Our Market Share Webinar: Four Expert Panelists, Four Different Routes to Growth

Market share is king for brands across the business world, including our Good Food and Natural Products industry. Brands can succeed, of course, without dominating their product category. But if you want your brand to get big… really big… and make money… lots of money… then becoming one of the biggest names in your product category is your goal.

There is no one-size-fits-all formula for growing market share. That’s why the panel for our February 1 free webinar, titled Market Share is King, brings a wide variety of experiences to share with attendees.

You’ll get insights and tips from Jean-Pierre Comte, President of Italy-based Barilla pasta company’s Americas division; Tracey Halama, CEO of Vital Proteins, which dominates the wellness-focused collagen category; Peter Maldonado, CO-CEO of decade-old CHOMPS, whose clean-label jerky sticks made from pasture-raised beef are shaking up a category filled with old guard conventional products; and Clara Lalouh Paye, whose flavor-forward and diversity-focused UNiTE protein bars are taking the snack world by storm.

The webinar will kick off at 3 p.m. central with a market share presentation by Simon Cutts, Senior Director of Retail Partners at SPINS, the leading provider of data and insights for the Good Food and Natural Products industry. The panel, moderated by Naturally Chicago Managing Director Jim Slama, will follow.

Click the button below to register, then enjoy the profiles of our amazing panelists.

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Jean-Pierre Comte, President Americas, Barilla

 Barilla, the Italian pasta company, did not even enter the U.S. consumer market until 1996. Today, just 27 years later, Barilla has 35 percent share in its category, making it by far the #1 pasta in this country. And since 2013, Jean-Pierre Comte has overseen much of that growth as President of Barilla’s operations in the Western Hemisphere.

 Comte is a Chicago resident and member of Naturally Chicago’s Board of Directors. He says Barilla established a solid customer base by focusing on its Italian authenticity, and by rolling out its Collezione of different traditional pasta shapes at a time when many Americans knew pasta only as spaghetti and meatballs, fettucine Alfredo or baked ziti.

During his tenure as head of Barilla Americas over the past decade, the company has nearly doubled its market share by directly addressing consumers’ concerns. For those worried about pasta having too many carbs and contributing to weight gain, Barilla has been on trend with its lines of gluten-free, legume and plant protein-based pastas. For eaters who love pasta but don’t have the time to prepare it, Barilla created Pasta Ready, pre-cooked noodles in a pouch that are ready to heat and eat in a minute. And for foodie customers, Barilla presents Al Bronzo, varieties of pasta cut with a bronze die to create a roughened surface that enables sauces to cling better.

Comte, a native of France, had a long tenure with Proctor & Gamble that ultimately took him to Italy. He joined Barilla in 2010 as Vice President in charge of Western Europe, then became President of Barilla Americas three years later.

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 Tracey Halama, CEO, Vital Proteins 

Tracey Halama had enjoyed a lengthy career in technology sales when she decided in 2016 to take a chance on a ground-floor opportunity with a fledging Chicago company named Vital Proteins. Her choice made her part of the astounding rise of one of the Natural Products sector’s fast-growing companies, as it quickly built a wellness-focused customer base around its collagen-based products.

Halama had a stratospheric rise of her own. She started out as Vital Proteins’ Vice President of Sales, then was promoted first to Chief Revenue Officer, then to President, then in January 2022 to CEO, succeeding company founder Kurt Seidensticker, who stepped down after the sale of Vital Proteins to Nestlé Health Science was completed.

Today, Vital Proteins maintains a 55 percent market share in its category, despite the emergence of new competitors. It maintains its position by innovating, expanding its product line beyond its flagship collagen powders to lines of supplements, drinks, gummies and bars.

And as a feather in her cap, Halama had the pleasure of announcing in December that Vital Proteins had achieved B Corp™ Certified status, given to companies that exhibit high social and environmental performance and make a legal commitment to make their corporate governance structure accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders. “Vital Proteins is proud to join a global community of businesses that are a force for good,” Halama said.

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Peter Maldonado, Co-CEO, CHOMPS

Peter Maldonado’s experiences as a fitness trainer piqued his interest in developing a line of protein-powered, clean-label snacks. In 2012, he and Co-Founder Rashid Ali launched CHOMPS and its jerky sticks made from grass-fed and grass-finished beef. Although the Florida-based company started on a shoestring, Maldonado sensed that CHOMPS could ride the waves of several major diet trends, including Paleo, Keto, Whole 30 and CrossFit.

His instincts proved smashingly correct. From a small online presence just a decade ago, CHOMPS is now on shelf in 19,000 stores nationwide. In one of its earliest retail victories, CHOMPS obtained placement in Trader Joe’s stores, where the overwhelming majority of products bear the chain’s house brand.

While Maldonado acknowledges that the big-name conventional brands of meat sticks and jerkys still dominate the overall category, CHOMPS has fueled its growth by creating new consumer niches. While most of these snack products project a macho image to appeal to a mainly male clientele, Maldonado says women makes up about 75 percent of his customer base. This makes CHOMPS a welcome addition for retailers, who are more interested in shelving new products that expand their market categories than those that seek mainly to grab market share away from existing companies.

And the good-for-people, good-for-the-planet, good-for-animals image CHOMPS earns from using only pasture-raised meat has given the company a big leg up with retailers who focus on Good Food products. For instance, Maldonado notes that CHOMPS is the leading jerky stick sold online by Thrive Market, which is heavily focused on a Good Food clientele.

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Clara Lalouh Paye, Founder/CEO, UNiTE

Clara Lalouh Paye’s personal interest in wellness, and her perception that the protein bars she’d tried were, well, boring, prompted her to give up a lengthy career running a plumbing supply company to becoming a Good Food entrepreneur. She developed her UNiTE snacks — which she boldly labeled “the world’s best-tasting protein bars” — prepared for a big March 2020 rollout at Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California… and then COVID hit.

Despite the terrible timing, Paye was determined to push forward, and as the world emerged from hibernation, she was pleased to learn that her flavorful formulations had appeal to consumers, and to retailers seeking a new, innovative product with strong potential to expand the protein bar category rather than just competing for existing companies’ market share.

Paye’s twist on the protein bar is a focus on flavors recognizable to specific demographic groups. A first-generation immigrant, Paye gave two of her current three flavors a Mexican flair: one is modeled after the churro, a fried, cinnamon-inflected pastry, and the other is Mexican hot chocolate. While UNiTE’s third flavor, Peanut Butter & Jelly, is aimed at broad appeal, Paye says, ”We're going to expand to an Asian flavor, a Middle Eastern flavor. We're going to be inclusive of hopefully all cultures and a big part of how we come to market is that we crowdsource our flavors.”

Paye’s company has taken off like a rocket over the less than two short years since the pandemic started to ease, and it is becoming increasingly easy to find and sample them. They are widely on shelf is our region’s Walmart, Meijer and Jewel Osco stores, and Paye noted that UNiTE has just recently begun selling in Sam’s Club outlets.