You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know And That’s Why You’re Not Ready

If you’re a fast-growing brand, here’s something you need to hear:

You’re probably not ready.
Not for national.
Not for a second SKU.
Not for that buyer meeting you’re hyping yourself up for.

And it’s not because you’re not smart.
It’s because you’ve never been taught what actually matters once the hype wears off.

Most brands scale fast and learn slow.

You launch hot.
You post the wins.
You hire sales reps and brokers.
And suddenly, you’re in 3,000 stores wondering why your velocities aren’t holding and your second SKU didn’t hit.

And it’s because the metrics you were tracking,
social followers, launch week sales, doors opened,
aren’t the metrics that make brands last.

So what do buyers actually care about?

Hint: it’s not your vibe.
It’s not your viral moment.
It’s not your influencer campaign or your digital CPM.

It’s things like:

• $/TDP – Are you pulling your weight in distribution?

• Incrementality – Are you growing the category, or just shifting dollars around?

• Repeat – Is the shopper coming back, or was it a one-time trial from a cool TikTok?

• ACV drag – Are you growing in high-ACV stores, or hiding behind expansion?

• Conversion by occasion or trip type – Are you winning in impulse? Meal occasions? Replacing another item in the basket?

This is category management.
This is shopper insights.
And this is what no one taught you because your growth outpaced your foundation.

That’s not your fault.

But it is your responsibility now.

You need to be able to answer questions like:

• How are we helping the retailer’s total category goals?

• What’s the reason to believe we deserve more space?

• What actually happens to the shelf if we get pulled?

If you’re answering with vibes and branding slides, you’re not ready.
If you don’t know how to translate your data into a category story, you’re not ready.

The good news? Most brands aren’t.

Which means if you do figure this out, you win.
You stop playing defense in buyer meetings.
You stop guessing at what worked.
You start building something that lasts.

This is what category and shopper insights are really about:

Knowing the game you’re playing and what actually gets you kept.