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Here We Go 2025!

Mark Tarchetti

Turning the page on a new year always gives me optimism.  The artifice of a new year has a lot of power to refresh and reinvigorate your ideas and business plans.  This is already shaping up to be a busy year for Alchemy-Rx.  I am releasing my second book in the coming months which focuses on a detailed playbook for growth based on nearly 30 years of practice.  We are restarting our sharing tips and tricks.  Meanwhile we have several live projects, starting the year strong!


For the first article of 2025 I want to channel your new year optimism and put the recent years of volatility in context.  A lot is written about the VUCA environment and the day-to-day challenges of CPG markets.  It seems harder and more dynamic every year.   Two to three years ago people would say they were waiting for the volatility to die down.  Now it’s seen as the new normal, and we measure ourselves on how well we respond to the volatility.


This sets up a critical leadership point.  Average tenures of CEOs, CFOs, CMOs are short at just a few years, and getting shorter.  Corporate business unit leaders have shorter tenure still.  The nature of recent events is you could spend your whole tenure reacting to the next big variable.  It is true that the short-term disruptions needed plenty of attention given their P&L impact.  Yet, it is also true that the volatility occurred amidst some underlying shifts in the market made over 2 decades which continue to play out and define your long-term risk and opportunity.  Those shifts are somewhat predictable in their direction and magnitude but also evolve over time requiring constant adaptation to win.   Think of the insurgent brands in their thousands, now faced with rising customer acquisition costs and a plateau in online demand.  Look at big brands, often with an enduring lack of innovation and a distorted focus away from pure consumer interests to corporate objectives on purpose, sustainability and complexity reduction.  The retail winners and losers has largely played out, consolidating the landscape into successful formats but with many less doors and less specialty players.  Now though, online is flattening and a return to in-store experiences is in evidence. 


Each of these shifts has progressive and regressive elements.  Opportunity and risk ebb and flow.  You need to see the underlying shifts and rebuild strategy around them, while being agile and opportunistic to market conditions so you make your numbers in any given period and get the sequence of change right. 


This creates the basic leadership choice for you and your organization.  Will you be a strategist or a tactician? The tactician focuses only on the moment, working through the immediate problems and optimizing short term results with immediate and decisive action.  The strategist may use some of that playbook opportunistically to balance results, but will see everything in the context of the broader playing field.  Observing the underlying shifts and focusing on where the market will go next.  Think beyond what’s possible in the shortest cycles to how your business needs to adapt and what it needs to be ready for.  The tactician may succeed but is always a passenger to circumstance.  The strategist sets the course for a deliberate destination and navigates the conditions standing in their way. 


Wishing everyone a successful 2025 and of course all our best wishes and support to those affected by the fires in California. 

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