Product Strategy

In commodity supply chains, operator margin erodes at every link the operator does not own. Frozen seafood is a thin-margin commodity to start with. Every step from harvest to retail shelf takes its cut: farming, processing, transport, cold storage, and distribution.

The strategic answer was to take ownership of the chain. The Brazilian acquisition gave us 24,000 metric tons of annual supply at the source, in one of the most popular seafood categories in the U.S. The LA cold storage acquisition gave us our own warehousing on the West Coast at an internal rate well below what we had been paying outside. The Houston warehouse and processing facility, in development at $40M when I stepped away, was set to give us additional distribution and processing for our largest customers: Walmart and Aldi.

Each owned link removes a margin slice. The chain compounds: every owned link makes the next one more economical because we control more of the cost basis.

I started with the Leo & Mike founders as an advisor in 2018. The advisory work for the first two years was as much mentoring as strategy: how to think about the catalog, how to design the customer experience, what to choose not to do, and how to make scale decisions before scaling.

In 2019 I joined full time as VP Product to lead the scaling work, while continuing to advise the founders through the harder calls. Online workflows for enquiries, scheduling, and sales handled the customer side. Seasonality needed a separate answer. Summer and winter camps drove the revenue curve, and the rest of the year was empty. I helped design AfterSchool Makerspaces, a new product line that ran inside school systems through the academic year. We branded it, signed three pilots, and ran them.

We took the catalog from 4 programs to 112 across 5 locations, served more than 1,500 students, and held an NPS of 69. The company went under during COVID, when none of the in-person programs could run.

By early 2023 Zalo Fresh had locked in a 50% stake in a Brazilian farming and processing operation. The strategic question was what category to enter with the new supply.

Frozen seafood from Brazil could not compete on price with frozen from China. Margins were thin and there was no differentiator. Fresh fish was the inverse problem: high margin, supply-constrained, and premium-positioned. The 48-hour distance from Brazilian farm to U.S. shelf was the operational opening.

I built the category around that window. We stood up the supply chain end to end, with sourcing, logistics, and fulfillment all built to the 48-hour timing as a hard constraint. The retail targeting followed from the same constraint.

The line went from $0 to more than $600K in four months and was running into U.S. retail by the time I stepped away in late 2025.