About the CPG Data Tip Sheet
For more than a decade, the CPG Data Tip Sheet has been a clutter-free, no-hype resource for the people who work with CPG/FMCG and consumer data — analysts, brand and category managers, and everyone who has to make real decisions from a pile of numbers. The goal has always been simple: explain how CPG data actually works, in plain language, so the numbers get used well and the common traps get avoided.
That goal hasn’t changed. The CPG Data Tip Sheet is now run by Kevin Lehmann, founder of Goods Group and creator of tools like cpgIQ.com and Planogrammer.com. Here’s a little about where the site came from, and where it’s headed.
Founded by Robin Simon and Sally Martin
The CPG Data Tip Sheet was created in 2012 by Robin Simon and Sally Martin — two consultants who, between them, had spent decades making data useful for some of the biggest brands in the industry. Fittingly, both are University of Chicago MBAs, and both built careers on the same conviction that powers this site, that better information, clearly understood, leads to better decisions.
Robin Simon brought more than 35 years in the consumer products industry to the Tip Sheet. Through her firm SimonSez Consulting (2002–2024) and a 12-year tenure at Kraft Foods across the U.S. and Canada, she earned a reputation for pairing rigorous analytics with a rare gift for making complex ideas land — whether building regression-based forecasts, advising on pricing and trade promotion, managing product portfolios, or training hundreds of field sales people to sell with data as a fact-based tool. For 15 years she developed and led forecasting training for the Institute of Business Forecasting, teaching the statistics as well as the people and process behind good forecasts, and presenting across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. She holds an MBA in Marketing and Statistics from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, with undergraduate degrees in Applied Mathematics and Business.
Sally Martin spent more than 20 years turning retail, panel, and customer order data into insight for CPG companies and multi-channel marketers. She was Vice President of Information Products at the online grocer Peapod, where she built and led a business analytics group serving clients including Frito-Lay, Kraft Foods, and Unilever on targeted ads and promotions. Earlier, as a Director at Information Resources, she measured marketing ROI for Kellogg’s, Sara Lee, Clorox, and others using multivariate techniques, and she got her start designing market research at Quaker Oats. She holds an MBA in Marketing and Finance from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University.
The CPG industry owes them both a real debt — not only for the body of work they built here, but for the standard they set, one that is accurate, practical, and generous. Everything that follows is an effort to live up to it.
A new chapter
After nearly 14 years at the helm, Robin and Sally decided to pass the baton — and they entrusted the CPG Data Tip Sheet to Kevin Lehmann and Goods Intelligence, the analytics arm of his firm, Goods Group. There’s a nice symmetry to the handoff. Kevin began his consumer career at Nielsen in January 2013, just months after this site launched, and credits its examples and glossaries with helping him get up to speed quickly.
Kevin has spent 15+ years across consulting, finance, and data. He started at Nielsen on the GSK (now Haleon) account, leading data and research projects for brands like Breathe Right, Abreva, Alli, Tums, and Aquafresh — source-of-volume, SKU rationalization, assortment, shopping decision tree, and demographic use-case studies. He was later recruited to Wall Street, where for six years he was a Director on one of the industry’s top-ranked CPG, Food, and Restaurant equity research teams at Evercore ISI and RBC Capital Markets, covering names like Kraft Heinz, General Mills, Hershey, Mondelez, Keurig Dr Pepper, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Domino’s, Starbucks, Yum!, and Tyson. His teams ranked in the Institutional Investor All-America poll, and Thomson Reuters once named them the #1 stock pickers in the food sector. He later returned briefly to NielsenIQ for a strategic role based in Europe.
In 2021 he founded Goods Group, a global consumer goods–focused consulting and venture platform built to bring big-brand-caliber analytics, finance, and strategy to companies of every size, from early-stage startups to much larger and scaling businesses. Today he consults, advises, and invests across the consumer sector and writes regularly about the industry. The work has always been hands-on, taking him from industrial bakeries to protein-shake R&D labs to the cattle ranches of Hawaii. He holds a B.S. in Finance with Distinction from Penn State and lives in Amsterdam with his wife and two sons.
Kevin took on the Tip Sheet because he believes in what Robin and Sally built. The industry is simply better off when the people working with its data understand what the numbers really mean. His commitment as steward is straightforward — keep it accurate, keep it practical, and keep it honest about what the data can and can’t tell you. The web address stays the same, every existing post and the Glossary remain available. Please subscribe and revisit for new content as it arrives.