Fractional Head of Sales
I used to breed seahorses.
Now I get brands
onto shelves.
Launch! is a fractional sales business for founder-led consumer brands. Two to four days a month. You get a Head of Sales without hiring one.
Start a conversationSome of the shelves you'll find my brands on
Selected work
Good products. Landed properly.
One Planet Pizza
Plant-based frozen pizza that does not ask you to lower your expectations.
- Retail readiness
- Buyer targeting
- Pitch and pack
Gold Standard Nutrition
Frozen free-from ready meals. High protein, low sugar, ready in minutes.
Praveen Kumar
Authentic Indian cuisine, built for a fixture that had stopped taking risks.
SNACK'd
Gut-friendly oat bars taken from a good idea to a judged, awarded product.
Pots for Tots
Frozen meals for toddlers, with an ingredients list a parent can actually read.
- Commercial story
- Trade terms
- Route to shelf
East Pizzas
Sourdough bases and pre-topped pizza, built for retail and wholesale at the same time.
- Retail readiness
- Wholesale channel
- Buyer meetings
The route to shelf
Five stages. I work across all five.
Most founders meet me somewhere in the middle. But I can pick you up at a sketch on the kitchen table and stay until a supermarket buyer has my number saved.
How it worksFoundations
Branding, labelling, sourcing. Everything an aspiring business needs before it has something a buyer will take seriously. This is where Native Roots started.
I do thisBuyer ready
Pricing that survives contact with a buyer. Margin that works both ways. A sell sheet that says one thing, clearly.
I do thisThe right doors
Not every door. The three or four that fit what you have actually built, opened by someone who has already sat on the other side of the desk.
I do thisListed
A listing is a start, not a finish. Launch plans, first orders, and the awkward conversations that follow.
I do thisSelling
Rate of sale and data analysis, key account management, and being the person a major supermarket actually picks up the phone to.
I do this too
Who you actually get
You get me. Not an account team.
I'm Andy, a qualified Marine Biologist with 25 years getting my hands wet across Europe, breeding Seahorses, Jellyfish and Sharks.
I ran a hugely successful retail store near Manchester, and from there I hit the world of Field Sales and Sales Management, leading National and European Sales Teams for several brands in the Aquatics industry. I've done TV and Radio, written for Magazines, Tabloids and even BoredPanda (my beef over a Sunfish became the stuff of legends).
Post-Covid, I decided to switch track. I ran a CPD register for 35,000 professionals, then leapt into food and joined the incredible Membership team at the British Frozen Food Federation.
This led me into my role with Praveen Kumar, which is where most people probably know me from. I took a small frozen ready meal brand and made it a household name. Now I'm here, running Launch! and giving you all the help and advice I wish I'd known 20 years ago, and picked up along the way.
It is a strange route into food and drink. It also turns out that keeping a shark alive and getting a founder through a buyer meeting are the same job. Preparation, patience, and knowing exactly when to avoid sharp teeth.
More about me
If the product is good,
let's talk about the shelf.
No pitch deck, no discovery framework. Tell me what you have made and where you are stuck.