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Interview with Kyle Barnholt the Podcast Host and Founder of TrewUp
37 Plays4 months ago
In this debut episode of The CPG Trade Spend Podcast, host Kyle Barnholt is joined by his good friend and TrewUp’s Head of Customer Success, Chris Ondrus. Together, they take a deep dive into the world of trade spend, deductions, and promotions—shedding light on the challenges brands face and the innovative solutions that are changing the game.
Kyle shares his journey from Hain Celestial to Manuka Health, where he saw firsthand the inefficiencies in trade spend management, leading him to co-found TrewUp. Chris and Kyle discuss the hidden costs of deductions, the impact on sales teams, and how data-driven insights can help brands not only recover lost dollars but also optimize their overall trade strategy.
Tune in for real-world experiences, expert insights, and actionable strategies to help your brand spend smarter and drive profitability.
Learn more at TrewUp.com.
🔗 Don’t forget to subscribe and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @CPGTradeSpendPodcast for more insights!
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Transcript
Introduction to the CPG Trade Spend Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the CPG Trade Spend Podcast. I'm Kyle Barnholt, and I've spent years helping brands navigate the messy world of trade spend, deductions, and promotions.
00:00:10
Speaker
This podcast is all about breaking down the complexities of trade spend, uncovering hidden insights, and turning data into profitable decisions. Whether you're a finance pro, sales leader, or just trying to make sense of it all, you're in the right place.
00:00:26
Speaker
Let's dive in.
00:00:29
Speaker
All right, without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to one of my best friends in life, someone I have the privilege to work with at Truup. He's the head of customer success, Chris Andrus. Thanks, Kyle. Yeah, happy to be here talking about one of the hottest topics in CBG.
00:00:45
Speaker
What's a better way to kick this off to learn more about you, your background, your experience? You know, we'll probably have some fun stories along the way. And and I think the general idea is is that by the end of the episode, we'll we'll know a little bit more about you.
00:00:59
Speaker
why you're on a mission to bring clarity to the black hole that we call trade spend. So fun stuff here with with deductions
Industry Challenges in Trade Spend Technology
00:01:06
Speaker
and whatnot. And you know as i as I think about deductions, I think it's important that we understand how we got here, right? And I know in my career, um there were several holes, there were there were several opportunities um within the industry and we had to throw technology at it, right? We had to create programs, we had to,
00:01:28
Speaker
we had to create software we had to fill a void um and that's that came to us through technology um and so i think you know you spent 15 years at hain that was ah must have been a fun experience um tell me a little bit about what you did at hain and you know any any gaps um or any any needs in the industry and and just basically how we got here how how'd you get here pal I like to say I was born and raised at Hain because like I started there
Chris Andrus's Journey in Sales and Data
00:02:02
Speaker
fresh out of college. I started as a retail rep in Southern California calling on whole foods and sprouts and um Henry's and, you know, these other natural stores, but calling on the store, not the actual headquarter and going and doing resets overnight.
00:02:21
Speaker
So, you know, I've got a great affinity for Payne Celestial, I learned so much there. As I worked my way up through kind of the sales side of the business, um you know, I had a lot of really great opportunities calling on and retail chains and the buyers and going through category reviews. And as you can imagine, you know, we had, I think, 40 brands at one point and over 2,000 items. And so there was a lot of complexity and data was always our friend when we could get it
00:02:52
Speaker
And you know throughout that experience, um you know it became clear that deductions were major pain point for us as an organization. And we're trying to do a lot to actually solve that pain with you know humans, having people go in and pull the deductions and review them. and try to get information out of them or leaning on our broker partners to try to figure out how do we get information and data out of these documents to you know true up our plans and our trade promotion software or simply just get insights into what was happening in the business and how much we were spending with our retail partners and distributors and so in that experience i think it became clear to me that
00:03:38
Speaker
man, if we could if we could get the data out of these documents and into a format that you can work with, that you can actually leverage that information and to get insights and drive your business forward, that it would be really, really powerful.
Founding Truup with Data Technology
00:03:55
Speaker
And so, um you know, a couple years later, partnered up with Scott Cousins, our business partner, and, you know, we used the latest and greatest and software technology to start to read these documents and then structure the data in a way that brands can leverage it. And, you know, it's been <unk>s been a really fun ride and we continue to innovate and try to bring more to our customers and to the industry to just help brands manage their trade spend, get insights out of their deductions,
00:04:30
Speaker
and ensure that you know every dollar they're spending in the marketplace is intentional and can drive more revenue and more profit into the bottom line so they can continue to get their awesome products into the
Manual Deduction Management Struggles
00:04:42
Speaker
consumer's hands.
00:04:42
Speaker
and I want to go back to the early days at Hain when you were uncovering, hey, there's an issue. Yeah. Right. and um Talk to me about the labor that went in behind that. So you had analysts reviewing deductions, right? And from the annual process and and maybe tell me about number of people and time spent. And if you even got the clarity out of all that time and labor and energy.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, good question. I think at one point we had something like 30, 35 people thirty five people that we're trying to go through all the deductions across them all of our customers and really try to get information out of that, those documents. And i would actually you know say kudos to the team there at getting enough information that we could start to understand what was happening, but by no means were we able to get to, you know, hundred page PDF, drill down and get the UPCs out and each of the retailers that was associated with that deduction. And so, you know, we're getting a high level
00:05:56
Speaker
But we were spending a massive of amount of time and human capital on trying to get that when in reality, if we didn't have to do that, think about those 30 people outselling or marketing or, you know, helping with other parts of the finance and accounting team. So, um yeah, it was very challenging.
00:06:17
Speaker
labor intensive and at the end of the day we just we were getting paper cuts we weren't getting the stuff we needed to really run the business we're getting just enough but you know we just weren't getting down into the detail the nitty-gritty that we needed and unfortunately that had a ripple effect across the organization so for the sales team you know we had to push on the brokers as hard as we could to try to get them to maybe go a little bit further and try to get some of those data points, which was kind of zero sum game and ended up burning them out. and And then from a sales team perspective, just on the insights and how do we figure out if these promotions were successful or not? you By the end of the the day, you don't have the data.
00:07:04
Speaker
You ran out of time and you move on to the next project. So it was detrimental to us as a sales team and of course marketing executive team. They wanted to know more and we just we couldn't get there. Yeah.
00:07:16
Speaker
I think, you know, so I guess to ask a better question, right? so you were, you had those 30 analysts, you were getting some granularity, but you know How much of your own personal time or your sales time were you spending you know decoding or or trying to decipher the information that those analysts were giving you when, you know in theory, you could have been out there
Balancing Sales and Deduction Decoding
00:07:38
Speaker
selling?
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think you know from just ah ah sales perspective, person's perspective, right? We're hired to go out and do our best to get our products into more stores so that more consumers can access those products. And unfortunately, what ends up happening when as a salesperson, you have to jump into that process and go through deductions yourself.
00:08:05
Speaker
You end up going from focused on that next category and review and being strategic about your promotional plan that you're going to present and you know how you're going to talk about your new products to spending hours and hours and hours just trying to go through the backup.
00:08:21
Speaker
And in some cases, you know guys and gals just didn't even do that because they're like, hey, this isn't my job. I'm not going to go through that. And so, yeah, it's ah it's kind of a mashup of you're either going to spend a lot of time and waste a lot of time in an area that you weren't hired and you're not going to be best suited to help the organization or you're just not going to do it at all.
00:08:44
Speaker
And then that also creates its own issues. So, you Yeah, no, and totally. And so you wanted to sell. I hear you. you know And then you moved on to Manuka Health, right?
00:08:56
Speaker
Awesome product. i know the product. Love it. Yeah. but definitely not at the the size of paint, right? So you had a smaller focus, like a more narrow focus, right? Go sell more.
00:09:09
Speaker
um Talk to me about your experience managing deductions there and selling the product at Manuka and kind of your experience at Manuka and also how that helped lead you to where we are today with
Lessons from Manuka Health
00:09:22
Speaker
TrueUp.
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good that's a good one too. I mean, I think obviously very different in terms of when working with Manuka Health, which great organization, love all the people there that I had the opportunity to work with, but you know single brand, a couple SKUs versus thousands and um you know working with really, really competent, smart folks, but that are from a different country. So don't necessarily understand the ins and outs and the craziness of going through distributors here in the US or even selling direct to retailers and how we kind of do business here.
00:10:03
Speaker
And so, you know, in that experience, I saw firsthand how an organization really struggled to understand what are all these deductions for?
00:10:14
Speaker
Where should we account for them within you know our P&L and from an accounting perspective? And so it became clear to me, you know, very early on that I was going to be very involved in the process of understanding, helping the organization understand how to account for and where they should land within the, you know, which GL code within the P and L.
00:10:37
Speaker
And so, you know, honestly, if I'm being honest, we we would do kind of a check in at the end of the month. We do a very high level overview of this you know the deductions, the spin that had come through and how we're going to account for those.
00:10:54
Speaker
And we just didn't have time to go as deep as I would have liked. But I think what we did have a chance to do is really kind of dive in at that moment and understand, okay, yep, these are happening here, these are happening here and trying to get you know promotions in the right spot, advertising in the right spot versus know placement or shortages or fines and fees.
00:11:18
Speaker
And so it was just a process, I think there of trying to get that stuff in the right buckets. And then we were able to evolve to, okay, now that we've done that,
00:11:28
Speaker
Are there any deductions here that we should be working on a better process with our distributor partners to try to reduce? So as an example, if we're getting hit with late fees, is there something we could do differently and working with them that would allow us to avoid those fees and better service our customer at the end of the day? And we were able to get some really good wins along the way, but I'll tell you, it was it was a journey and Doing it manually pulled me out of the strategic work as the general manager of the North America business from thinking about either marketing or sales promotions or my next category review with, you know, a large retailer here that we wanted to
00:12:13
Speaker
continue to expand into. So that was that was a little bit of the experience that we had there. As you're going through this, you got there, right? You got there, you got some clarity.
00:12:25
Speaker
it was a process to get there, hours, time, money. i would say, or I guess my next question is, at what point did the light bulb go off and you're like, I i need that i need a tool that can make me go faster and give me what I need.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, well, let me go back to one thing you said, we got there, which, you know, we didn't, like, we weren't there, right? Like, that was that was the thing that was, I think, frustrating was,
00:12:55
Speaker
we were doing a lot of, okay, you know we've got accruals that we're gonna take into the next month. So do we accrue for that ad at that retailer for $10,000 or do we not?
00:13:08
Speaker
And there was a little bit of the like finger to the wind. Do I think we got that deduction? or not. And, and, you know, that's an ad example. We talk about a promotion, you know, with all these different retailers that we were running and planning for and accruing for like all that stuff. It was just, it was a little bit of a, it was my best guess if I'm being honest and good intuition based on just my experience, but it was by no means like clear and it was by no means where we wanted it to be. So we're doing the best with what we had, but it didn't really suit us well, I think from a business perspective. And so through that, it was evident that, Hey, this is a pain point, both at the large organizations and the small ones. And then if you layer in
00:14:00
Speaker
maybe you're newer to the industry or you're not from the U.S. and you're kind of learning the nuances of the business, that if we can take this information, these documents, and use technology to extract the data and then bump that against you know good categorization, the retail list, the item list, and start to make sense of you know what is challenging data to handle,
00:14:28
Speaker
then you can really get, you know, like sky's the limit, right? yeah Trade spend by retailers so that you can understand how much you're spending for those indirect retailers underneath the distributor or, you know, am I, the money that we are spending, or sorry, the money we're accruing, did it actually happen?
Insights Driving TrueUp's Development
00:14:49
Speaker
Did those deductions come through? You can say with clarity now. And I think that's where this idea really flourished in ah in my mind and for Scott and I as, okay, we got a clear line of sight to how we can do this, how we could get the data.
00:15:05
Speaker
And of course, in the early days, before we launched anything, we talked to hundreds of people in the CPG industry that deal with this problem to continue to validate and massage out, like, we think this would help,
00:15:19
Speaker
um But when we talked to them, and it was more like, actually, that would help. But if you could also do this, that would be massive. And so we learned and iterated with, you know, future customers and other people in the space to kind of come up with what you see now in TrueUp.
00:15:37
Speaker
And of course, we continue to innovate and iterate as we go now today. Yeah. You know, we talked a lot about sales and and kind of the sales strategy and and bringing, it you know, having that clarity really helped you with sales.
00:15:49
Speaker
um In my experience, you know, there's there's also quite a bit of other areas, right? Other use cases, other types of deductions, operations, fees, fine logistics, all that fun stuff.
00:16:03
Speaker
Is there, um in your experience, of is there a success story that you can share um yeah outside of the sales strategy and clarity?
Cost Savings with TrueUp
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, there's one actually top of mind, and we do see this quite a bit where, you know, we had just onboarded new, you brand and you know they hadn't had visibility to the deductions beyond what they had previously been getting and when they came in it was they were able to go over to our deductions ah analytics tool and see month over month by category where their spend was going where their deductions were coming from and they quickly were able to see that you you know the fines and fees they were incurring from a logistics perspective were really starting to add up i mean
00:16:49
Speaker
$20,000, $30,000 in the last like six or 12 months. And as they were able to drill into those details and understand what was happening at the root cause, they were able to find that actually, if we just change this one thing in our process of pack and packing the pallet, then when it arrives to the distributor, they were able to um just stop those fees. They were able to cut them off at the source.
00:17:18
Speaker
And um obviously that's good for the distributor because as they take in the cases, the pallets, they're able to do it efficiently and, um you know, all that stuff. And then of course, good for the brand because they don't have the fees and fis fines coming through. And so it was a win-win for everyone involved, obviously for them saving $20,000, $30,000 that they could redeploy to, you know, a promotion with,
00:17:43
Speaker
one of their retail partners and get the, you know, get those dollars to the consumer was an awesome win. And we love hearing those stories. We hear them quite a bit. And so that would be one example that comes to mind.
00:17:55
Speaker
I love that little reallocation of funds. Good stuff. Yeah. And, and you mentioned it, right? I think, root cause, you know, a lot of folks come to this space with the mentality that, Hey, all I'm going to do here is claw back money, claw back funds. That's what I'm going to do. And and that's not necessarily yeah it the the main strategy here. There's, there's a lot of root cause issues we can figure out, we can drill in, we get the clarity, we find out what's going on.
00:18:23
Speaker
And then we use that clarity to improve our operational efficiencies And now we have more time, more money, can go sell more. We've got, yeah, root cause.
00:18:37
Speaker
chop off Chop it off at the head. Yeah, exactly. And you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours trying to get that information into a data format that you can actually get the insight. It's there on day one.
00:18:51
Speaker
And so like I'm a huge proponent of, because I saw it firsthand, you do all that work and what ends up happening is you get 90% of the job done or maybe 75% or 50% of the job done and you got another fire or something else you got to go do. You got other priorities and you never get back around to it. And so then it's just wasted time and energy and everyone's frustrated. And so, yeah, it's it's cool to be able to have that data and see those wins.
00:19:19
Speaker
We love those stories. All right, Kyle, thanks for sharing your experience. One last question.
Podcast Conclusion and Social Media
00:19:25
Speaker
if there's a brand that needs some assistance with this what can they do what's the next step for them yes so we'll share a link below on this podcast so that they can you know check out our website learn more about who we are and what we do and how we can help and we're also giving away free trade spend health checks where we actually bring in six months of deduction documents and spin up their data from a trade spend perspective, as well as their sales so that they can see kind of line by line where their dollars are going. So they can sign up for a free trade spend health check on our website.
00:20:01
Speaker
It's easy to do, easy for us to spin up, takes very little time and off to the race as we go. Love that. So a demo with their live data. yeah Very cool. yeah Trade spend health check. Here we go.
00:20:13
Speaker
Love it. Yeah. Thanks. Cool, man. Thanks. All right, thanks for tuning in to the CPG Trade Spend podcast. And as always, until next time, keep spending smart.
00:20:32
Speaker
And let's keep the conversation going. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn at CPG Trade Spend podcast for more insights, updates, and behind the scenes content.
00:20:45
Speaker
See you next time.