1. Brian Staudenmaier Bio
With twenty-five years of experience in consumer goods and related industries, Brian
Staudenmaier has consistently developed and executed strategies that accelerated
successfulgrowth across multiple channels of distribution at public CPGcompanies,
mid-cap family owned businesses, and early stage startup companies. In his most
recent role, he led a sales organization with extreme growth in a flat-to-declining
category which led to a successfulM&A exit by the founders and acquisition by a
private equity backed competitor.
He began his career at Pepsiwhere he moved through their sales management
organization selling soft drinks and alternative beverages for approximately nine
years. He then joined The Clorox Company where,for eight years,he held positions
of increasing responsibility in field sales and planning. A majority of his time was
spent on integrating new sales teams into existing ones, and on building businesses
with large customers; where he honed skills at developing strategic plans for
successfulgrowth.
Numerous assignments at Clorox instilled skills to adapt quickly to a wide variety of
complex business situations. He worked with numerous product categories that were sold through many trade channels
including but not limited to: grocery, mass, drug, department, food service. As the Sales Planning Manager of Glad trash
bags (Clorox joint venture with P&G),he was the internal sales leader for the launch of Glad Force Flex trash bags which
resulted in increased shares of almost 4pts and an increased margin on the business of double digits. During that
assignment, he became enamored with the excitement of game changing & innovative businesses.
In 2006, he left Clorox to pursue a passion for new challenges in smaller business environments. He joined Method
Products as Director of Sales Planning and played an active role in developing a long-term strategic plan to assist the
founders in preparing the company for a liquidity event. His effort resulted in the successfuloptimization and improved
profitability of this fast growing company. He worked very close with the Board of Directors and with the Goldman
Sachs investment banking organization to secure additional private equity investment in early 2008.
Continuing a passion for smaller companies, he then joined a startup in Berkeley, Vaska,which was in the “seed” phase of
its existence as their Vice President of Sales. He drove the company’s growth from zero in 2008 to $10mm projected for
2011. His skills at team building, strategic planning and customer development took Vaska all the way through the
“early” stage and helped launch the “growth” phase in 2010 by securing distribution at major retailers like Sam’s Club,
Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Duane Reade (now owned by Walgreens), H.E.B.,Albertsons, Hy-Vee,Fred Meyer,
Raley’s, Lucky, The Fresh Market,Earth Fare along with numerous others.
Following the successfulsale of Vaska to new investors, he began working at Cot’n Wash as their Senior VP of Sales. His
focus was on optimizing selling results at Target,Safeway,Publix, Duane Reade,Raley's, Wal-Mart.com and
Amazon.com & worked on partnership opportunities with Wal-Mart, Trader Joe's,Aldi & Costco.
He has spent the last 4 years working with California Scents, a 20+ year old family owned business that had flat revenues
for the previous 10 years. He immediately upgraded the sales organization and developed multiple internal processes that
helped the company stay focused on the customers. His skills at team building, strategic planning and customer
development led to almost 50% growth (in a flat category) over the last 4 years and resulted in the founders of the
company performing a successfulexit with a private equity backed competitor.
Brian is a graduate of Thunderbird School of Global Management’s MBA program. He is also a graduate of the
University of Nebraska where he was a scholarship golfer and member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He presently
resides in Coto De Caza,California with wife, Kasia, and their twin seven year olds, Trent and Grace.