your white-labeled Google Doc
Creative Brief
For agency and internal creative work. Campaign, packaging, content, brand.
Innovation Brief
For new product development and line extensions. The brief before the brief.
Product Brief
For co-man, R&D, and packaging partners. Spec-level clarity from a strategic starting point.
R&D Lite Brief
For early-stage concept exploration before full development begins. Think it through before you commit.
  • Surfaces conflicts before they become expensive
  • Forces the tradeoffs you've been avoiding
  • Flags what's unresolved before it reaches the agency
  • Target consumer with retailer-specific context
  • Single-minded message and reason to believe
  • Mandatories, guardrails, and hard stops
  • Category and competitive framing
  • Timeline with CPG's real constraints built in
  • White-labeled paid version — your logo, your document
Get your brief → Select your brief type after clicking
Document pricing

Simple pricing. No surprises.

Try it free as a branded PDF. Upgrade to own it — white-labeled with your logo, delivered as an editable Google Doc for $39.

Free Document
$0
PDF · CPG Exchange footer
  • Full brief or sell sheet content
  • Structured intake form
  • Delivered as a professional PDF
  • CPG Exchange footer included
  • Shareable and ready to reference
Get free document
Paid Document
$39
per document · white-labeled Google Doc
  • Everything in the free version
  • CPG Exchange footer removed
  • Your logo and custom footer added
  • Delivered as editable Google Doc
  • Fully yours — no attribution
Get started
Credit Pack · 5 Documents
$169
one time · $33.80 per doc
  • 5 white-labeled Google Docs
  • Mix and match document types
  • Credits never expire
  • Your logo on every document
  • Covers most brands for a full year
Buy pack
Why this exists

The community and toolkit I wished existed at every brand I've led.

I've spent 20+ years building brands from the inside — Starbucks, Bulletproof, Oobli, The Good Patch, and several other brands I've built and supported. I've written hundreds of briefs, sat across from retail buyers, and watched agencies come back with the wrong work because the brief didn't do its job.

The brief problem isn't a writing problem. It's a thinking problem. The decisions that make a brief work — the tradeoffs between price and positioning, audience and channel, claim and reality — don't get made because nobody's in the room to push back.

CPG Exchange is the room. The community is where operators talk straight. The toolkit is what makes the thinking visible before it becomes expensive.

20+
Years building CPG brands from the inside
100+
Products launched across brands
$20M+
Raised across brands as founder and operator
Concept → Global
From early-stage startups to Starbucks scale
🔒 Your brand information is never shared with other brands or third parties
📁 Documents you create belong entirely to you
🛡️ Plain-English privacy — no legal boilerplate
✉️ Questions? karen@cpg.exchange
Ready?

Find your people.

A curated community for operators who are actually doing the work. And a brief that thinks with you when you need to get it right.

Apply for founding member access → Working on a sell-in deck? Let us help.