Where CPG margin actually leaks
Most CPG tech stops at Shopify dashboards and ad copy. The real money is in the back office.
Operational workflows, wholesale logistics and margin recovery are where emerging brands bleed time and cash — and where almost no turnkey tools exist.
2–8%
of gross revenue lost to distributor & retailer deductions
Zero
visibility into whether trade promos made incremental profit
Months
spent emailing co-packers about MOQs, certs and lines
Daily
content drift on retailer portals that hurts rank and triggers penalties
Days vs.months
DTC velocity vs. wholesale lead times — cash trapped or shelves empty
The Design Partner Model
Not an agency. Not off-the-shelf SaaS. An operational co-builder.
We solve hard, unaddressed CPG headaches in exchange for equity, pilots, or strategic development partnerships — so our incentives line up with your margins.
Built around your stack
Generic SaaS doesn’t account for your co-packers, distributors, or retail agreements. We build around the exact way your business runs.
No $50k agency retainers
We build rapid pilots in exchange for feedback and case studies — with equity or partnership structures when the fit is right.
Working software, not slides
Skip months of consulting decks. We deploy working agents into your Slack or internal tools, then iterate with your team.
Five Engines · Major Whitespace
The AI engines we’re building with CPG founders
Each one targets a painful, manual workflow that has no turnkey solution for brands under $10M ARR.
Distributor Chargeback & Deduction Recovery
Agentic Claims Auditor
The Problem
UNFI, KeHE, Target and Walmart issue clawbacks for late deliveries, mislabeled pallets and short-shipped cases. Brands lose 2–8% of gross revenue — and disputing means manually matching invoices, BOL PDFs and portal logs.
What We Build
An agent that monitors distributor statements, parses BOLs, receipts and manifests with multimodal OCR, cross-checks warehouse logs, then drafts and submits dispute packages via API or browser automation.
Trade Spend & Promotion ROI Optimizer
LLM-Powered Trade Analytics Engine
The Problem
Trade promotions eat a huge share of revenue, yet most brands can’t tell if a “2 for $5” generated incremental profit or just subsidized loyal buyers. Syndicated data is too expensive under $10M ARR.
What We Build
An engine that ingests POS data, retailer portal exports and distributor invoices to calculate true promo margin per SKU per region — and answers plain-English questions from founders.
Co-Packer & Ingredient Sourcing Matching
Vertical Sourcing & R&D Agent
The Problem
Finding co-manufacturers and specialty suppliers is opaque and word-of-mouth. Brands spend months emailing to learn MOQs, certifications (Organic, Kosher, SQF Level 3) or whether they have a hot-fill line.
What We Build
Agents that read capability statements, regulatory filings and trade-show databases. Input your formulation; get a qualified co-packer shortlist, drafted RFIs and ingredient supplier comparisons.
Digital Shelf & Retailer Portal Compliance
Autonomous Digital Shelf Monitor
The Problem
Across Amazon Vendor Central, Target Partners Online and Walmart Luminate, content changes, missing images, out-of-stocks or altered attributes quietly damage search rank and trigger penalties.
What We Build
Agents that scan retailer product pages daily, flag discrepancies against your master file, and draft support tickets or portal updates to fix content, categorization and pricing errors.
Multi-Channel Inventory & PO Forecasting
Context-Aware Inventory Agent
The Problem
DTC inventory moves in days while wholesale lead times run weeks or months. Miscalculate and you get stockouts at retail — or cash trapped in excess inventory.
What We Build
A model that blends DTC sales, pending wholesale POs, supplier lead times and your marketing calendar — and sends proactive Slack alerts before a reorder window closes.
How a Design Partnership Works
From your most manual process to a working agent
Apply
A 2-minute form: your brand, channels, and the process that hurts most.
Diagnose
A founder call to map the workflow, data sources and the margin at stake.
Build the pilot
A rapid pilot at zero upfront dev cost, shaped by your weekly feedback.
Launch
Deployed into Slack or your internal tools — production-ready in weeks.
Scale together
Shared upside through equity, extended pilots, or a strategic partnership.
Design Partner Application
Tell us what’s crushing your ops team.
We’re taking on a small cohort of CPG brands as design partners. Three questions, two minutes — we review every application personally.
Who we’re looking for
Prefer to talk first? Book a Founder Call →
Your margin is leaking in the back office. Let’s build the engine that plugs it.
Tell us the workflow that eats your team’s week. We’ll tell you honestly whether AI can fix it.