最近，我与Clairvest Group的合伙人道格·霍恩（Doug Horn）和董事总经理罗比·伊森伯格（Robbie Isenberg）进行了富有成果的对话。他们的一家成功的企业家成立于1987年，是一家表现最佳的私募股权公司（PE）公司，管理资本超过25亿美元。Clairvest的使命是与企业家合作，以帮助他们建立具有战略意义的业务。
What piqued my interest in the PE scene and how it relates to packaging is the firm’s most recent partnership with Canadian co-man/co-packer Brunswick Bierworks Inc. Horn and Isenberg have a different approach to packaging where they help founder/owners grow and build value. What guidance do they give the companies with whom they partner? I asked them these questions, largely using co-packer Brunswick as a lens through which to view their approach, but most of what they say is universally applicable to CPGs.
What attracted Clairvest to co-packing to begin with? More than anything else it was the continuing march of SKU proliferation and the explosion of packaging formats that came with it. Clearly this spelled opportunity for PE. What once was a space dominated by (so-called) tier-one Canadian beer brands like Labatt’s and Molson has since fractured to include a healthy ecosystem of craft (tier-two) brands on the upswing, getting bigger pieces of the pie at the expense of tier-one competitors. That’s why co-packing for beer was so attractive.
How are they steering partners like Brunswick in terms of handling capital investment, particularly in uncertain times? By looking for the high value wins that offer the most bang for the buck, they say. Ask yourself how you can maximize/optimize capital investment. Determine the best ROI across the available investment option. “You also don’t want to be so hyper-responsive to customer needs that you’re whipping around and foolishly spending the capital in response,” Isenberg says. “Start from the more critical needs and work your way down so that you can be best aligned with your customers to focus on where they really need you. And then work to provide those needs for the customers at a really high level of proficiency.”
目前，他看到来自IT和物流方面的最添加的自动化，尤其是在分销和面向零售的软件附近。但是他还认为需要灵活的包装设备。伊森伯格（Isenberg）给出的一个例子是精酿啤酒品牌，这些品牌变得太深了，依赖于瓶装和装瓶设备，然后才能狂热。这提出了另一个关键方向，克莱尔维斯特（Clairvest）为合作伙伴提供了：知道如何发现趋势。
霍恩说：“那里最好的管理团队今天没有试图扑灭大火。”“他们考虑到其能力利用率以及在这种环境中取得成功的设备方面提前三到五年。在包装方面，我们看到了同样的东西。有趋势和格式变化。管理团队可以灵活地建造资本设备的能力，但也要领先于此，因为这些事情确实有很长的交货时间，这很重要。”
说到漫长的交货时期，大流行将扳手扔进了供应链中。这如何改变事物？
“One change is inventory. I think we’re going into a world where holding a little inventory is valued (versus just-in-time),” Horn says. “We’ve seen supply shocks before. Obviously this one was a big one, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone that building more slack into the system is a likely result.”
On a related note, Horn sees the need for increased input diversity. Brands can’t be too reliant on a single supplier (or single region) in the post-pandemic environment.
“ CPG品牌是包装公司的合作伙伴。They work together, so the management teams of these companies need to take it on themselves to make sure that they’re getting as much visibility downstream as possible from the bigger brands, and they can work together to make sure that they can meet demand,” Horn concludes. “We’ve seen a lot of instances in this crisis where active communication actually presented new revenue opportunities because you’re out there trying to get forward visibility on demand.”
