PLTFRM Goes Deep in Natural, Buys Presence Marketing

Shortly before the biggest week of the year for the natural products industry – Natural Products Expo West – one of the biggest companies in that industry has a new owner.

Presence Marketing, a natural products brokerage firm that grew out of its Chicagoland founding in 1990 to become the largest independent sales and marketing organization in its channel, has been bought by PLTFRM, a multi-channel sales, marketing, and investment company.

The deal takes PLTFRM, which has strong relationships with retailers like Target, Walmart, and Amazon – as well as hard goods companies like Best Buy and Home Depot – deep into the natural channel, where it had begun making inroads over the past year. The company began with BDirect, a leading Wal-Mart brokerage and brand incubator started by Noah Bremen.

“We are excited to welcome the incredible team from Presence into the PLTFRM family,” said Bremen, the CEO and Founder of PLTFRM in a statement announcing the deal Thursday night. “This acquisition positions PLTFRM as the most powerful partner for disruptive brands looking to scale within both digital and physical retail. By integrating Presence’s deep expertise in the natural & organic channel with PLTFRM’s omnichannel strategy and technology, we are unlocking new levels of growth and market access for our brand and retail partners. Together, we are poised for a bright future.”

Even as many new brands have begun to rely on social and online media as their launching pads for consumer introduction, customers of natural and specialty stores continue to command a strong audience and persist as important pathways to brand-building.

That’s something that PLTFRM recognized as early as last year, when the company’s chief growth officer, Saagar Mehta, told BevNET that the organization was starting to look at that channel as a line of business alongside its long-established big box relationships.

But in creating a tie-up with Presence, PLTFRM is buying what is, along with distributors UNFI and KeHE, one of the natural channel’s most important sources of product introduction.

Under founder and former CEO Bill Weiland, Presence became an important incubator of some of the natural channel’s signature brands, including Siete, Simple Mills, Clif, Vital Farms, Suja, and Zico. Founders, investors, and retailers would frequent Weiland’s massive estate in the Chicago suburbs – christened by some as the “Billagio” – to pore over sales data and innovation strategies.

Presence grew geographically to become a national agency through the purchase of other established brokerages. Weiland, himself a frequent investor in natural products companies, sold a minority stake in Presence to Vistar, a private equity firm, in 2016.

Now Presence’s own growth has become linked to yet another brokerage, but this time as a seller, not a buyer.

BevNET has reached out to Bremen and Weiland for comment.