Our Partners
The specialists we bring in to build brands worth buying.
Honey Bee Brands runs your retail growth engine. But great retail performance needs a great brand behind it, so we partner with a short list of specialists who own the work outside our lane. This page will grow as we add more partners.
Strategic marketing partner
Mandala
Mandala is a full-service brand and marketing collective, strategists, creatives, producers and content creators handpicked by category and assembled around a single brand. They exist for founders who refuse to play it safe: the ones building iconic, culture-shifting consumer brands from concept to shelf to consumer.
Where Honey Bee Brands owns retail growth, distribution and profitability, Mandala owns the brand story, the creative and the consumer marketing that pulls product off the shelf. Together we cover the full path from idea to purchase.
How the fit works
One brand. Two teams. No overlap.
Founders waste months trying to stitch marketing and sales together on their own. When Mandala and Honey Bee Brands run in parallel, every function has a clear owner.
Mandala owns
Brand, creative & consumer marketing
- Brand strategy, positioning & storytelling
- Naming, identity & packaging design
- Go-to-market & launch creative
- Social strategy, content creation & campaigns
- E-commerce strategy, build & optimization
- Brand advertising & consumer research
Honey Bee Brands owns
Retail growth, ops & profitability
- Retailer & distributor management
- Broker and sales team oversight
- Pricing, promo & margin strategy
- Deduction tracking & sales reporting
- Forecasting & fill rate management
- Trade show planning & buyer meetings
Vendors we recommend
People we have actually worked with.
Every team on this list has earned it in the field, with our own clients, on real timelines. These are the people we call when a founder needs something outside our lane.
Drive awareness at the store level
Hummingbirds
A local creator platform that puts your product in the hands of real shoppers near the stores that carry you. Great for building trial and velocity where it actually counts, at shelf.
Visit Hummingbirds
Beverage & natural food brokerage
Burst Management
A fabulous beverage and natural food broker team with deep retailer relationships. A strong fit for brands that need experienced feet on the street in the natural channel.
Visit Burst Management
Resources & community for founders
Startup CPG
The best community, education and peer network for emerging CPG founders. Slack channels, events, podcasts and honest founder-to-founder answers, most of it free.
Visit Startup CPG
Nutraceutical & cosmeceutical brokerage
P2 Launch
Masters of nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals. If your product lives in supplements or advanced skincare, this is the team that knows those buyers and those categories cold.
Visit P2 LaunchReady to build with a team that has both sides covered?
Explore Mandala for brand and marketing, and book a call with Honey Bee Brands for retail growth. You can bring us in together or one at a time.
More partners
We add partners carefully, one at a time.
Every partner listed here has been vetted in real client work. As we bring on additional vendors across creative, operations, logistics and finance, they will show up on this page.