ShelfWorks · Wave 2
From first production run to first retailer.
ShelfWorks is a planned operating system for emerging food, drink and personal care brands: sourcing and co-manufacturing, the production run and its cash, retailer requirements, and the trade spend and deductions that decide whether any of it was profitable.
- Source
- Make
- Land
- Sell
- Reconcile
- Stage
- Planned
- Portfolio bay
- Bay 12
- Focus area
- Launch & Growth Control
- Part of
- The Collective Foundry
The problem
Why ShelfWorks exists.
Emerging brands lose money in the gaps between stages. Inventory is produced before revenue arrives, retailer requirements are discovered rather than planned for, and deductions arrive months later against promotions nobody can fully reconstruct. Each stage is handled in a different spreadsheet by a different person.
Who it's for
Founders and operations leads at emerging food, drink and personal care brands, from before the first production run through to a national account base.
The opportunity
The market ShelfWorks is built for.
Established platforms enter this market at the promotion. Vividly, Promomash, CPGvision and the enterprise suites from SAP and Oracle are strong at trade promotion planning and deduction management, aimed at brands that already have a trade spend budget and a retail account base. Nothing serves the stages before that — the founder with a formulation and a target retailer — and nothing carries the costing forward into the execution that follows it.
The numbers
What the category is worth.
-
Retail execution software
$6.8B (2026) → $12.4B (2034)
7.8% CAGR
Source: Intel Market Research
Treat with caution: other publishers put the same category two orders of magnitude lower, around $290M for 2025. The category boundary is genuinely unsettled, and this figure is included with that disagreement stated rather than resolved.
Why now
The timing behind it.
- 01
Smaller brands have been taking share from established consumer goods companies, and there are more of them than the tooling assumes.
- 02
Co-manufacturing has made small production runs possible without owning a facility, which changes who can start a brand at all.
- 03
Retailer requirements and deduction practices have grown more complex faster than the systems emerging brands can afford.
What it does
The capabilities inside ShelfWorks.
Sourcing and making
Suppliers and co-manufacturers found, sampled and qualified, with the record of what was agreed and what arrived.
The run and its cash
What a production run costs, when the money leaves and when it is expected back.
Retailer requirements
What each account requires, tracked before it becomes a penalty rather than after.
Trade spend, reconciled
Promotions costed, deductions matched against them, and the result attributed to the account that caused it.
Where we start
The smallest valuable first step.
- Who it is for first
- Founders and operations leads at emerging food, drink and personal care brands
- The first thing it does
- The production run and the first retail account, with the costs and the commitments in one place.
- Likely commercial model
- Free before the first retailer, then metered on retail accounts and trade spend
- What has to be proven
- That a brand will adopt it before the complexity arrives, rather than after.
What makes it innovative
Why ShelfWorks is different.
Starts before the complexity
Specialist platforms begin at the promotion. This begins at the formulation, when nothing else is serving the brand.
The costing carries forward
What was modelled before the run and what actually happened sit in the same place, so the comparison is automatic.
Attribution by account
Deductions reconciled back to the promotion and the account that produced them, rather than absorbed into a single line.
The usual way
A costing spreadsheet, a supplier email thread, a shared drive of retailer paperwork, and deductions reconciled months later if at all.
The foundry way
One record from the first production run to the retailer remittance, where each stage already knows what the one before it cost.
How it compares
ShelfWorks against the trade promotion platforms an established consumer goods brand already runs.
Every competitor cell below is drawn from that vendor's own official site on the date shown. Where a capability was not documented there, it is marked Not publicly verified rather than Not available — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
| Capability | ShelfWorks Not built — scoped for Wave 2 | Vividly Trade promotion and deduction platform, pricing not published | Promomash From around $500/month | CPGvision Trade promotion management, pricing not published | SAP / Oracle TPM Enterprise licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before there is a retailer Sourcing and co-manufacturer management Finding, sampling and qualifying who actually makes the product. The first real decision a brand makes. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 Nothing in this shortlist touches sourcing or co-manufacturing. It is the earliest stage and the least served. | Not publicly verified Depth 0/5 Not part of the documented scope | Limited Shipped Depth 1/5 Logistics is covered; sourcing and co-manufacturing are not | Not publicly verified Depth 0/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 Procurement exists in the wider suite, aimed at a scale an emerging brand does not operate at |
| Before there is a retailer Production run costing and working capital Stock is paid for months before a retailer pays for it. The gap is where emerging brands fail. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 What a run costs, when the money leaves and when it comes back. The gap that closes emerging brands, and the second row nothing here occupies. | Limited Shipped Depth 1/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 1/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 1/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 |
| Once it is on shelf Retailer requirements and compliance Requirements that are discovered rather than planned for arrive as penalties and strained relationships. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 4/5 Requirements tracked before they become penalties. Achievable because it is record-keeping rather than analysis. | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 | Included Shipped Depth 3/5 Retail-facing by design, with field marketing and logistics alongside | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 | Included Shipped Depth 3/5 |
| Once it is on shelf Trade promotion planning and return The largest discretionary spend a consumer goods brand makes, and the hardest to attribute afterwards. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 3/5 Conceded. Vividly, Promomash and the enterprise suites have built this over a decade and a first version does not match it. | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Campaign creation through to promotion measurement | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Forecasting, deduction management and budget allocation in one module | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 |
| Once it is on shelf Deduction matching and dispute Money taken back off the invoice months later, against promotions nobody can fully reconstruct. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 4/5 Below Vividly, which is the category reference point. Enough to reconcile a deduction back to the promotion that caused it. | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 The category reference point, aimed squarely at small to midsize brands | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 | Included Shipped Depth 3/5 |
| Who it is built for Usable before the first retail account The stage where a founder has a formulation, a co-manufacturer quote and a spreadsheet — and no software at all. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 The position. Free before the first retailer, when no other product in this market is interested in the brand at all. | Limited Shipped Depth 1/5 Built for brands already trading, not for one that has yet to make anything | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 The lowest published entry price here, but still aimed at a brand already in retail | Limited Shipped Depth 1/5 | Not publicly verified Depth 0/5 Enterprise licensing puts it beyond the stage entirely |
Who each tool is actually best for
- ShelfWorks Not built — scoped for Wave 2
Not a buying option. Every row is target specification at an achieved depth of zero. The intended buyer is a brand before its first production run, which is the stage nothing here serves.
- Vividly Trade promotion and deduction platform, pricing not published
Small to midsize consumer goods brands already trading with retailers. Deduction management is its specialism and it states a very large volume of trade spend under management.
Source: Vividly — trade promotion and deduction management for small to midsize CPG brands
- Promomash From around $500/month
Brands wanting trade promotion, field marketing and logistics in one place, at the lowest published entry price in this shortlist.
Source: Promomash — sales, marketing and logistics for CPG brands in retail , CPGenius trade management — forecasting, deduction management, budget allocation
- CPGvision Trade promotion management, pricing not published
Growing brands wanting trade promotion management built on an enterprise platform, with the governance that implies.
Source: CPGvision — trade promotion management and success factors for emerging brands
- SAP / Oracle TPM Enterprise licence
Large consumer goods companies where trade promotion has to sit inside the system of record that already runs finance and supply chain.
Source: SAP Trade Promotion Management
Considered and excluded
- General ERP and inventory systems — They begin at the purchase order, which assumes the sourcing, the co-manufacturer and the costing are already settled. Those earlier stages are the ones this comparison is about, so including them would compare products that start after the question has been answered. Check current status
How this comparison is made
- Comparative claims follow ACCC guidance: they must be accurate, fair and supportable on reasonable grounds, judged on the overall impression rather than line by line.
- A competitor capability is only marked as present where its official site or documentation describes it. Where it was not documented the status is “Not publicly verified” — not “Not available”. This is a desk review of published material, not a hands-on benchmark.
- Vividly scoring 1/5 on usability before the first retail account is not a criticism. It is built for brands already trading and does that extremely well. These rows exist to show where the market’s attention starts, not to mark anyone down for a scope they chose deliberately.
- Depth scores (0–5) are our own analytical assessment of how deep a capability runs. They are not vendor-published figures, and they are separate from the evidence status beside them.
- ShelfWorks is not built. Every one of its cells shows delivery “Planned” and an achieved depth of zero. A target beside it is the specification being built toward, never a claim about today.
- Targets are published only for our own column and only with a stated reason. Trade promotion planning is set at 3/5 — the lowest here — because three vendors in this shortlist score 5 and have spent a decade getting there.
The approach
How we build it.
A consumer goods brand spends money long before it collects any. Ingredients and packaging are bought, a production run is made, stock sits in a warehouse, a retailer takes it on terms measured in months. ShelfWorks is a planned platform for that sequence.
It covers finding and qualifying co-manufacturers and suppliers, costing and scheduling a production run, meeting each retailer’s requirements, and reconciling the trade spend and deductions that follow — the part where a profitable line quietly becomes an unprofitable one.
The outcome: a brand that knows what each account actually earns while there is still time to do something about it.
The outcome
What changes when it's in place.
- The stages stop being separate spreadsheets.
- Cash tied up in stock is visible before it becomes a problem.
- What each retail account actually earns is known while it can still be changed.
What could go wrong
The risks, named.
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Specialist platforms are mature at trade promotion and deduction management.
Do not start there. Start before the brand has trade spend at all, when nothing else serves them.
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The domain is unusually specific — co-manufacturing, retailer routing guides, deduction codes.
The venture does not begin without someone who has run a consumer goods brand through those stages.
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A brand that fails before reaching retail never becomes a paying customer.
Charge nothing until they are in retail. The free stage is cheap to serve and is how the account is won.
The open questions
What would need to be true.
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Pre-retail brands will adopt an operating system before they strictly need one.
How we would know: Measure how many brands join before their first retail account and how many are still active at it.
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The early stages matter enough to displace spreadsheets.
How we would know: Track how many brands move their production costing in, rather than keeping it alongside.
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Growth into trade spend follows adoption.
How we would know: Measure how many free brands reach a paid tier within a year.
A scenario
What this could become.
$9M–$21M
at $3M ARR, on 3–7× ARR
A scenario, not a valuation, a forecast or an offer. It states what the venture might be worth IF it reached the revenue shown, at multiples other private SaaS businesses have transacted at. Nothing here has revenue today.
Published private-SaaS transaction benchmarks, checked 2026-10-13: private deals broadly transact at 2–7× ARR, with medians around 3–5×. These come from advisory firms and marketplaces rather than audited transaction data.
How it fits the foundry
A venture, not a department.
ShelfWorks moves through the whole foundry — discovery, design, engineering, quality and launch — like every venture we build. It's most visible in Launch & Growth Control, where its business purpose is sharpest.
- Discover
- Define
- Design
- Build
- Assure
- Launch
- Learn
- Scale