University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management

Western University

Sean Bredt Consulting

Leading a private equity-backed sustainable ingredient business, transforming it into a strategic force in North America.

Turnaround Specialist: Recruited to revive a struggling business lacking strategy, direction, and team morale.
Strategic Revamp: Secured board approval for a new plan within 90 days, focusing on a sustainable ingredient business. Our purpose: helping food companies meet carbon reduction targets.
Focused Execution: Aligned the business with specific industry/customer
targets and a customer-centric go-to-market strategy. New investments drive a
revolutionary production technology, enabling us to offer carbon-reduced ingredients at no premium.

Early Success: Witnessing strong Q1 sales growth, improved cash flow, and enhanced margins. On track to achieve 2024 goals.

Revitalized Team: Instilled clarity, resources, and ownership. Despite
turbulence, morale is up, thanks to a clear plan, goal clarity, and an ownership approach.

Outcast Foods

Chief Executive Officer

The focus of my consulting business has been to bring many of the lessons learned in Tier 1 organizations to smaller businesses nimbly and flexibly.  Enjoyed fast-paced, owner-led organizations that need help in driving consistent, profitable growth.  With a passion for a focused strategy and an eye for executional excellence.

President, GM, Vice President, Marketing and Sales

Reporting to the CEO & the Board and a member of the executive team. DFO is a $2+ billion farmer-led co-operative business that produces, distributes, and markets milk in Ontario. This was a start-up business mission: the Board had removed money from the National organization and Ontario had not been marketing in over 15 years. The mandate was to establish the vision, strategy, and tactics and then to build the team to execute.  
- Built a Tier 1 marketing team of 20+ and an agency network – all committed to a get it done culture. This drove category growth for the time in 20+ years.
- Created two new communications platforms, four advertising campaigns that tested well and won 
  Canadian Agriculture Marketing Awards. 
-  Built retail and foodservice business partnerships to drive dairy consumption; focus was on helping to 
  bring innovation to market.
- Conceived and built a digital/social marketing/CRM platform that in 18 months attracted 200,000+ 
  consumers.  This is a data hub designed to directly market to consumers based on their profiles.

Dairy Farmers of Ontario

Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer

Involved in consulting opportunities where I leveraged my Sales, Marketing and GM experience to enable entrepreneurial companies to realize profitable growth: 
- Insurance for Children.  A direct marketing company that sells insurance to millennial parents via 
  social media and an independent sales force.  As the acting COO, I oversaw all aspects of the $5MM 
  business: Marketing, Sales and Operations. Rebuilt the digital & social on boarding process and 
  developed a new CRM system to better track people through the sales/acquisition funnel and improve 
  the closing rate.
- Smooth Commerce. Provides a white-label, handheld application for QSR/C&G channels that enables 
  pre-ordering, easy payment and direct marketing programs. Leveraging my contacts in foodservice 
  and retail to sell-in the technology to accounts.  
-  Club Coffee – leveraged by significant North American Retail and Food service network to advise 
  them on new customer opportunities and sell in execution.

GM, Vice President, Marketing, Sales & Strategy

Mother Parkers is the leading provider of private label tea & coffee solutions in North America to the Food Service & Retail channels.  A family company started in 1912, it operates 4 plants in CDA & the USA.  Some of our business partners: Tim Horton's, McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, 7-11, Speedway, Wawa, Target, Walmart, Wegman's, Publix, Loblaws, Sobey's & Metro.  

My role at Mother Parkers involved leading business strategy, P&L ownership, and all commercialization.  During my time at MP, the business experienced a remarkable turnaround as sales doubled and profit increased by 6X; 2017 will be another record year. I led the following departments at one point: Marketing, Category Management, Commercialization, Core Product R&D.

I am most proud of my leadership of the following:
> I led the turnaround of the coffee business; It went from losing millions to generating over $20 
   million; RONA from -3% to 10%
> Led the launch of WaterWise coffee that improves people's lives at origin by helping to fix water
   related issues. www.waterwisecoffee.com
> Initiated the development of the private label Capsule business; we are now a market leader
> Revamped the tea business strategy by focusing on the specialty segment & new pyramid tea
   innovation 
> Developed a high-performance team; strong focus on development; several people promoted
   from Manager to Director

Mother Parkers Tea & Coffee

Vice President/VP & GM - Category Marketing

Chrisco Hampers Canada, was a family company that operated in the food-hamper category, which is a billion dollar category in the UK, Australia & New Zealand.  The business model is based on a layaway service program where consumers select bundles of food (ranging in value from $200 to $2,000) from a catalogue/on-line and then pay off their options over 8-12 months.  It had revenues of $18MM and a staff that ranged from 25 to 125 people.

When I entered the business it was not performing well, sales had stalled and the annual loss had hit over $7million.  In less than 2 years we recedes loss by $5 million and improved marketing ROI by 10% by developing a model which allowed us to re-allocate investment in real time.   

As the VP of Sales and Marketing, reporting to the President,  I managed the Sales and Marketing teams.  In a direct marketing model, we invested over $8 million in TV, On-line, Radio, Direct Mail and Phone.  

I am proud of the following accomplishments:
> Increased sales by +15% and reduced operating loss from $7 million to $3 million by optimizing sales & marketing investments
> Developing a financial model which helped us better predict results by sales campaign 
> Increased efficiency of our sales activities by leveraging an outside call centre to reduce overtime in peek periods

Chrisco hampers NZ

VP Marketing & Sales

Rubbermaid Canada was a subsidiary of NewellRubbermaid.  The business had $185 million in sales and covered the following categories: Storage, Food, Closet & Organization, Tools, Cleaning & Industrial materials.  There were over 200 people and a plant in Canada.  

At Rubbermaid, I started by revamped the planning process, enabling a more focused effort on select activities and clear accountabilities by function.  This helped the business achieve top and bottom growth for the first time in 5 years.  

As the VP of Marketing, I was responsible for a team of 17 people, the category strategies, the P&L's, a total budget of $15 MM with $7 MM for consumer marketing.  Brands included: Rubbermaid, Commercial Products, Irwin tools (ViceGrip).

At Rubbermaid, I made a difference by:
> Drove +20% sales growth on Configurations/Fast Track Closet systems with integrated program on HG TV and at the Home Depot 
> Selecting as the only Canadian representative on the Global Marketing team and presented to the Global CEO 
> Developed a new sourcing program out of China which drove over $3 million of incremental sales

Rubbermaid Home Products

VP Marketing Canada

Kraft Canada was a $2.4 billion subsidiary of Kraft Foods, USA.  It operates in over 50 product categories and was one of the largest CPG companies in Canada.

I was brought into Kraft as the Director of Corporate Strategy which involved 3 responsibilities: 1) Running the planning process, 2) Leading all M&A activities and 3) Acting as an internal consultant.  A small business team of 3 people we worked extensively with the VP Strategy, CFO & the President.  

In early 2004, I was moved into the Director of Frozen meals, which had Delissio pizza (DiGiorno in USA) with sales of $170 million and profit of $60 million.  The team was 8 direct reports and a larger team of people from sales, insights, category management focused on frozen segment.  

Finally, in 2006, as Kraft re-organized, I was made "Sector lead - the Sr. Marketing person" for convenient meals which had sales of $500 million (Delisso, Kraft Dinner & Minute Rice), reporting into the VP Convenient Meals in the USA. 

At Kraft, I was proud of accomplishing the following:
> Rebuilding the planning process to increase speed, improve strategic alignment & streamline presentations
> On Delissio, saved over $3 million annually by fixing the issue of excessive product write offs 
> Driving Delissio pizza business to +8% sales growth and over +40% GM growth 
> Revised Delissio trade strategy & added in key account overlays which boosted trade spend ROI
> Improved the Delissio creative strategy and launched new creative ("Date Night") which scored the second highest of any piece of brand creative
> Drove innovation by launching 1) Microwave pizza, 2) Harvest Wheat sub-line and 3) relaunching the Thin Crust sub-line.

Kraft Canada

Sector Lead - Marketing

Effem Canada Inc is the subsidiary of M&M Mars Inc. It operated in Confectionery, Pet Food & Food segments.  The business had sales of $330 million and approximately 300 associates. 

I worked in confectionery, which had $130 million in sales and $40 million in profit.  I reported into the VP Confectionery and ran the Chocolate business segment (Brands: Mars, Snickers, M&M's, Twix, Bounty & Maltesers) which was $110 million in sales and generated $35 million in profit.  I was responsible for a team of 5 people and a marketing budget of $10 million made up of advertising,  in-store displays & promotions.

At Effem, I was proud of the following:
> Initiated a new business strategy targeting discrete customer targets (psychographic & demographic) by channel
> Launched new innovative product called "Rewards" which generated over $10 million in sales and recognized as the innovation of the year at Walmart 
> Led the team that revamped the planning process; it was os successful that it was leveraged in the US business 
> Revamped the trade spending program which enabled reduced trade spend which enhancing promotional activity

Effem Inc. - M&M/Mars

Group Franchise Manager, Snack Food

Campbell's Soup Company is the largest soup company in North America.  I worked in the Canadian division which had 500 employees and $800 million in sales. 

At Campbell's I worked on every business segment:
- I started as an Assistant Manager on Condensed Soups - sales of $250 million.  
- I was promoted to Brand Manager on Condensed soups and then moved to run the Frozen Meals portfolio (Swanson) and then to Senior Brand Manager on Ready to Serve Soups (Chunky & Campbell's) 
- Within 4 years, I was promoted to Director of the Grocery Division.  The Grocery Division has sales of $135 million, a team of five people & brands like V8, Pace Salsa, Pepperidge Farm & Swanson.

I made a differnece at Campbell's by:
> Growing Chunky Soup by almost $20 million in sales - over 15% CAGR 
> Developed new Chunky creative strategy, move brand from "Fork vs. Spoon" to "Fills me Up Right" 
> Successfully lunched Chunky soup into Quebec
> Developed & presented the first Grocery business segment strategic plan
> Integrating the Pepperidge Farm brand into Campbell's Soup Canada
> Revamping the $50 million Condensed Soup trade budget, resulting in $5 million in savings