Interim product leadership at a premium tea brand: an innovation pipeline in two months
A brand with more than 200 years of history, a small product management team, and stalled innovation. The engagement began with clarity on the existing range and ended with a clean handover to a permanent hire.
Schedule a conversation about interim leadership- Industry
- Premium food (tea), B2B
- Company
- Mid-sized company, brand on the market for over 200 years, Germany
- Format
- Interim Leadership
- Role
- Head of Product, Research & Innovation, ad interim
- Duration
- 15 months
Starting point
A premium tea brand, established for two centuries, had stalled. The company knew that growth was necessary to stay relevant and to fend off new competition in its core market: premium hotels, hospitality, and catering.
Innovation had stopped, product lines were outdated, and the product management team was small and junior. The company needed a structured approach to revitalize the portfolio and then fill the function permanently.
Diagnosis: the bottleneck was not ideas
The innovation backlog was the result of missing decision criteria, not missing ideas. There was no defined process and no contribution margin transparency. Criteria for adding a product to the portfolio or keeping it were absent. Every portfolio decision became a matter of taste: subjective and hard to trace afterwards.
The first lever was therefore clarity on the existing range, not creativity in new business.
Approach
- Audit of all assortments using the grid: modify, observe, discontinue.
- Portfolio analysis based on contribution margin and range reduction.
- Value Proposition Canvas (Osterwalder) as a shared language for marketing, sales, production, quality management, and tea tasting.
- KPIs and PowerBI dashboards, so that decisions become transparent and traceable.
- Realignment of the specialist trade strategy.
- New product process established, team trained and coached, roles and job descriptions defined.
- Preparation and handover to a Senior Product Manager.
Result
- Within two months, an innovation pipeline with two initiated exploration initiatives was in place. The company had lacked this momentum for years.
- After about six months: range reduction of about 10 %, based on data rather than gut feeling.
- Specialist trade strategy: 20 % less budget and staff effort, with no loss of revenue.
- Product management moved from a side topic to a KPI-driven core function.
- Handover to a permanent hire: a Senior Product Manager continues to run the function.
Why interim was the right format
The build-up was time-limited. The permanent role could then be staffed more narrowly than at the start of the search: structure, processes, and decision criteria were in place, and a Senior Product Manager could build on them. That is exactly what an interim engagement at marqueteer is designed for: it makes itself redundant.
The pattern fits heritage brands under pressure to modernize, functions that need to be built from scratch, and any situation where portfolio decisions have so far been made without reliable data.
The first conversation clarifies whether the pattern fits the situation.
No commitment, no risk. 30 minutes to understand whether an interim engagement is the right starting point, or whether a structured diagnostic with Clear Focus would make more sense first.