CMYK Services
Consumer Insights
Through surveys, interviews, sampling, and events, we talk to your customers and target female consumers to help you launch and improve products. Our conversation style is friendly and approachable, resulting in authentic insights on what women really want from your brand.
We focus on talking to women because they control the majority of household purchases. 👸🏽
Use cases:
Validate your team’s assumptions and understand your customers, her motivations, budget, buying habits and lifestyle
Test UX, names, messaging and packaging
Design research-backed personas
Develop or pivot your brand strategy
Discover product & marketing ideas
Collaborate on insights with CMYK to strengthen your agency’s packaging and brand development offerings
Market Research
We look high and low for your competitors, complementary brands, and trends to show you what’s new and next in your industry.
Our data is collected through supermarkets and specialty retail, curated online stores, talking to experts and investors in your industry, social media, and a few secret, trusted* sources.
Use cases:
Understand your market position
White space / new product inspiration
Ecosystem partnerships to grow your brand
Fundraising and sales deck content
Investor pitch pipeline development
Mergers & acquisitions strategy
Selling a tech product or service to CPGs? Identify customer leads with our research
* We’re transparent with clients about our sources.
cmyk for investors
Access diverse CPG deal flow, due diligence support, market research, ecosystem partnerships, and portfolio support programs.
Sample engagements:
Branding and awareness for your fund
Connect with like-minded CPG investors
Get a trusted POV from a strategist who meets as many brands as you do
Understand what women honestly think of a product or trend before you invest in it
Survey your founders to understand their unique needs and health of their businesses
Curate business resources and access opportunities for your portfolio companies
Build a supportive community between your brand founders, both online and offline
Annual report “magazines” for LPs summarizing your portfolio’s progress
CMYK Clients
Endless West, makers of the world’s first molecular whiskey, hired CMYK twice to help their marketing team and founders test demand, names, messaging and story with consumers before Glyph launched.
We also connected Endless West to their brand and web agencies, two vendors we’ve known for years.
Happy Money hired CMYK to talk to women about their relationship with money. We spoke to Joy users and Birdie members who were new to Joy.
Our study helped Happy Money’s marketers and product managers to gain a deeper understanding of their UX, users and target audience.
The majority of Amrit’s client work between 2016-2019 was with Backstage Capital, a global VC fund & accelerator investing in underrepresented founders. Projects include ecosystem partnerships, business resources, curated newsletters, community and platform development, founder surveys, and annual reports for Backstage’s Limited Partners.
Why collaborate with CMYK?
CMYK ECOSYSTEM
Our founder Amrit has worked across advertising, media, tech and VC, growing a network helpful to brands of all sizes along the way. CMYK’s ecosystem includes complementary vendors for our client projects and referrals, tech platforms, artists, experts, journalists, and CPG investors.
BIRDIE COLLECTIVE
We’re so committed to studying what women want that we built our own consumer panel. The Birdie network of Millennial women allows us to deliver trusted, affordable and timely insights to clients. In addition to our panel, we recruit respondents that match the needs of your brand study.
INDIE CPG
Our new community and newsletter Indie CPG is designed to connect companies in our ecosystem to resources, opportunities and each other. This is our way of keeping in touch with all the amazing people we meet, but don’t have an immediate way to collaborate together. You can subscribe here.
CMYK Research & Insights
Let’s Collaborate
Curious about investing in market research for your brand, agency, or fund?
About CMYK Ventures
Photo by Eleanor Lee, co-founder of Meraki Narrative
Hey there! I’m Amrit Richmond, founder of CMYK Ventures. My most recent work helps CPGs launch and grow, but my interest in brands started as a kid. I’ve been exploring trends at Expo West with my mom since age 10, helped demo her frozen food brand at Whole Foods, and was a fly on the wall in her meetings with branding agencies and factories.
Since then, I’ve spent 12+ years working across advertising, media, creative services, technology, and VC on the post-investment side leading communications and founder platform programs to support 250+ startups and brands in the Backstage Capital, Collaborative Fund and RRE Ventures portfolios.
Before working with VCs and their portfolio companies, I was a freelance strategist and analyst for advertising agencies like HUGE, Mother NY, Exopolis, and Digital Kitchen, and innovation agencies like Loyal, Machine and Luminary Labs. These agencies hired me to write digital strategy briefs for global campaigns that integrated the latest tech trends, and to research the future of retail and eCommerce, health and wellness, the online grocery and meal kit market, beacons and mobile payments, and apps and software that brands can use to create and analyze content, and connect with consumers.
I’ve also worked closely with startups like CreativeMornings and Meetup to build communities and connections between creative people, hobbies, and companies. Prior to advertising and consulting with startups, my first job was at GOOD magazine for three years working across the art and digital departments.
As a consumer, I look for plant-based foods, clean beauty, well-designed sustainable packaging, and multi-purpose products that travel well. When I’m not working, you can find me in supermarkets, Sephora or Sardinia. 🏝