Hi everyone, I'm Jennifer Yuppes Blundell and welcome to the Startup's CPG podcast.

If you're new around here, we're a community dedicated to helping young CPG brand succeed.

We do this a few ways like giving access to phenomenal resources, like our guest today, Mary Allen, who has expertise

in taking brands global.

She not only advises brands in this space, but she's done it herself.

She has taken her brand, Savvy Green, a line of eco-clean detergent products internationally.

Listen in as Mary dives into what brands and products should be thinking about

expanding internationally and resources to help you on the journey. Well, hi, Mary. How are you?

Great. Hey, Jennifer. How's it going? Pretty good. So at Startup CPG, you are the go-to for

global business development knowledge and resources. So I wanted to

capture your knowledge for our community, you know, help them perhaps expand their horizons

or actually consider having a global footprint for their brand, which can seem daunting to some.

Definitely, but shouldn't be. But before we dive in, I wanted to

acknowledge that this business is in your blood and you come from a family of grocers and have been

eyeing merchandise, really, since you were a kid. That's true. Yeah, I grew up in Jacksonville,

Florida. My dad owned the local grocery stores. so I grew up around food and entrepreneurship.

After college, a Florida department store hired me as a buyer.

Two months later, I was in New York City buying women's jewelry and sleepwear.

I moved on to a larger department store chain, buying and eventually a VP of merchandising for housewares and consumer goods, with extensive

travel to Asia, sourcing and developing items for the chain, things like palm trees on plates

and flamingos on glasses. Anyway, millions of dollars in sales and thousands of container loads later,

I was ready for a change. Did you say you went back into the natural food product area, right?

...