Retail Growth Academy
Your $97 price is held for 15:00

For CPG brands doing $50-100K+ on Amazon / Shopify

The Step-by-Step Framework to Get Your Products into Physical Retail Stores

You already proved people want it. You’ve got momentum online already. The retail part is a different beast, and it is mostly a system and follow up, which, when done in the right order, can lead to massive retail success and unlock a whole new growth engine.

6 Phases. 38 Lessons. Real Working Framework. Phase by phase, from a price stack a buyer will sign to the lifecycle of a product on shelves.

The Retail Ready Toolkit: the course portal on a laptop, the five phase books, and the template pack

The Retail Ready Toolkit. Six phases, the template pack, and the three calculators.

Just $97 $999 (90% off) as of .

Yes, I Want To Be In Physical Stores

Instant digital access · start in the next 2 minutes

RGA insight

Four people I keep going back to

Real accounts from operators, buyers and founders who have been in the trenches.

TARGET

The order that wasn't enough

"A buyer I knew placed a 30 store order, and we were celebrating. Two months later, we were out of business."

I read a piece by a guy who used to buy for Target, Matt Adelmann. A brand he knew got a 30 store order, shipped it, celebrated, and about two months later they were out of business. Not because it did not sell. Because after paying to make it and ship it, there was no money left to help it sell. He put it plainly: a retailer will not do this work for you.

Matt AdelmannFormer Target buyer→
30 stores wasn't enough.
WHOLEFOODSMARKET

Speak their language

"Silence doesn't mean no. It usually means you didn't speak the buyer's language."

Samantha Fletcher is a senior category merchant at Whole Foods, and she says she reads every cold email that comes in, so silence is not her ignoring you. It is her reading "this is the best drink you have ever had" and having nothing to do with it. She wants a brand that knows who it is, in the buyer's terms, with numbers attached. That is a writing problem, and writing problems are fixable in an afternoon.

Samantha FletcherWhole Foods Market→
TeaSquares

The real math

"We invoiced $32,000 and only received $21,000."

Jordan Buckner at TeaSquares invoiced $32,000 and received $21,000. Eleven thousand of it went to chargebacks, fees and returns, and about $8,400 of that was returned inventory fees alone. His buyer left and he had nobody to call. That is 34 percent, gone, on money he had already spent to make.

Jordan BucknerTeaSquares→
ABSURDSNACKS

Get on the shelf first

"We thought the product would sell itself. It doesn't."

Two college seniors at Absurd Snacks finally got lunch with a Whole Foods buyer, and her first question was, so where do you see these on the shelf? They called it a snack, customers used it like granola, and they had never picked a home. They went away and fixed it. Then the PO showed up 18 months later with no warning and one line of instruction: go store to store and start selling.

Absurd SnacksOn their first Whole Foods store→

And the one I think about most is a granola brand that went from 100 stores to 1,500 in twelve months, could not make enough product to fill the shelves, and got dropped by its biggest accounts inside 18 months.

To be honest, that is the outcome most people are chasing when they say they want retail. So the order of operations in here is built to stop that, on purpose, even when it feels slow.

These are published accounts from named operators and founders, quoted for comment. Retail Growth Academy is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Target, Whole Foods Market, TeaSquares or Absurd Snacks.

Yes, I Want To Be In Physical Stores

Instant digital access · start in the next 2 minutes

Who is teaching this

I learned retail from the brand side, not the buyer side

Robert Gomez sitting on pallets of Kaffe stock in the company warehouse
Robert Gomez in the Kaffe warehouse. This is the photo Business Insider ran.

So let me get the obvious question out of the way, because you are already thinking it. Who is this guy, and why should you take retail advice from him.

I am not a retail buyer and I never have been. I am a product founder, the same as you. I started Kaffe in 2016 because I wanted better coffee at home and could not find the right tools for it, and I launched with one coffee grinder in one color. I did all of that while I still had a full time job in corporate finance, and I finished that run as a senior finance manager at Microsoft.

The grinder worked online first. It did about $10 million in sales on Amazon, and Business Insider wrote a piece about it, which was a strange week.

Then I tried to take it into actual stores, and that is where I found out that most of what I knew about selling online was close to useless. The pitch is different. The math is different. And the part nobody warns you about is everything that happens after the buyer says yes.

It took a while to figure out. Today Kaffe is in roughly 4,000 Walmart stores nationwide, plus Target, Macy's, Home Depot and QVC. We ship to 42 Walmart distribution centers every week, and in a slow month that one grinder moves 25,000 to 30,000 units through Walmart alone, which is about three times the next brand sitting on the same shelf. Somewhere in the middle of that we landed at No. 1031 on the Inc. 5000, and 71st in consumer products, which I mostly found out about from a screen at a conference.

That is my result, and it is not a promise about yours. But it does mean that when I tell you what order to do this in, I am telling you the order I actually had to learn, mostly by getting it wrong first.

4,000Walmart stores carrying the brand
$10Min Amazon sales on one product line
42Walmart distribution centers shipped weekly
8 figuresbuilt while working a full time job
No. 1031on the Inc. 5000, and No. 71 in consumer products
25k–30kunits a month through Walmart in a slow month
Robert Gomez
Robert GomezFounder, Kaffe · Retail Growth Academy

The receipts

Business Insider headline: I've made $10 million in sales for my Amazon coffee grinder brand
Business Insider$10 million in sales, written up in April 2023.
Inc. 5000 rank reveal showing Kaffe Products at number 1031
Inc. 5000No. 1031 overall, No. 71 in consumer products.
The Kaffe team at their trade show booth listing retail partners
On the floorThe Kaffe booth, with the retail partners listed behind it.
Robert Gomez on a podcast episode titled He Built An 8-Figure Brand While Working A 9 to 5
InterviewedWalking through the whole build, start to finish.
Yes, I Want To Be In Physical Stores

Instant digital access · start in the next 2 minutes

Picture this

It is six months from now, and you did the work in the order it is laid out. Your price stack holds up at a 35 percent retailer margin. Your one sheet says what your product does for a category instead of what it means to you. You have 60 named accounts and two contact names on each one, and about seven weeks ago a buyer at a regional chain asked for a case pack and three samples.

Then this shows up on a Tuesday, while you are doing something else.

PO
Mailnow
Purchase order received
Hillcrest Markets, PO 4471. 42 stores, 168 cases, ship window Oct 6 to Oct 13.

One buyer said yes. Forty two stores. And now the actual work starts, which is the part I care about.

So let me take a $4.99 item off a shelf and walk it backwards, because this is the math nobody does before they email a buyer. The store wants about 30 percent, so $1.50 comes off the top right away. If you are going through a distributor, they take their piece too, call it 45 cents. Then there is trade spend, which is the promos and the free cases and the discounts you agreed to without reading closely, another 55 cents or so. And the product itself cost you $1.49 to make and get there.

Add those up and what is left is about a dollar. One dollar, on a $4.99 item. That is not me being dramatic, that is just arithmetic, and you can check every line of it in the first calculator.

Now here is why the dollar is fine. Two hundred doors, three units a store a week, that is 600 units a week, so about $600 a week in gross profit, which is a little over $31,000 a year from accounts that reorder on their own schedule while you sleep. And the reason I want you doing this math on day one instead of month nine is that the same arithmetic tells you when to say no.

Because a yes is not the finish line, it is the point where the stakes change. The thing that kills brands in retail is almost never the product. It is saying yes to a purchase order that costs more to fill than it pays, and then waiting 60 to 90 days to get paid on it.

Yes, I Want To Be In Physical Stores

Instant digital access · start in the next 2 minutes

This is for you if

And to be frank, if you are pre revenue, or you want somebody to make the calls for you, this is not it. This is a course and a set of tools. You do the work.

Yes, I Want To Be In Physical Stores

Instant digital access · start in the next 2 minutes

What is actually inside

Six phases, 38 lessons, released on a 90 day schedule so you finish a thing before the next thing shows up. The SHELF System is the spine: Strategize, Hunt, Engage, Land, Flywheel.

Everything included, with a total value of $999 and $97 today

Still $97 $999 (90% off).

Yes, I Want To Be In Physical Stores

Instant digital access · start in the next 2 minutes

Zero-risk: go through the first phase. If you don’t walk away with a price stack that holds a retailer margin and a buyer list you can actually work, reply to your receipt email and we’ll refund you, no questions, and you keep everything you’ve unlocked.

$9790% off Get on shelves