70% of the brands that pitched me at Expo West this year had the same plan: go straight to Target.

I get it. Mass feels like validation. But every brand I’ve watched scale past $20M followed the same sequence: Specialty → Regional → Mass. In order. Not faster. Your CPG go-to-market strategy is only as strong as the sequence underneath it.

I’ve seen three brands this year jump to mass with a hero SKU doing well in specialty. Two got discontinued within 9 months. Not because the product was wrong. Because they weren’t ready for the velocity expectations, the deductions, and the chargebacks.

After four days at Anaheim, I came back with a clearer version of something I’ve been saying to founders for a while: there is a right sequence to CPG growth. The brands drawing real interest at Expo West had something in common. They had distribution credibility before they had the investment story. They had velocity before they had visibility. And they had a specific consumer before they had a broad positioning.

Why Your CPG Go-to-Market Strategy Needs the Right Sequence

The pressure on CPG founders to grow fast is relentless. Investors want trajectory. Retailers want scale. Everyone in the ecosystem is rewarding speed with attention and capital.

But speed applied to the wrong step is how brands end up with mass distribution they can’t support, retail relationships they can’t maintain, and a growth story that looks impressive until the scanner data comes in.

The sequence I see working, consistently:

Specialty first. This is where you prove the consumer exists. Specialty and natural retail, local accounts, regional health food chains, direct-to-consumer. Build velocity without the exposure risk of a national rollout.

Regional next. Once the specialty proof points are in, regional accounts become the bridge. A strong regional chain placement validated by specialty velocity tells an investor or a national buyer that this isn’t a one-market phenomenon.

Mass when ready. Not when the opportunity arrives. When the brand is ready to handle what comes with it. Mass distribution brings volume, but it also brings velocity pressure, margin compression, retail media requirements, and operational demands that can break a brand that wasn’t built for it yet.

Throne Sport Coffee: Distribution Before Capital

Throne Sport Coffee is one of the clearest examples I saw at Expo West of what the right sequencing looks like in practice.

Patrick Mahomes-backed, built around a specific functional claim for a specific consumer. Throne raised $10 million and launched DSD distribution with Big Geyser in New York. That’s direct-store delivery, meaning the distributor physically places product in stores and manages reorders.

What stood out about Throne wasn’t the celebrity backing or the raise size. It was the sequencing. The distribution relationship with Big Geyser came first. The investment story was built around that proof point.

For any CPG go-to-market strategy, distribution credibility is becoming a condition of funding, not something you figure out after the raise.

Magic Mind: Precision Before Volume

The positioning was tight in a way that most functional beverage brands aren’t. A productivity shot built specifically for knowledge workers, founders, and creatives who want focused energy without the crash. Within seconds of looking at the product, I understood the consumer. Not a demographic. A behavior.

What made the Magic Mind booth different was that they weren’t presenting this as an idea waiting for retail to validate it. They had momentum. The channel strategy was clear. The consumer had already found the product through DTC and was pulling it into the channels where knowledge workers actually shop.

That level of specificity changes the buyer conversation entirely. You’re not asking a buyer to bet on a concept. You’re asking them to put something on the shelf that a specific consumer is already looking for.

Fly By Jing: Depth Before Breadth

The brand that kept surfacing in conversations throughout the week was Fly By Jing.

Jing Gao built what is arguably the most credible specialty food brand to emerge in the last five years. Not by extending into 20 SKUs across four categories, but by becoming undeniable in one.

Sichuan Chili Crisp. One product. One clear identity. One reason to exist that no competitor could replicate because it was rooted in Jing’s personal story, sourcing relationships, and an uncompromising approach to ingredients.

The growth came from depth. The brand became a reference point in the condiment category before it expanded into anything else. By the time Fly By Jing added products, the consumer already trusted the brand deeply enough to follow.

That’s a different approach than what I see most founders pursuing. Most want range before they have identity. Fly By Jing had identity long before it had range.

Seed Health: Science to Consumer Without Losing Either

Seed Health represented something at Expo West that I think will define the next wave of premium supplement and functional health brands: the science-to-consumer pipeline done correctly.

Most supplement brands lead with claims. Seed leads with research. Their approach to communicating clinical trial data, strain specificity, and formulation logic to a consumer audience is more sophisticated than nearly anything else in the category.

What makes Seed’s sequencing instructive is that they built the science credibility before they built the mass distribution story. The research, the publishing, the academic relationships — all of that came first. The consumer brand was built on top of a foundation that most competitors can’t replicate because they didn’t invest in it.

For supplement and functional health founders, the lesson is clear: the clinical evidence is not a marketing asset. It’s the product. If your science can’t withstand scrutiny from someone who actually reads studies, your brand is one regulatory headline away from a credibility crisis.

The Question Founders Should Ask Before the Next Raise

Every brand I’ve described above built something in the right order. They did not raise capital to figure out distribution. They did not launch nationally before proving regionally. They did not extend their product line before their core product had earned the right to be extended.

The question I’d ask any CPG founder preparing for a raise or a major retail expansion: what step are you on, and have you actually finished it?

If you’re in specialty and your velocity is strong, the next conversation is regional, not national. If you’re DTC-first and your repeat rates are solid, the next move is proving that the product works at shelf, not scaling ad spend. If you’re in one retailer and the data is good, the next step is one more retailer with comparable dynamics, not ten retailers at once.

The brands that came out of Expo West with real momentum this year were the ones that could walk a buyer through a clear, credible narrative of where they’d been before they talked about where they were going.

The right CPG go-to-market strategy is not a constraint. It’s the strategy.

Compass Rose Ventures works with CPG founders and investors on commercial strategy, margin architecture, and growth execution. Let’s talk.