Growing a new product business is hard to do alone

Allison Ball, a former Grocery Buyer & Head of Grocery at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco, now consults with CPG clients on the behind-the-scenes of wholesale & retail. Her clients range from small vendors launching their first product, to entrepreneurs opening their first market, to well-established retail stores and nationally known food producers. She concentrates on supporting sustainable, community-focused businesses, promoting unique, delicious products, and coaching small business owners on developing strong management teams, creating effective operational systems, and building strong business models.

Synergy is the sales force for brands that don't have their own. Betsy and her team assist brands with pricing and promotional strategy, broker management, the category review process, and data & analytics. Synergy assigns a lead person to help with overall strategy and to be the core communicator within the team. And we have a team of seasoned CPG sales professionals to manage natural and organic retailers in their assigned territory. Betsy is a 20-year industry veteran having experience in both conventional and natural retail with Jewel Food Stores in Chicago and Wild Oats in Boulder. Additionally she has held positions on the manufacturing side, with White Wave Foods and in distribution at UNFI. For the past 4 years Betsy held key roles at IGNITE Sales Management, most recently as SVP of Sales, where she helped emerging and mid-sized Natural and Organic brands gain distribution at retail, develop promotional and trade strategies, solidify channel strategies, and manage broker relationships. Additionally she managed the IGNITE portfolio of brands at Whole Foods Market, representing over $100MM in retail sales.

The Good Trends is a BtoB Gourmet Food marketplace, connecting local and healthier food brands with neighborhood stores. Our purpose is to increase access and affordability to the US consumers to healthier, more local food products by reinventing food wholesale and making it more transparent and streamlined. Our BtoB wholesale platform works from a simple premise. On one side, the number of local and healthier food brands is exploding, yet they struggle to get discovered by consumers through wholesale channels. On the other side, neighborhood stores are looking for new sources of revenues and have in general a huge amount of underused shelf space. This opportunity to connect the right brands, with the right retail at the right time is the win-win model we are building. And by doing so we will help consumers eat better, entrepreneurs grow their brands, retail owners grow their business.

Entrepreneurial business leader, motivated by challenge, dedicated to service excellence founded on pillars of integrity, empathy, honesty, and authenticity. Visionary who seeded natural personal care products in Food, Drug, and Mass retailers — Walmart, Target, Walgreens, CVS, Kroger, Albertsons, Costco — achieving exponential growth in sales, margins, and market share. Conceived bold business ambitions and propelled realization by focusing on growth strategy, quality, cash flow, and financing — identifying opportunities and raising capital.