Amy Kapolnek
“Founders don't understand that it's actually easy to get into retail. The hard part is staying in retail.”
Amy Kapolnek is the visionary behind the fwrd group, a growth consulting firm providing strategic advisory and fractional leadership to indie consumer brands. Serving as a Fractional Executive and Growth Advisor, she partners with founders and team leaders to develop, launch, and scale businesses from $0–$50M, combining business, operations, and marketing strategy to drive revenue and position companies for growth and capital.
In addition to her work with indie brands, Amy led brand development and marketing strategy across Fortune 500 companies and global portfolios, including Gucci Beauty and Burberry Perfumes (Coty), Olay, Pantene, Tide and Febreze (Procter & Gamble), Band-Aid (Johnson & Johnson), and Baileys and Don Julio (Diageo).
She is a sought-after industry contributor and speaker whose insights are frequently featured in Beauty Independent, Beauty Matter, Vogue Business, Cosmetic Business, Glossy, Digiday, and Modern Retail, and serves as an advisor to early-stage companies within the XRC Ventures portfolio.
We're starting a consumer goods company in our metaphorical garage this year. What's your first round of advice for us?
I could talk about this for hours, but I actually have five pieces of advice I want to share quickly:
1. Only launch as many products as you can keep in inventory and afford to market.
Majority of brands are bootstrapping. A lot of them don't have pre-seed money, and they're launching multiple SKUs. They don't understand the financial resources needed to support those SKUs. They dump all their money into producing them.
I'll join the team and when I ask about the marketing budget, the answer is typically, "Well, we don't have much." How are we going to get this out into the world? Deer in headlights. It becomes a very obvious, serious question nobody thought through when the company was being formed.
2. You must have your foundations in place.
You can't build a skyscraper if the first layer of concrete is unstable. It's going to topple over. I've advised brands at $25 million, wondering why they have so many issues. Peel back the onion, and you'll see something basic is off, like they have invested zero in brand marketing, so of course their performance marketing is plateauing.
3. Focus on D2C
There's this obsession brands have with breaking into retail before they're ready. Founders enter the industry with dreams of seeing their product in Sephora and Ulta. They don't understand that it's actually easy to get into retail. The hard part is staying in retail.
Retailers pursue indie brands because their customers want them, but maintaining an ongoing presence is a challenge. And if you don't hit numbers at Target or Sephora, you will get pulled and the founder feels like a failure.
But the reality is they were not set up correctly in the first place. Retail comes with demands: producing POs, handling chargebacks, slotting feeds, promotions, self-displays, marketing. It's all about boosting the sales velocity. Which is hard to do if you have limited brand awareness and are up against brands with multi-million dollar marketing budgets to hire mega influencers and create viral brand activations.
So, focus on D2C. The first job should never be retail. I'm a firm believer in slow growth. Build your community first, the rest will unfold naturally.
4. Take a business class.
I beg my clients to do this. If you don't come from business or marketing, please learn the basics. Please educate yourself about the industry you're entering. As an entrepreneur myself, I can tell you that not understanding the fundamentals is actually what gets you burned.
5. When the brand starts growing, don't be your own bottleneck.
Oftentimes, I see founders have a really hard time letting go. They still want their hands in every single process.
But it gets to the point where you need to run the business. You can't be approving every social media post that goes out. Or flip it. Hire a CEO and pivot to CCO or another role you are more passionate about and knowledgeable on.
“There’s a major issue in how women are not supported by the medical industry. Conventional medicine is quick to treat a core problem but not the entire person.”
What's an overlooked product offering or segment of the market?
Women's health and integrative medicine. We have just scratched the surface.
Periods kind of got a facelift a few years ago, and now we're seeing more conversations around perimenopause and menopause, but there is so much more that a woman goes through during her life.
There's a major issue in how women are not supported by the medical industry. Often, we go to our physician and are given answers that don't address underlying problems at all. Your pinky toe hurts? Have you tried getting on an antidepressant? Your stomach hurts? Oh, have you tried birth control? Sometimes it feels like women's health has just not progressed at all, and I'm not even talking from a treatment perspective. It really starts at the research phase.
Because beauty and wellness are becoming increasingly integrated, we, as an industry, need to conduct more rigorous research so we can treat women appropriately. Conventional medicine is quick to treat a core problem but not the entire person.
I'm really passionate about how the industry can support integrative medicine, where we can utilize every single tool in the box to make that person - the woman - feel seen, heard, and just better.
We need to bring a critical eye to products hawking miracles. Some gummy or powder sold as a sleep aid for perimenopausal and menopausal women is probably not a reliable solution when your hormones are off.
But we're so desperate that we lean into these products for help. A positive thing about social media is that it's given us a platform to come together, share information, and bring some perspective to the transitions women experience.
What should a brand do to build a real community?
Even though I, myself, get tired of hearing this, the reality is you have to know your customer at the deepest level. If you can't answer their burning desires, their life ambitions, their keep-you-up-at-night problems, you need to dig deeper.
Let's say your core demo is a 24-year-old woman, recently moved to New York City, likes to travel, goes to Pilates, and eats out at restaurants.
But deep down, she probably wants the close girlfriends she had in college. She's probably worried about all the major life things like finding a partner, staying healthy, getting that promotion at work, or growing her wealth.
And so, does a lip gloss really matter to her? Maybe. She wants to look and feel good at the end of the day, and that lip gloss may help that. But maybe she's also looking for something deeper - to connect in real life with like-minded women at a weekly run club.
If you know your customer inside and out, including the little details that signal bigger wants and needs, you'll know how to build that community, and you will win that consumer for life.
How has your language about your personal brand, your company, and your role changed over the years?
I’ve owned the fwrd group for more than 12 years, and when I first started, I described myself far more narrowly. I was afraid to show the full scope of what I could do, partly because it felt unbelievable that one person could be deeply skilled across so many areas, and partly because imposter syndrome convinced me I had to stay in a smaller box.
It was even harder to pivot, even when I knew I had outgrown the roles I had once attached myself to, both personally and professionally.
Through building dozens of businesses, learning some very hard lessons, and completing my Executive MBA, I realized that while no one knows it all, everyone evolves - and it’s up to you to own that evolution, define your value, and give yourself permission to take up more space.
My personal language had to evolve first because I noticed that the way I spoke about myself shaped how everyone else saw me. If I told people I was a growth marketer, that’s what they believed even when in reality I was operating as a CGO, and in many cases, even a CEO. People will often take your own definition of yourself at face value. You have to say it over and over again, like a broken record, until it catches on because if you don’t define your value, someone else will do it for you.
What's your favorite method of self-care?
I really love nothing more at the end of the day than getting into comfy clothes, sitting on the couch, and sitting in silence. It really helps me unwind and process everything that's happened.
I've also recently started recording voice memos. If I am angry or frustrated about something, or trying to figure out a complex problem, I'll record a few voice memos until I feel better. Stop internalizing and talk things out. Such a simple act, but hearing yourself speak things out loud and going back to listen to old memos puts a lot in perspective.