Commercialization 101: How to Make and Scale Your Product

Why It Matters

Following this structured commercialization framework helps CPG startups accelerate market entry while minimizing regulatory and product‑market fit risks, a critical advantage for attracting capital and achieving sustainable growth.

Key Takeaways

• Conduct thorough consumer need and competitive analysis before product design
• Define precise target persona to align branding and product attributes
• Build a gold‑standard formulation and iterate with food scientists
• Ensure ingredient sourcing meets FSMA compliance and market cost constraints
• Align brand mission with product functionality for clear stakeholder communication

Summary

The video is a crash‑course on CPG commercialization, led by Jamie Valente Jordan, a two‑decade veteran who has taken thousands of products from benchtop to full‑scale profitability. He walks founders through the entire pipeline—from identifying a genuine consumer need, performing competitive, category and channel analyses, to pinpointing white‑space opportunities and crafting a focused target persona such as “yoga moms.”

Jamie stresses that product definition must stem from rigorous market research and a clear differentiation strategy, then move into formulation. He advises creating a gold‑standard prototype, iterating with food scientists to nail texture and flavor, and ensuring all ingredients meet FSMA regulations while staying within cost parameters. The ultimate goal is a final product that matches the gold standard at shelf‑life, not just at initial blend.

Branding, he argues, should be overlaid after the product is solidified, linking the brand’s mission directly to the product’s functional promise. This alignment prevents the common disconnect where a strong brand exists alongside a product that fails to embody its narrative. By tying mission, vision, and product attributes together, founders can communicate a coherent story to stakeholders and consumers alike.

The takeaway for entrepreneurs is clear: a disciplined, data‑driven approach to market analysis, formulation, compliance, and brand integration can dramatically reduce time‑to‑market, lower operational risk, and improve the odds of securing investment and scaling profitably.

Original Description

Getting your CPG product from idea to shelf is one of the hardest things a founder will ever do. In this Startup CPG webinar, Founder and CEO Daniel Scharff sits down with Jamie Valenti-Jordan — Founder & CEO of Catapult Commercialization Services and the MVP of Startup CPG's ops Slack channel — for a soup-to-nuts crash course on commercializing a food or beverage product. With 20 years of experience, an engineering and food science background, and over 400 brands and 2,000+ products under his belt, Jamie walks through every stage of the journey: from defining your product and target consumer, to finding and working with a co-manufacturer, to understanding what it actually costs to make your product at scale.

Whether you're still working out of a 400-square-foot kitchen or you're ready to make your first co-man run, this is the foundational session for any brand trying to figure out how operations actually work.

Takeaways

- Start with your consumer need, not your product — competitive, channel, and category analysis all feed into a defensible product concept

- Build your product first, then layer your brand on top so the two are clearly connected

- A formulator will iterate on texture first, then flavor — knowing this saves you time and frustration

- Primary packaging preserves your product; secondary packaging sells it — they are not the same job

- Running faster on a co-man line is almost always a better way to lower your cost than asking for a price cut

- Co-manufacturers are not predatory — they want to make your product, run a clean changeover, and move on to the next one

- MOQs are largely made-up numbers based on shift economics, not hard rules

- Never fold equipment purchases into your manufacturing agreement

- Your formulation should always be your IP; the co-man owns how they run their equipment

- Exit planning matters — know how to leave a co-man with your inventory and your relationships intact

Key Topics

- 00:00 Introduction & about tonight's session

- 05:00 Consumer need, white space, and category analysis

- 09:00 Defining your target consumer and dialing in your concept

- 12:30 Building your brand around your product

- 14:00 Working with a formulator: the gold standard and the iterative process

- 19:30 Packaging 101: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary

- 24:00 Process flow diagrams and scaling up (which is actually scaling down)

- 28:00 Mass balance and surface area-to-volume ratio

- 30:00 Self-manufacturing: pros, cons, and who should actually do it

- 33:00 Co-manufacturing: how they work, what they want, and how to approach them

- 44:00 Finding a co-man: databases, referrals, and what to say on the first call

- 48:00 Trials, contracts, and securing your co-man relationship

- 54:00 Costing, conversion costs, and how to actually bring your price down

- 58:00 Q&A: shelf life, formulator resources, and closing remarks

Connect with our guests:

Jamie Valenti-Jordan — Founder & CEO, Catapult Commercialization Services

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/fvmh97c/

Daniel Scharff — Founder, Startup CPG

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/danscharff

Work with Catapult: Special pricing available for Startup CPG members — drop into the Slack #ops channel or visit startupcpg.com for the link.

Free Startup CPG Resources:

- Formulator Directory: https://startupcpg.com/product-developer-directory

- 3PL, Freight, Warehouse & Distributor Databases: https://startupcpg.com

About Startup CPG:

Startup CPG is the largest community for emerging brands: 35,000+ Slack members, the #1 podcast in CPG, 100+ events per year, and award-winning resources to help brands grow. Join free today: https://startupcpg.com/sign-up

Stay connected:

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startupcpg

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/startupcpg

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