Scaling beyond founder relationships into a structured route to market.
FMCG growth often starts on the strength of one or two founder relationships with key buyers. It scales when that relationship becomes a repeatable key account and distribution model that doesn’t depend on any single person in the room.
A handful of strong retail or distributor relationships can carry an FMCG business a surprisingly long way. The ceiling shows up the moment those relationships need to scale to new categories, new retailers or new regions, and the informal way they were won doesn’t transfer to a second or third person.
Route-to-market complexity compounds fast — different retailers, different terms, different distribution models — and without a structured key account approach, every new relationship gets built from scratch.
What We Usually See First
- Key retail relationships that exist almost entirely in one founder or leader’s personal network, undocumented.
- Inconsistent terms and margins across retailers, negotiated ad hoc rather than against a defined account strategy.
- A distribution model that worked for the first few channels but wasn’t designed to extend cleanly into new ones.
- Forecasting that’s really a set of informal promises from buyers, not a structured account planning process.
If your biggest retail relationship would be genuinely at risk the day its current owner left the business, you don’t have a key account. You have a personal favour with a purchase order attached.