Golden Thread CPG To Bring Big Business Insight To Early Stage Brands

For early stage CPG food brands, navigating the inner workings of selling into retail can easily lead to disaster. Golden Thread CPG wants to be their guide.

The new broker and sales planning firm, created by Rachelle Lynch, is aiming to ease that transition through a range of á la carte services. The goal? Help emerging brands set a solid foundation and grasp the fundamentals of selling in retail.

“I felt like I could be of real service to founders and people who were really new to this industry in a way that – they just don’t know what they don’t know. It’s such a brittle and important time for [brands], one bad move and it could have really bad financial implications,” she said.

The former Magic Spoon head of sales brings over 20 years of experience selling in the CPG food industry from roles at Mason Dixie Foods, Hu, Jeni’s and Burt’s Bees. She is supported by two equally experienced women, Petra Kauzar (formerly national sales director at GoodPop) and Jessica Boroi (director of sales planning and strategy at Magic Spoon).

The women-powered team plans to offer services such as sales leadership, strategy planning, building go-to-market strategies, and more – depending on what the client needs. Lynch’s model is built around offering services and support in a “fractional way” to brands who “couldn’t afford us, shouldn’t afford us – like they should not be paying for these kinds of services at this stage of their lifecycle.”

Only about a month in, the firm already has three clients on deck and a fourth starting with them in January. Lynch said the original plan was to find brands that were DTC-only, doing about $5 to $10 million in revenue a year and help them prop up the retail side of their business. But then Petit Pot reached out as former chief sales officer Pierre Jamet planned a departure and Golden Thread notched its first big client.

However, as the company grows and evolves, Lynch believes it will take small-scale, focused approach with its client list. She also sees potential in helping brands “graduate” to onboarding a full-time sales person and help them through the transition into that format.

For now, she is working to solve the puzzle of how many brands Golden Thread can serve, and with what services, while navigating the mundane aspects of running a small business like setting up web domains and payment systems.

“I’m like the speakeasy of sales support at the moment where if you know the handshake or the secret knock you can get in, but I don’t have a deck or a site or anything yet.”