Outsmart Bigger CPG Brands with AI

Webinar Recording

Outsmart Bigger CPG Brands with AI

In this session, Tia Ellis, pitch and presentation coach behind $200M+ in retail sales, breaks down how to use AI to compete with brands 100x your size. You’ll learn how retail buyers actually make decisions, the four questions every winning pitch answers, and get a step-by-step walkthrough of applying to Alibaba’s CoCreate Pitch 2026, a non-dilutive funding opportunity most founders will never even find.

Welcome to the Recap!

Whether you missed it live or just want to watch again, this recording shares helpful insights and steps you can take to move forward.

The three pitches every product founder has to master

A customer pitch, an investor pitch, and a retail buyer pitch are three different conversations. Customers buy resonance, investors buy return, and buyers buy low risk, and most founders lose deals by giving the right pitch to the wrong audience.

How retail buyers think (and why most pitches miss the mark)

Retail buyers are corporate decision makers with categories to manage and internal KPIs to hit. Their job is to pick brands that perform on shelf, so a strong pitch shows how your product sells in their stores and makes them look good internally.

The four questions every winning pitch answers

What makes you different, what problem you solve, what proof you have, and who else is on the shelf. Answer these four and you’ve got the meat of any pitch (customer, investor, or buyer) the rest is packaging it for the audience.

Why AI is the small brand's unfair advantage

Big brands have the headcount, but they also have the red tape. As a founder you decide and move faster, and with AI agents one person can compete with a corporate team of twenty. You can’t out-manpower them. You’re out-thinking them.

Inside the CoCreate Pitch 2026 opportunity

Alibaba’s CoCreate Pitch is non-dilutive (no equity, no strings to your cap table) with a prize pool spanning cash, credits, and multiple stage placements. And because the application isn’t publicly searchable, everyone who does the work to reach it is already ahead of the pack.

The step-by-step path to the application inside Accio

The application only lives inside Accio, Alibaba’s AI platform built for product founders. The recording walks the exact clicks plus the pre-built prompts for the two big application questions.

How to turn an AI first draft into a submission-ready application

AI output is your first draft, never your final answer. The session shows how to check your responses against the application’s own embedded tips (they literally tell you what reviewers want) and where the human polish wins the deal.

Inside you'll find

Want to take the next step?

If this sparked something for you and you’re ready to get more clarity on your path into retail, we’d love to support you.

Even if you’re catching the replay, we’re offering a free 1:1 Starter Session to help you identify what’s next and where your biggest opportunities might be.

This was originally just for live attendees, but if you’re here now, the timing is right. Let’s explore what’s possible.