The Biggest Key to Success for Brands in the Sprouts Innovation Center 🌱

As someone with family and friends in Los Angeles right now, I do hope that if you’re in the area and reading this that you're safe and out of harm's way with the fires.

It always feels trivial writing and posting during horrific events especially when you know people who have been affected and I am hoping that the area gets relief as soon as possible.

I am always hesitant on how specific I want to get when it comes to retailer advice here and how I believe a brand can be successful inside of a retailer.

Retail is not black and white, so what works for one brand, might not be a fit for another.

Playbooks are rarely repeatable and it's the reason why so many high-level sales people who have had one big success continue to bounce around from brand to brand until they find another brand that they can apply that same successful playbook to.

As Obi Wan says, only a Sith deals in absolutes, so please don’t view this advice as me painting a broad strategy that I think all brands should follow.

That being said, most brands are looking for retail wins and new doors in 2025 (DUH!) and one of easiest ways to secure these wins are through retail innovation programs.

One of the most frequent conversations that I have with brands is them coming to WeStock to use our rebate function so that they can perform well during their 90-day trial in the Sprouts Innovation Center.

I would say that out of all of the innovation initiatives that new retailers run, Sprouts is the one that gets the most attention from emerging brands. It’s a dedicated set for new and emerging brands that rotates every 90 days with another group of great brands.

Sprouts is a dream retailer for most emerging brands and the easiest way to get your foot in the door is through their innovation center, but you need to be fully prepared for what it takes to succeed in that short of a time window and be honest with yourself on if you have the available cash to hit the weekly velocities they are looking for.

I know the intention from Sprouts with this program is to give emerging brands a shot to become everyday items and provide their loyal shoppers with an elevated and highly curated shopping experience.

The issue, at the end of the day, is that you can’t build shopper loyalty or a viable trade spend strategy around a 90-day test.

Several consumer studies have been conducted around how many purchases it takes for a consumer to become loyal to a brand and they all conclude that the starting point for brand loyalty is at least three purchases and you don’t truly cross chasm into consistent brand loyalty until you hit five purchases with that brand.

That is a lot to ask of a consumer in 90-days and therefore almost an impossible task for a brand to accomplish, but the good news is your not trying to establish consumer loyalty here, your just trying to win the business long term.

That is a goal you can accomplish if you can sprint and spend.

I know from my work with other brands that the success rate for brands in this program is low and I believe it would be collectively higher if brands approached this opportunity with more urgency.

The biggest piece of advice that I can give to a brand here is that you have to front load your trade spend to the primarily focus on the first month.

Your only goal in this 90-day period is to move enough product in the first 30 days to warrant a reorder and not just a reorder, but moving quick enough to get re-merchandised in the set again to move through a majority of that second order as well in the 90-day period. This is a sprint.

There are plenty of rebate platforms you can work with and if you are planning on making that part of your strategy, I would just push to allocate most of your budget to the first few weeks and ensure you also have a large enough budget set aside for ads that are targeting the Sprouts locations you are in with the offer.

Whether you plan to support with demos, UGC, or a roadshow stopping into each account personally - you want to prioritize that first month. The clock is ticking the moment your product hits the shelf and you need to focus on securing the reorder.

I outline Sprouts here, but multiple retailers have innovation programs and my belief is that this sprint focused approach to trade spend is well served across any retailer you are running a test with.

As an emerging brand you also have to have an honest conversation about if you can properly support a program like this in the time frame that they are allotting.

If your product needs a lot of consumer education to succeed, you might not have enough time to execute that. If your a brand that doesn’t have a robust trade spend budget than your most likely just setting yourself up for 90 days of business and nothing more.

If you can’t allocate the proper trade spend budget to these programs then I would pass on the opportunity until you can fully support it.

It’s such a better experience to go into a retailer on your own terms, feeling confident that you can support them, instead of feeling rushed to jump on an opportunity.

It’s much harder to get back into a retailer than it is to get into one initially.

The moment your product hits that shelf, you are on the clock, make sure you have a plan.