Coterie has surpassed $200 million in annual sales while taking a deliberately selective approach to growth. The baby care brand has expanded beyond its direct-to-consumer roots into retailers including Whole Foods Market and Wegmans, while treating store shelves as marketing opportunities—what Lindsey Kling calls a "giant billboard." Kling says 43% of Coterie's new customers now come through word of mouth.

Kling, Coterie's senior VP of brand marketing, partnerships and business development and one of Ad Age's 2026 Mid Size Brand Leaders, joins the Marketer's Brief podcast to share lessons from Coterie's growth. She discusses why "more is not more" when expanding into new categories, how the brand balances measurable returns with longer-term brand building, and how Coterie is trying to preserve its agility after being acquired by Mammoth Brands.

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Most marketing leaders get involved after a product is built. SharkNinja Chief Brand and Experience Officer Michelle Crossan-Matos says her role exists because that's too late—she now oversees creative, marketing and customer experience under one roof, with her team co-creating alongside engineers and product teams from the earliest stages of development.

The reasoning is growth, not just structure: Crossan-Matos says double-digit quarterly growth only comes from focusing on the full consumer experience, which is why one person now owns every touch point rather than splitting it across departments.

Crossan-Matos also details the AI Jailbreak Hack Week that produced an internally built tool for predicting which product features will drive sales and five-star ratings—part of how her team stays involved upstream in product development, not just downstream in marketing it.

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Saint James Tea Co-Founder and CEO Brad Neumann says a single packaging switch—from cardboard cartons to resealable aluminum bottles—nearly tripled the three-year-old, better-for-you iced tea brand's sales velocity overnight. The bigger signal: Saint James sits in less than 17% of possible retail doors, yet has ranked as the country's fastest-growing iced tea brand in every four-week SPINS reporting period for almost two years.

Why the switch worked: it solved a consumer complaint (the old packaging didn't keep tea cold), and opened channels, including convenience stores, that the old packaging couldn't reach.

The bigger philosophy: build the brand first and let distribution follow. "Our strategy from day one has always been: focus on the brand. Distribution and sales will come," Neumann says. He also details how Saint James uses Costco to drive volume in-store while boosting sales in other retail channels, discusses high-profile brand collaborations including "The White Lotus" and Juicy Couture, and explains how the brand's growing in-house marketing team is helping it compete against much larger companies.

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