Home / What we do / Retail distribution & buyers
Reach U.S. retail buyers and activate distribution.
Category buyers at national and regional chains, in scheduled meetings, with a presentation built to their criteria rather than yours — then the account work that keeps the listing once it is won.
Compare U.S. retail channels before building an account target list.
The problem
Buyers don't take cold meetings, and a distributor listing isn't a sale.
Category buyers at national chains receive more approaches than they can read. They do not evaluate on the qualities a founder is proudest of. They evaluate on category gap, margin, velocity elsewhere, supply reliability, promotional support and how much of their time the vendor is going to cost them.
The second failure is subtler and more common. A brand secures a listing with a national wholesaler, sees its own item number, and reports to its board that it has U.S. distribution. It has availability. Nothing has been sold. A wholesaler is a logistics route, not a demand engine, and the shelf still has to be won store by store, chain by chain.
The third is timing. Category reviews run on a calendar that has nothing to do with your launch date. Miss a review window and the honest answer is not no, it is next year.
Direct retail execution
From Strategy to the Buyer Meeting
TruLife combines market strategy with direct retail execution, representing brands throughout the buyer-development process and helping turn market opportunities into long-term retail relationships.
Buyer access is only the beginning. TruLife manages the preparation, commercial requirements and follow-through needed to move a retail conversation toward an actual business opportunity.
See How TruLife Develops U.S. Retail Accounts →Retailer names and photographs are shown to document TruLife Distribution’s participation in scheduled buyer meetings. Meetings do not imply retailer endorsement, purchase commitment or guaranteed placement.
Is Your Brand Ready to Meet U.S. Retail?
TruLife helps emerging and international brands prepare for, access and execute opportunities across the U.S. retail market.
View the September 2026 ECRM buyer meeting results →
For the story behind those sessions, read TruLife Distribution’s news article on 37 ECRM buyer meetings and the follow-up needed for U.S. retail expansion.
What we do
Representation, not introduction.
Account targeting
A ranked target list built from where your product actually fits — national chains, regional grocery, specialty, drug, club and e-commerce — rather than an alphabetical list of everyone with shelves.
Category presentations
The sell sheet, the deck and the numbers built to the buyer's evaluation criteria: category gap, margin, velocity evidence, promotional plan and supply capability.
Scheduled buyer meetings
Meetings with the category buyer who owns the decision, including ECRM programs where the meetings are pre-arranged rather than pursued. We have attended these programs every year since 2009.
Distributor and broker activation
Wholesaler listings set up correctly and then actually worked, with the broker network managed rather than left to manage itself.
Onboarding and first orders
Vendor setup, routing guides, carton marking, ASN requirements and the paperwork that causes first-order rejections when nobody has done it before.
Resets and account servicing
Planogram work, promotional calendars, category reviews and the ongoing servicing that decides whether the line survives its first year on shelf.
How it works
Target, present, close, service.
The first three are what most brands imagine buying. The fourth is what determines whether the first three were worth anything.
Target
Account list built and ranked, review calendars mapped, and the order of approach set so the accounts that matter most aren't approached before the brand is ready for them.
Present
Qualified presentations to category buyers, reported monthly by account, date and outcome, including the reasons behind a no.
Close
Terms negotiated, vendor onboarding completed, first purchase order shipped to retailer specification.
Service
Sell-through monitored, promotions run, resets worked and the account defended at the next category review.
Who this is for
Worth saying plainly who this doesn't suit.
This works when
Your product is compliant, priced for the U.S. chain, in stock, and you can supply a national order if one lands. Those are the conditions under which buyer access is worth having.
This doesn't work when
The regulatory and pricing work isn't done yet. Putting an unready brand in front of a buyer spends a relationship that took years to build and cannot be spent twice. We sequence those first for that reason.
Third-party validation
Interviewed by the people who run the buyer programmes.
Working with ECRM since 2009. This is Brian’s 2020 interview with Joseph Tarnowski of ECRM — which is worth more than us describing the relationship ourselves.
ECRM creates pre-scheduled meetings with category buyers. It is a structured route for a brand without existing relationships.
Watch · Brian Gould × Joseph Tarnowski, ECRM
Interviewed by Joseph Tarnowski, ECRM · September 2020 · plays from YouTube, nothing loads until you press play
Go deeper
Read the detail before you commit to anything.
U.S. retail distribution
How distribution actually works here, and how buyer access fits inside it.
Read the guide →Distribution & buyers
Guides, articles and answers on wholesalers, brokers, buyers and category reviews.
Browse the hub →Daily Crave
A West-Coast-first expansion, with the team on camera.
Read →Client case studies
Documented launches, the channels they ran through, and what happened next.
Read the case studies →In their words
The people who run the buyer programmes know how a supplier turns up.
“Brian has been attending ECRM Programs every year since 2009 to help his suppliers grow sales and expand distribution. He is focused on how to help his brands — getting the right appointments, preparing for meetings and promoting their offerings and capabilities.”Sarah DavidsonVP, ECRM / RangeMe
Questions
Frequently asked.
- Do you guarantee placement?
- No, and we would be careful with anyone who does. A buyer's decision is theirs. Full-management retail-development engagements typically target 25–30 qualified retailer presentations per month, tracked by account, date and outcome.
- How many presentations do you commit to?
- Full-management retail-development engagements typically target 25–30 qualified retailer presentations per month, tracked by account, date and outcome.
- What is ECRM and why does it come up so often?
- ECRM runs category-specific programs where suppliers meet retail buyers in scheduled, pre-arranged sessions rather than chasing them. TruLife has been working with ECRM since 2009.
- We already have a distributor listing. Isn't that distribution?
- It is availability, not distribution. A listing with a wholesaler means a retailer can order your product if they choose to. It does not mean any retailer has chosen to. The sell-in work is the part that turns one into the other.
- Will you work on commission only?
- No. Commission-only representation means the representative concentrates on whichever brand in the bag is closest to a cheque, which is rarely the new entrant. Our structure includes a fee for the work, so the work gets done.
- What happens after a first purchase order?
- Onboarding paperwork, routing and labeling compliance, the first shipment, then sell-through management — resets, promotional planning and the account servicing that decides whether the line is still there at the next category review.
A connected commercial plan
See RARI Nutrition client work → Explore the service → Read the practical guide → Request a U.S. Market Assessment →
Buyer meetings and retailer references do not imply endorsement, purchase commitment or guaranteed placement.
U.S. Market Assessment — $3,500
Find out what America would actually take.
Send us your product and your numbers. We'll come back with a written assessment of what entering U.S. retail would require and what it would realistically return.