Fostering trade relations, growth

Ted Peterson, HBC industry veteran and former VP of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, last month started a new company, CPG Linkages, to focus on customer development efforts between national trade associations, their manufacturer members and retail customers.



“The most critical challenge facing trade associations and their members today is manufacturer and retailer consolidation,” Peterson said. And in today’s consolidating marketplace, there is a real danger of losing those kind of instrumental relationship-based connections that foster opportunity and incremental growth," he said.



“Trade relations have all but disappeared with retailer consolidation. Companies need it. How can you sell to a chain retailer category manager and then ask his or her CEO to dinner at NACDS?” Peterson asked. “[It] creates trust issues and doesn’t work,” he said. Both associations and manufacturers need a neutral third-party to drive relations and business, to be their retail champions in their respective areas. “Serving that ‘Switzerland’ role is imperative, and companies like CPG Linkages can provide that role,” Peterson said. “You’ve got to bring something of value [to the table], something that’s new or innovative.”



Peterson has cultivated many relationships throughout his career, particularly among his mentors, which includes CHPA’s president and CEO Scott Melville. “He’s a driven CEO. You always learn from driven people, and he was a great boss,” Peterson told Drug Store News.



Another executive who made an indelible mark on Peterson’s career was Ron Ziegler, NACDS president and CEO from 1988 to 1999 and former White House Press Secretary during the Nixon administration. “Ron had an insatiable zest for life and the industry,” Peterson said. “He made us all work harder, look through the other guys’ eyes and step up our style.”



And CPG Linkages has hit the ground running, representing the Council for Responsible Nutrition to key retail pharmacy contacts at NACDS. “The two biggest buyers of nutritional supplements are boomers and millennials,” Peterson said. The nutritionals business is aspirational, Peterson added, and represents a significant growth opportunity for the right partners.