Case Study

How SKUs Drive Business Strategy

After a successful exit from a national beverage company, one founder took on the role of Chief Expansion Officer at a new health-focused consumer packaged goods (CPG) startup. When due diligence pressure mounted, the leadership team turned to GrowthLab to bring structure to chaos—starting with disorganized data and ending with a scalable financial model.

Challenge

Disconnected Historicals, No SKU Clarity, and No Forward-Looking Plan

Industry

Health & Superfood (CPG)

Services

• Historical Cleanup
• Financial Modeling
• Strategic Planning

No Cohesive Financial Story in a Multi-SKU Business

GrowthLab and team worked closely with the management team of a national, high-growth beverage company which successfully exited in 2018. One of the founders transitioned positions and was now working as Chief Expansion Officer (CEO) at an emerging-growth, consumer packaged goods company with a focus on health and superfoods. The CEO came to GrowthLab needing some guidance around financial modeling during a hectic due-diligence period. 

The main challenge this company faced was the gathering and clean-up of historical data to drive strategy in order to create a long-range plan used for this due diligence. GrowthLab began dealing with a messy assortment of different documents, sales reports, inventory reports, and financials that, unfortunately, didn’t tie together. As we all know, without proper historicals, it is beyond difficult to create a solid forward-looking plan. Our main goal was to not only clean up the historicals, but to then use those historicals to build a forward-looking financial model to use through due-diligence and scaling. 

From Data Chaos to Strategy-Driven Modeling

GrowthLab worked across both accounting and operations to:

• Clean up and connect historical data across SKUs, sales, and inventory
• Build SKU-level visibility to support margin analysis and future planning
• Collaborate with leadership to define business goals, resource needs, and long-range strategy
• Develop a forward-looking financial model tailored for due diligence and scale

The model wasn’t just a spreadsheet—it was a tool built to align vision, resources, and execution.

Data Clarity, Strategy Alignment, and a Model Built for Investors

The company emerged from due diligence with:

• A clean financial foundation
• A clear strategic plan
• A custom financial model that translated goals into numbers

With full ownership of the model and our team as support, they had the confidence to speak to their financials and make informed decisions during a high-pressure phase of growth.

Advice for Other Business Leaders

If you can’t track SKU-level performance, you can’t scale with purpose.

You need:

1. Clean historicals to tell a financial story
2. SKU insight to drive decisions
3. A model you can actually use and understand
   

Final Thoughts

GrowthLab helped transform disconnected data into a strategic asset, giving this CPG company the clarity it needed to move forward with confidence and precision