Getting EDI right comes down to a handful of unglamorous moves, done in the right order and early enough that nothing catches fire during your retail launch. Most founders learn that order the hard way, after the first stack of chargebacks land, but it most certainly doesn’t need to be that way. Hence, this mini master class!

The brands that get chargebacks under control share one belief. They stopped seeing chargebacks as random bad luck and started seeing them as a process they can audit, fight, and mostly prevent. That's the whole game.

Retail compliance is more than chargebacks. See the operational and product rules CPG brands must meet to sell into retail, and how to stay compliant.

A retail chargeback is a fee a retailer like Walmart, Target, or Kroger deducts straight from what it owes you when a shipment breaks the rules laid out in their vendor manual. The money is gone before you see an invoice, usually tagged with a reason code that tells you what they say went wrong….

We interviewed a number of COOs and Directors of Operations, and we documented what they feel are the best use cases for AI in supply chain and CPG operations.

3PL vs 4PL explained for CPG brands. Compare cost, control, and retailer compliance to pick the right logistics model for your stage.

Out-of-stocks cost retailers roughly $1.2 trillion a year globally, according to IHL Group's 2025 inventory research. For a growing brand, the sting can be painful. A stockout can cost you a retail slot, tank your Amazon ranking right when you've built momentum, or teach a buyer that you can't be trusted with more doors.

You raised your round, landed the retail doors, and the revenue chart finally points the right way. On paper, this is the part you worked toward. In practice, it's the stretch where a lot of good brands quietly get into trouble, because growth and cash don't move on the same schedule.

A fractional COO is a senior operations executive who works with you part-time on an ongoing basis, usually 10 to 25 hours a week. It isn't a one-off project and it isn't a temp filling a seat. This is someone who joins your leadership team, owns the operational side of the house, and stays long enough to actually fix things…

When a growing brand first starts shipping to retail, almost all the attention goes to the case. How does it look on shelf? How does it feel in a consumer's hand? That focus makes sense, and it matters. But when it's time to actually build the pallet, the instruction to the co-packer or warehouse is usually some version of “just stack as many as you can so it doesn't topple over.”