The Supply Side: The Barcode Group pulls six businesses into one brand

The Barcode Group in Bentonville has integrated six retail industry businesses under one brand. Portu Sunberg, Belmont Partners, Infinity Worlds, Retell, Avenue C, and Tana now make up The Barcode Group, which offers six specialty areas to retail supplier clients.

The Barcode Group partners with brands and manufacturers to service top-tier retailers, with products found in more than 60,000 physical stores and also online.

“We’ve been running as a cohesive company for a while. Formalizing it through a brand transition was the next logical step,” said Chad Bugos, CEO of The Barcode Group.

He said the consolidation of resources has enabled the business to serve customers better on a larger scale. As a united entity, he said The Barcode Group has gained efficiencies and broadened its scope to offer a more comprehensive array of solutions within the retail sphere.

“We stand stronger and enriched by the collective legacies of these companies and the individuals who’ve shaped them, underpinning our ability to innovate and deliver excellence,” he said.

Bugos, a pharmacist at Walmart in 1995, spent more than a decade at the retail giant in pharmacy management and later as a senior buyer and category manager for diet and nutrition. Bugos formed his own company in 2006, launched two products in Walmart and then transitioned to a licensee platform, licensing products or formulations to other companies. He also founded Infinity Worlds Inc., a boutique-sized company to help CPG manufacturers keep and grow their business at Walmart and Sam’s Club nationwide.

Bugos said that early on, brokers and sales reps called on him to help brands handle the soup to nuts, blocking and tackling necessary for brands to grow their business. He said Infinity Worlds started small in 2006 after he left Walmart. He said the firm helped clients with packaging, managing the back-end supply chain and a strategy to grow their business.

He said the company grew to 35 local reps in Bentonville, working with 150 brands in different categories, producing $1.3 billion in sales in baby, domestics, hardware, health and wellness, beauty and skin care, housewares, pets, and cosmetics. The firm has also worked with over-the-counter brands in analgesics, first aid, nutrition, and grocery categories of dry packaged, frozen, snacks and crackers, and seasonal foods.

Under the newly expanded The Barcode Group brand, the company has offices in four cities and employs 200. The Bentonville office focuses mainly on Walmart and Sam’s Club. The office in Minneapolis, formerly Portu Sunberg and acquired by Tana, serves Best Buy and Target. There are also offices in Chicago and St. Louis and a few technologists who work remotely.

According to Bugos, the firm is backed by private equity investments from Clearview Capital. He said the new combined firm has employees geographically dispersed with different channel expertise from mass retail to grocery, online and drug stores. The crew in Bentonville offers omnichannel alignment, assortment planning, merchandising and marketing strategies, forecasting and replenishment. They also provide e-commerce sales and strategy, digital advertising, content creation and support, digital design, reporting and analytics.

Bugos said The Barcode Group helps its clients back behind the scenes so that their products can succeed on the shelf and online. The firm represents products in most major retailers across mass, pharmacy, department stores, online, grocery and specialty retailers like Best Buy.

“We are not everything to everyone. We turn down up to 70% of the people who come to us for help. We are not interested in a short-term paycheck. We want a long-term relationship,” Bugos said.

Bugos said The Barcode Group does not take upfront fees or get paid until the brands do. A new brand can take a year to get on shelves, but tons of work must be done before then.

“Our firm helps brands get on the shelf, stay on the shelf and grow market share,” Bugos said. “We provide basic blocking and tackling for the day-to-day; we help fight claim deductions; we provide consulting on everything from how to spend advertising to forecasting and order replenishment.”

The firm also works with private brands. Bugos said manufacturers could better manage the back end once they have sold a product into mass retail.

Bugos said the firm has had some success helping small brands grow into significant players. He said that early on in the Cliff Bar’s journey into retail, the brand sought his help.

“We managed the brand and worked closely with Cliff Bar, helping them do business with Walmart,” he said. “Their business grew seven times in two years and expanded beyond the need for our help. They have their own team in Bentonville with about 20 people now, and it feels great to see a brand we helped early on garner this much success.”

Then there was Zarbees Cough Syrup, which Bugos helped get into 300 Walmart stores around 2008. The all-natural pediatric brand was sold to Johnson & Johnson in 2017 for about $500 million. Bugos said he stayed on after the sale for 18 months to manage the business for J&J.

“Our goal is to help the brands who call on us grow big enough to have their own team; that’s our ultimate success,” Bugos said.

Editor’s note: The Supply Side section of Talk Business & Politics focuses on the companies, organizations, issues and individuals engaged in providing products and services to retailers. The Supply Side is managed by Talk Business & Politics and sponsored by Firebend.