About Making It Count

Meet Brian Staudenmaier

OUR FOUNDER

With over twenty-five years of experience in consumer goods and related industries, Brian Staudenmaier has consistently developed and executed strategies that accelerated successful growth across multiple channels of distribution at public CPG companies, mid-cap family owned businesses and early-stage startup companies. In his most recent role, he led a sales organization with extreme growth in a flat-to-declining category which led to a successful M&A exit by the founders and acquisition by a private equity-backed competitor.

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He began his career at Pepsi where he moved through their sales management organization selling soft drinks and alternative beverages for approximately nine years. He then joined The Clorox Company where, for eight years, he held positions of increasing responsibility in field sales and planning. A majority of his time was spent on integrating new sales teams into existing ones, and on building businesses with large customers; where he honed skills in developing strategic plans for successful growth.

Numerous assignments at Clorox instilled skills to adapt quickly to a wide variety of complex business situations. He worked with numerous product categories that were sold through many trade channels including but not limited to grocery, mass, drug, department, food service. As the Sales Planning Manager of Glad trash bags (Clorox joint venture with P&G), he was the internal sales leader for the launch of Glad Force Flex trash bags which resulted in increased shares of almost 4pts and an increased margin on the business of double digits. During that assignment, he became enamored with the excitement of game-changing & innovative businesses.

In 2006, he left Clorox to pursue a passion for new challenges in smaller business environments. He joined Method Products as Director of Sales Planning and played an active role in developing a long-term strategic plan to assist the founders in preparing the company for a liquidity event. His effort resulted in the successful optimization and improved profitability of this fast growing company. He worked very close with the Board of Directors and with the Goldman Sachs investment banking organization to secure additional private equity investment in early 2008.

Continuing a passion for smaller companies, he then joined a startup in Berkeley, Vaska, which was in the “seed” phase of its existence as their Vice President of Sales. He drove the company’s growth from zero in 2008 to $10mm projected for 2011. His skills at team building, strategic planning and customer development took Vaska all the way through the “early” stage and helped launch the “growth” phase in 2010 by securing distribution at major retailers like Sam’s Club, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Duane Reade (now owned by Walgreens), H.E.B., Albertsons, Hy-Vee, Fred Meyer, Raley’s, Lucky, The Fresh Market, Earth Fare along with numerous others. Following the successful sale of Vaska to new investors, he began working at Cot’n Wash as their Senior VP of Sales. His focus was on optimizing selling results at Target, Safeway, Publix, Duane Reade, Raley's, Wal-Mart.com and Amazon.com & worked on partnership opportunities with Wal-Mart, Trader Joe's, Aldi & Costco.

He has spent the last 4 years working with California Scents, a 20+-year-old family owned business that had flat revenues for the previous 10 years. He immediately upgraded the sales organization and developed multiple internal processes that helped the company stay focused on the customers. His skills at team building, strategic planning, and customer development led to almost 50% growth (in a flat category) over the last 4 years and resulted in the founders of the company performing a successful exit with a private equity backed competitor. Brian is a graduate of Thunderbird School of Global Management’s MBA program. He is also a graduate of the University of Nebraska where he was a scholarship golfer and member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He presently resides in Coto De Caza, California with wife, Kasia, and their twin nine-year-olds, Trent and Grace.