Episode 120: From Zero Revenue to the Inc. 5000: Inside Chagrinovations' Growth

Building and scaling a consumer brand takes far more than a great product. It requires the right mix of strategy, speed, operational discipline, and people who can adapt when opportunities emerge. In this episode of Marketing Moves, Chagrinovations COO Derek Naim shares how the company grew from virtually zero revenue to a seven-brand portfolio, what the launch of TRGT taught the team about moving quickly, and how collaboration across retail, e-commerce, marketing, and operations helped earn Chagrinovations a spot on the Inc. 5000 for the second consecutive year.

Building a successful consumer brand takes more than finding a great product and putting it on a shelf. Behind the scenes, teams are constantly balancing inventory, manufacturing, retail relationships, e-commerce, marketing, cash flow, and countless other decisions consumers never see.

Now imagine doing it across seven brands.

In this episode of Marketing Moves, VividFront's President Madison Riddell sits down with Derek Naim, Chief Operating Officer of Chagrinovations, to pull back the curtain on what it really takes to build and scale consumer brands. Derek joined the company in February 2020, leaving an established career to join a business with virtually no revenue just before the pandemic. Today, Chagrinovations manages a growing portfolio of consumer brands and has earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for the second consecutive year.

Chagrinovations wasn't always operating with the business model it has today. The company's original goal was relatively straightforward: identify innovative consumer product ideas, commercialize them, and bring them to market. But when Derek joined in February 2020, the pandemic quickly forced the team to rethink that approach.

Retailers were facing massive supply chain disruptions and struggling to keep products on shelves. Rather than continuing to approach them with new ideas, Chagrinovations started asking a different question: What problems can we help you solve?

That shift became foundational to the company's growth strategy.

Instead of developing products in isolation and hoping retailers wanted them, the team began working directly with retail partners to understand where supply chains were falling short, which categories needed innovation, and where unmet consumer demand existed. When one retailer identified a problem, Chagrinovations often found that others were experiencing the same challenge.

Those insights gave the company a roadmap for building brands around actual market needs. Today, its portfolio spans categories including household products, pet products, sporting goods, supplements, and more.

For Chagrinovations, brick-and-mortar retail has historically been at the center of its growth strategy. But as consumer behavior evolves, the line between retail and e-commerce is becoming increasingly blurred.

Derek explains that the relationship between the two channels now works both ways. Retail performance can provide valuable insights into product velocity and consumer demand that can then inform e-commerce strategy. At the same time, retailers increasingly look at a brand's Amazon presence, online sales, customer reviews, and overall digital footprint before deciding whether a product deserves space on their shelves.

That makes an omnichannel strategy more important than ever.

A consumer might discover a product online and purchase it later in a store. Another might find it on a retail shelf and reorder directly from the brand online. For growing consumer brands, treating those experiences as completely separate strategies can mean missing opportunities on both sides.

The launch of TRGT gave Chagrinovations and VividFront the opportunity to put that thinking into practice. Rather than building one channel first and adding the other later, the teams launched retail and e-commerce in parallel, allowing each side of the business to strengthen the other from the beginning.

TRGT also demonstrates what can happen when an organization is willing to move quickly around the right opportunity.

The idea began through a conversation with the representation team for professional golfer Vince Whaley. The concept was to create a convenient pouch that could deliver functional supplements without nicotine, ultimately expanding into functions ranging from energy and focus to electrolytes, recovery, and sleep.

What followed was an unusually fast launch.

In roughly six months, the teams moved from an early concept to a fully developed consumer brand entering the market. That required far more than branding and a website. Chagrinovations had to navigate compliance, testing, supply chain development, manufacturing, direct-to-consumer fulfillment, and retail distribution, while VividFront worked alongside the team on brand development, creative, e-commerce, and marketing.

The speed was intentional.

Derek explains that certain categories only offer a limited window of opportunity. When the team believes the market, product, and timing are aligned, it is willing to shift resources toward the opportunity and move.

That doesn't mean moving recklessly. The TRGT launch required fast decisions, but they were calculated decisions made by teams with the right expertise and decision-makers in the room.

One of the biggest lessons from TRGT came when the brand experienced an unexpected viral moment only a few months after launch.

Within 24 hours, sales skyrocketed and inventory was wiped out. The surge created an enormous opportunity, but it also tested nearly every part of the business at once.

The teams quickly learned which products and functions consumers gravitated toward, while VividFront accelerated planned website features to capture demand. Subscriptions, for example, were launched the same day as the spike despite originally being planned for months later. At the same time, Chagrinovations had to fulfill a sudden flood of orders and begin replenishing the supply chain.

The experience reinforced something Derek sees throughout the business: marketing and operations cannot function independently.

A successful campaign doesn't mean much if a company can't fulfill the resulting demand. Likewise, having inventory available doesn't create growth without the marketing needed to generate awareness and sales. Scaling requires both teams to understand what the other is doing and be prepared to react together.

At Chagrinovations, that collaboration extends beyond job titles. When something significant happens in marketing, operations team members step in to understand how they can help, and vice versa. It's a full-system approach that has allowed the company to move from concepts to retail shelves in remarkably short windows.

Behind Chagrinovations' growth is a leadership philosophy centered on people.

Derek credits much of his own approach to lessons he's picked up throughout his life, from his parents and coaches to early managers and the leaders he works alongside today. One lesson in particular has stuck with him: strong leaders surround themselves with people who may be better than they are in certain areas.

Instead of needing to be the expert in every room, Derek believes leaders need enough self-awareness to recognize their strengths, acknowledge their weaknesses, and trust the right people to take ownership.

That trust also means allowing people to make mistakes.

Chagrinovations' team is encouraged to push outside of their comfort zones, make decisions, and learn through experience, with experienced leaders serving as guardrails when necessary. The goal isn't to eliminate every mistake. It's to avoid making the same mistake twice and use those experiences to make the business stronger.

That culture has become increasingly important as the organization has grown from a small team figuring things out in 2020 to one capable of managing multiple brands, channels, partnerships, and rapidly changing opportunities at once.

Chagrinovations' growth didn't happen because of one breakthrough product, one viral moment, or one perfect strategy.

It came from repeatedly identifying real problems, surrounding the business with the right people, moving quickly when opportunities emerged, and creating partnerships where everyone was working toward the same goal.

That approach has taken the company from virtually no revenue in 2020 to a diversified portfolio of consumer brands and, now, its second consecutive appearance on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies. For Derek, that recognition ultimately belongs to the team and reflects years of work that could never have happened through complacency or by accident.

For consumer brands looking to scale, the lesson is bigger than retail versus e-commerce or marketing versus operations. Sustainable growth happens when all of those pieces work together.

Because getting a product into the hands of a customer is only the visible part. The real work happens behind the scenes.