I’ve sat through many annual strategy reviews, and they tend to run the same way. Each brand team walks through its category. Share is up a tenth of a point here, down two tenths there. The plan for next year is a sharper campaign, a new flavor and a price pack. Everyone nods. Then the CEO asks the question nobody has a slide for: where is our growth going to come from?
The data answers it bluntly.
Circana tracked more than 700 manufacturers in 2025. The largest, those with $8 billion or more in sales, lost share again. Private label and companies under $1 billion gained. E-commerce was 12% of sales but 71% of the growth. And the younger households, whose buying power is only going to grow, lean toward the smaller brands. Most of the giants skew older. None of that shows up in a category share report.
So growth doesn’t come from inside the category. It forms outside it, in needs and behaviors that don’t yet have a shelf, a brand or a line in anyone’s plan. By the time it becomes a category, someone else usually owns it.
That changes the job. If you want to shape demand, you have to place strategic bets, not chase the next growth opportunity. Chasing means following whatever moved last year. A bet is a choice you make before the evidence is in: which shifts in demand to back, how to give them a form people recognize, which brand has the right to win there, and where to invest for the greatest economic return. Then you stay with it long enough for the demand to take shape around you.
Circana, 2025 U.S. CPG Growth Leaders Report, April 2026