Road 2 Retail

What Road 2 Retail does

Road 2 Retail is a podcast-based advisory business targeting small, emerging, and challenger consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands seeking to transition from direct-to-consumer or local market sales into broader US retail distribution. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Tampa, Florida, the company is privately held and operated by co-founders Bruce Montgomery and Tracey Priest, each with more than 30 years of CPG operating experience at blue-chip firms including Bayer Consumer Care, Quaker Oats, Tropicana, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Fleet Laboratories. The company has 1–10 employees and no external funding disclosed.

The core product is the Road 2 Retail podcast, a weekly interview-format show featuring retailers, brand founders, industry suppliers, and investors, with 50+ brands featured to date and distribution across Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. The underlying technology is a podcast-based knowledge platform hosted on Squarespace, supplemented by the "Rules of the Road" educational blog. Supporting this media engine are four paid consulting services: Go To Market Strategy development, CPG 911 (urgent crisis advisory), Presentation Review for retail sell-in decks, and Introductions to Industry Experts across advertising, logistics, package design, brokerage, and capital sources.

The business model is professional services, generating revenue through quote-based consulting engagements. The go-to-market motion is community-led: the podcast and blog drive top-of-funnel awareness with emerging-brand founders, while a curated network of nine "Trusted Business Partners" (Emerson Group, Big Chalk, Eagle Labs, ECRM, The CPG CFO, Market Performance Group, Pathfinders, Floret, and Retail & Response) provides mid-funnel referrals and integrated service offerings. Pricing is not publicly disclosed. The company has no disclosed revenue, no institutional investment, and no disclosed paying customer logos beyond Koia.

Name

Road 2 Retail

Legal name

Road 2 Retail

Website

https://road2retail.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2021

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Road 2 Retail is a podcast-based advisory business co-founded in 2021 by CPG veterans Bruce Montgomery and Tracey Priest, providing consulting services and educational content to small, emerging, and challenger consumer packaged goods brands seeking to enter or expand within US retail distribution.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Tampa

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Technology or R&D

Revenue model

1. Consulting & Advisory Services: The company provides business building services to emerging CPG brands including Go To Market Strategy, CPG 911 crisis counsel, Presentation Review, and Introductions to Industry Experts. Revenue is generated through consulting engagements and advisory services.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Road 2 Retail is a podcast-based advisory practice that helps small, emerging, and challenger consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands navigate their journey from local or direct-to-consumer origins into ecommerce and brick & mortar retail. The business sells paid consulting services — Go To Market Strategy, CPG 911 crisis counsel, Presentation Review, and Introductions to Industry Experts — to CPG brand founders, while the Road 2 Retail Podcast and Rules of the Road Blog serve as content channels that attract and educate those same founders.

Product overview

Road 2 Retail is a podcast-based media and consulting platform co-founded by CPG veterans Bruce Montgomery and Tracey Priest. The core offering consists of the Road 2 Retail Podcast, which provides guidance to emerging and challenger CPG brands through interviews and educational content. Supporting services include Go To Market Strategy consulting, CPG 911 urgent advisory, Presentation Review, and Introductions to Industry Experts. The Rules of the Road Blog complements the podcast with written guidance on retail distribution topics.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Road 2 Retail Podcast Weekly podcast featuring interviews with retailers, brand founders, suppliers to the CPG industry (advertising agencies, package design firms, brokers, ecommerce specialists, market research firms), and investors, distributed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Targeted at small, emerging, and challenger CPG brands seeking guidance on retail readiness and growth.
• Go To Market Strategy Consulting engagement helping emerging and challenger CPG brands build comprehensive plans for entering or growing retail distribution, including understanding retailer expectations across classes of trade.
• CPG 911 Urgent business advisory service for CPG brands facing pressing time-sensitive matters or business challenges, providing counsel and options to resolve jams.
• Presentation Review Service reviewing and streamlining sell-in presentations and annual line review decks to focus on information that matters to retail partners.
• Introductions to Industry Experts Service connecting CPG brands to trusted suppliers across advertising agencies, logistics providers, digital marketing firms, package design, branding, brokers, distributors, investors, and market research firms.
• Rules of the Road Blog Educational blog providing practical guidance to CPG brands on topics including differentiation, product benefits clarity, understanding consumers, retail readiness, retailer selection, and buyer relationships.

Named customers24 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

Nine partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• Emerson GroupcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFull Service Omnichannel Sales, Supply Chain, Data, Strategy & Marketing Agency. Trusted CPG Growth Partner Since 1994 supporting brands, retailers, and suppliers with deep CPG expertise and omnichannel commerce capabilities, specializing in launching & driving growth for health, wellness, and beauty brands. Powered by proprietary OMEGA AI Technology platform.
• Big ChalkcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerMarketing Analytics Consulting Agency that serves as the human connection between data and analytically driven insights. Partners with leading brands and retailers to achieve extraordinary results by assessing marketplace opportunities, building impactful selling stories, tracking business health, deploying advanced analytics to maximize marketing spend, inform revenue growth management, and quantify new product launch impact.
• Eagle LabscoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerUS based, NSF Certified contract manufacturer of dietary supplements, skin care and OTC products. Provides custom turnkey contract manufacturing from formulation to blending, packaging, labeling and testing for release. Helps emerging brands scale with experienced leadership team focused on quality and communication as strategic partners.
• FloretminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerComprehensive financial automation platform for CPG brands providing software supporting deduction management, dispute recovery, and promotion planning. Platform automatically syncs to accounting systems like QuickBooks Online and NetSuite. Helps brands recover millions of dollars lost from invalid retailer and distributor chargebacks.
• Retail & ResponsecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerAudio advertising agency specializing in national campaigns that dramatically drive product sell through across both digital and brick & mortar channels. Specialties include network & satellite radio, host endorsement campaigns, podcasts, streaming. Provides production, media strategy, and media buying services.
• ECRM / R/ (Retail & Response)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerIndustry's Leading Product Discovery and Sourcing Platform. Bridges brands and retailers through high-value meetings and digital solutions, turning sourcing challenges into streamlined partnerships. Data-driven growth platforms that empower brands to get discovered while helping retailers curate perfect product mix.
• The CPG CFOcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFractional CFO service for CPG brands helping founders determine whether growth will actually generate profit by channel with real operating assumptions. Identifies constraints that can break a CPG business while it scales, maps where cash gets trapped across inventory, trade spend, and receivables, pressure-tests pricing, channels, and retail decisions, and translates financials into decision-making tools.
• Market Performance Group (MPG)coreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorLeading omnichannel commerce agency delivering integrated solutions that accelerate profitable growth. New growth initiative helps brands of any size win in every channel whether launching DTC, scaling on Amazon, or entering brick & mortar. Team of veterans from top retailers, CPGs, and digital platforms connects brands with consumers across the full funnel.
• PathfindersminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorFull-service agency partner for more than four decades serving Consumer Package Goods, Financial Products and Services, Business-to-Business, and Healthcare segments. Core areas of focus include branding, omnichannel campaigns, product launches, demand generation, and events/trade shows.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• The CPG CFO: The CPG CFO is a fractional CFO service specifically for CPG brands. Although a partner of Road 2 Retail, it serves the same emerging-brand segment with a similar founder-led, expertise-driven service model, making it a close comparable.
• Market Performance Group (MPG): MPG is an omnichannel commerce agency that helps CPG brands launch DTC, scale on Amazon, and enter brick-and-mortar retail. It directly overlaps Road 2 Retail's go-to-market strategy offering while serving a similar emerging-brand customer base.
• Blue Wheel Media: Blue Wheel Media is a digital marketing agency specializing in Amazon and e-commerce growth for CPG brands. It competes with Road 2 Retail's Introductions service by offering direct performance marketing capabilities to the same emerging-brand segment.
• Category Partners: Category Partners is a CPG-focused advisory and analytics firm that helps emerging and established brands with retail strategy, shopper insights, and sales planning. It competes directly with Road 2 Retail in serving small and mid-sized CPG brands seeking retail navigation services.
• Emerson Group: Emerson Group is a full-service omnichannel sales, supply chain, and marketing agency supporting CPG brands in health, wellness, and beauty. While listed as a partner, it also offers go-to-market and broker services that overlap with Road 2 Retail's advisory offering, making it both an ally and a competitor.
• ECRM (Efficient Collaborative Retail Marketing): ECRM operates a product discovery and sourcing platform connecting CPG brands with retailers through high-value meetings. It overlaps with Road 2 Retail's Introductions and retail-readiness services and serves the same emerging-brand buyer persona.

Broad incumbents

• Simon-Kucher: Simon-Kucher is a global consulting firm with a dedicated Consumer Goods practice covering pricing, go-to-market, and sales strategy for CPG brands. It serves larger clients but competes in the same strategic advisory space and represents a scaled-up incumbent alternative to Road 2 Retail's model.
• NielsenIQ: NielsenIQ is a global consumer intelligence and analytics provider serving CPG brands and retailers with market data, shopper insights, and category management. It addresses similar retail-readiness and category-strategy problems as Road 2 Retail, but at enterprise scale.

Emerging players

• Brandlective: Brandlective is a smaller, emerging CPG-focused consulting firm providing retail strategy and sales support to challenger brands. It targets a similar niche as Road 2 Retail but with a smaller footprint and less developed content engine.

Others

• Retail & Response: Retail & Response is an audio advertising agency specializing in radio, podcast, and streaming campaigns that drive sell-through for CPG brands. It is a Road 2 Retail partner but serves the same emerging-brand customer with complementary media services, making it an ecosystem player rather than a direct competitor.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/@road2retail327
• Xx.com/Road2Retail
• Facebookfacebook.com/profile.php
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/road-2-retail

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Road 2 Retail