Playbook · The whole job, end to end
Seven phases sit between the decision to enter the United States and a brand that grows on its own momentum. This is what each phase decides, the work inside it, and the order that keeps a launch from stalling.
The seven phases
Whether the U.S. is worth it for this brand, and what entering would take and return.
Registration, labeling, claims and the import pathway — the items that cost a year when they're wrong.
The margin stack worked down from the shelf price, per route to shelf.
The route to shelf, the buyer presentation, and the first purchase orders.
Freight, customs, warehousing and routing compliance — service the order you won.
Velocity work: positioning, the promotional calendar and the evidence chain.
From regional placement to national distribution without losing fill rate or margin.
Most launches fail on sequencing, not product. Brands sell before they comply, price before they model landed cost, and ship before anyone has worked out what a deduction is. Each phase below assumes the one before it is done. The timelines overlap — compliance and pricing run in parallel once the decision is real — but the dependencies never reverse.
The decision phase answers two questions honestly: is the U.S. worth it for this brand, and what would entering actually take and return. The inputs are your unit economics, your regulatory distance from a compliant label, your capacity to fill a real order, and the evidence a buyer would find if they looked you up today.
Most brands skip this phase and pay for it in phase four. A week of structured reading and a five-minute readiness score now is cheaper than a year of buyer meetings that were never going to convert.
Done looks like: a written position on whether to enter, at what price, into which channel, and what has to be true first.
The resources: the ultimate guide to entering the U.S. retail market, then the Retail Readiness Checklist. If you are starting cold, the Start Here sequence runs all five essentials in order.
Compliance is the phase that costs a year when it is wrong and a few weeks when it is planned: facility registration, the U.S. agent, ingredient status, panel construction, claims discipline and the import pathway for your category. None of it is optional, and none of it is visible in a buyer meeting — until it is the only thing visible.
Claims deserve particular respect. Language that is ordinary marketing at home can make a product an unapproved drug in the United States, and the label review has to happen before artwork, freight or a listing — not after.
Done looks like: a compliant label on final artwork, registrations in place, an import pathway that clears without improvisation.
The resource: the FDA compliance guide, which is reviewed every six months.
Pricing starts at the shelf and works down, because the shelf price is the only number the market sets. Retailer margin, distributor margin where one is in the chain, trade spend, deductions and freight allowances all come out of the invoice price before anything reaches you — and landed cost decides what remains.
Model each route separately. The same product can be a healthy business through a distributor into specialty and an unworkable one in grocery, and that is a useful answer to have before a year is spent pursuing the wrong channel.
Done looks like: a shelf price the channel accepts, a contribution per unit that survives trade spend, and a MAP policy that protects it online.
The resources: the pricing and margin guide and the U.S. Launch Calculator for your own numbers.
Selling is choosing the route to shelf — direct to retailers, through a distributor, or a hybrid — and then earning the listing. Buyers are measured on category revenue, margin and velocity, so the presentation that converts is priced in their numbers: the margin story, the velocity evidence, the promotional plan and the operational proof that a purchase order will be filled.
The vocabulary matters more than founders expect. A first meeting runs on terms like trade spend, OI, fill rate and OTIF, and the brand that speaks them fluently gets taken seriously before the samples open.
Done looks like: a route chosen deliberately, a buyer presentation priced in the buyer's numbers, and first purchase orders with dates attached.
The resources: the distribution guide, the Retail Buyer Glossary, and the buyer-ready learning path.
Shipping is where margin is kept or lost after the yes: freight and customs into one inventory position, a warehouse that can reach your channel, retailer routing guides, EDI or portal discipline, and fill rate protected like it is revenue — because it is. A purchase order you cannot fill is worse than no purchase order.
Done looks like: orders shipped complete and on time, chargebacks near zero, and inventory positioned close enough to the channel that lead time is never the excuse.
The resource: the logistics and warehousing guide.
Marketing in retail is velocity work. Positioning and packaging win the first purchase; the promotional calendar, the marketplace presence and the evidence chain win the reorder. The discipline is treating online advertising as cost of sale and retail promotion as an investment with a baseline — not as noise on the P&L.
Done looks like: velocity that holds without permanent discounting, scan data you can take into an expansion conversation, and a brand a buyer can find evidence for.
The resources: the brand marketing guide and the Amazon & e-commerce practice.
Scaling is regional proof widened to national distribution without losing the two things that earned it: fill rate and margin. New channels are entered one at a time, each with its own margin model, because the norms differ enough that a price which works in one is unworkable in another.
Done looks like: a second and third channel running on the economics of the first, with the supply chain funded for the volume it is now committed to.
The resources: the scaling learning path and the case studies of brands that have run this sequence.
Who runs all of this
Keep going
The five essential resources in the order to use them — the fastest route through this playbook's first three phases.
Start Here →Score your brand against the twenty things phases one and two depend on.
Check your readiness →Pillar guides, topic hubs, learning paths and the article archive, by topic.
Open the Knowledge Center →U.S. Market Assessment
Send us your product and your numbers. We come back with a written assessment of what entering U.S. retail would require and what it would realistically return.
