from first contact to shelf, if you are starting cold.

The database shortens the research. It does not shorten the clock. Six to nine months is what a private-label project takes when you already have the relationship — and almost nobody reading this page has one yet.

Giles Pickles · 36 years in food and beverage,
most of it selling into the European shelf

Book a call See where the time goes

Two routes to the same shelf

The build phase is fixed — artwork, specification, audits and print do not go faster. The fifteen months in front of it is the part a conversation can collapse.

Where the year goes

Five ways to lose a cycle, none of them published anywhere.

You already have the retailer relationship

6–9 monthsConcept to delivery

You are starting cold

~24 monthsFirst contact to shelf

You approach a French retailer after 28 February

+12 monthsThe window is statutory

You pitch chilled into Germany without production in the region

IndefiniteShelf lives need local supply

You pick the wrong retailer for your tier

One full cycleAnd nobody tells you why

The expensive part is not the mistake. It is finding out.

You learn each of those by spending a quarter on it. A supplier who gets two of them wrong has lost a year, a sampling budget, and usually the internal argument for trying Europe at all.

Save 2 years to get on shelf

One call. One decision, answered properly.

Thirty minutes with an operator who has made the decision before — not a research team reading the same public sources you already have.

30 minThe call

FreeNo fee, no invoice

1Decision, answered

2 yrsWhat it can save you

Which market, and honestly whether it should be this one
Which retailer, and at which own-label tier
Which window, and how far ahead to be in the conversation
Direct or through an importer, and who
What they will expect on volume, margin and service level
What would get you a no in the first ten minutes

Pick a time →

Straight into the calendar. No form, and nothing to buy at the end of it.

Who you'd actually speak to

Not researchers. Operators who have been in the room.

Three of the people whose interviews are quoted throughout the database.

Damien Cambefort

🇫🇷 France · 25+ years

F&B business development, and ran a specialist private-label manufacturer pitching French retailers for a living.

He can tell youWhich French retailers commit to the volumes they quote you, and which quote a third of what they'll actually take.

Rob Johnson

🇬🇧 United Kingdom · 26+ years

B2B foodservice and commercial across the UK, EU and Switzerland.

He can tell youHow the private-label market outside grocery works — QSR, contract catering, airlines, institutions. Different buyers, different rules, no shelf.

Giles Pickles

🇩🇪 Germany · 36+ years

Global sales leadership in food and beverage, most of it selling into European retail.

He can tell youThat a private-label project runs six to nine months once you have the relationship — and about two years if you're starting cold.

Behind them: Phil Cross, who began his career at Tesco · David Jan de Zeeuw, buying and category management at Ahold · Lorenzo Livi, senior commercial roles at Ferrero, Danone, Lactalis and Nestlé · Cédric Colliot, FMCG across France, Germany, the UK and Iberia · and others across Southern Europe and CEE.

Start here

Fifteen months of guessing, or thirty minutes.

Pick a time that works. Tell us the market and the category when you book, and we'll put the right person on the call.

Book your call →

Free, thirty minutes, no obligation.
If we don't have the right person for your market, we'll tell you before the call.