Malk Organics
Brand Background
Born with a severe dairy allergy, founder August Vega spent most of her lifetime struggling to find foods that would keep her healthy. Years later, when her son was born with the same allergy, her condition motivated her mission: create a better dairy alternative.
Initially selling at farmer’s markets in the Austin area, MALK was noticed by Whole Foods and became a national brand within 12 months of being founded.
The Challenge
Flat Sales
After 3 years of 100% year over year growth MALK’s sales were beginning to normalize and slow. With product placements in over 85% of the natural and specialty channel and new innovations still in development, MALK faced a significant challenge – how could they continue to double sales each year without innovations and very little remaining market share to conquer?
The Solution
Outsourced Sales and Marketing Team
MALK engaged Venice Made to step in and support the MALK sales team as a fully staffed, fractional sales, sales operations, marketing and merchandising team.
Forecast and Opportunity Identification
Key to the effort was a bottoms-up and top-down sales forecast to create common knowledge across the business to fully understand the current sales landscape and open opportunities. Venice Made also created a detailed sales reporting tool that detailed weekly sales across all retail stores and channels, door by door and product by product.
Use the Data, Luke
One of the biggest challenges for MALK was understanding how their product was selling at the store level. SPINS and distribution sales velocity reports are costly yet critical to pinpointing issues within retail such as lost facings and opportunity for sales by addressing product voids. Venice Made was able to accelerate data procurement by building a case for return on investment if the data was provided as well as an actionable plan and sales commitments using this data to focus efforts.
Trade Spend
Much of MALK’s trade spend had been initiated years prior and the business had little sense of how or if it was driving trial and delivering a return on investment to the MALK bottom line. Venice Made provided a deep analysis of trade and promos across all lines of business. Trade and promo efforts were shifted, and control was put in the hands of the MALK business vs. distribution partners.
Results
87-120% sales growth year over year during Venice Made’ s tenure with MALK (4 years)
Acquisition of 2700 new retail doors
Channel expansion into Food Service and Conventional Grocery
Development and launch of Canada Market within 6 months of inception. 331 retail doors FY1
ACV increase of 29%
Social – 1091% follower lift (IG and FB)