The Brand Playbook for “Enough” in 2025
How to Win When Consumers Aren’t Buying More
For years, the growth formula for consumer brands was straightforward: launch more SKUs, chase more distribution, throw more promos into the market, and watch the numbers climb.
That engine is sputtering.
Volumes across major categories are flat. Consumers are buying differently—not necessarily more. And the biggest brands in the world are quietly rewriting their strategies to adapt.
We’ve entered what I call the “Enough Economy.” And 2025 is proving that this isn’t a phase—it’s the new baseline.
📊 The Data Doesn’t Lie: Volume Growth Has Stalled
Let’s start with the hard truth: unit growth is under real pressure.
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Across 11 major CPG companies (Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola, P&G, and others), organic growth slowed to 1.5% in Q1 2025, down from 3.9% for FY 2024. Even worse, volumes declined by ~1.0% in Q1 and only recovered to roughly flat by Q2. Eight of those 11 companies still reported negative or zero volume growth【Sevendots, 2025】.
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Consumers aren’t reverting to pre-inflation behavior. McKinsey’s 2025 State of the Consumer report found that the link between sentiment and spending has fractured. People may feel uncertain, but they’re not necessarily spending less—they’re just trading off differently, splurging selectively, and curating more tightly.
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Deloitte’s 2025 CPG Outlook shows only 22% of companies cite “volume” as their primary growth lever, down 14 percentage points from the prior year. Instead, mix, premiumization, and portfolio discipline are leading the way.
Put simply: the old “more” model is losing its magic.
🧠 What Thrives in the “Enough” Economy
The brands that are weathering this shift—and in some cases thriving—aren’t chasing more. They’re getting clearer and sharper. The new levers look more like this:
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Hero SKUs > SKU sprawl. Doubling down on the products that actually drive behavior instead of chasing marginal line extensions.
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Loyalty > endless acquisition. Retention compounds margins; acquisition eats them.
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Value signaling > value stacking. Consumers don’t want more “stuff” for less—they want trusted quality, compelling stories, and emotional connection.
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Operational discipline. Trimming dead SKUs, reducing promo churn, reallocating resources to focused innovation.
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Analytics as muscle. Bain reports that CPGs using granular, AI-driven execution can add 3–5 ppts of growth and improve margins by 200–300 bps.
This isn’t austerity—it’s strategy.
🧪 Brands That Prove the Point
🥤 Stanley
The Stanley Quencher is a masterclass in doing one thing exceptionally well. Revenues exploded from ~$70 million in 2019 to $750 million by 2023, and reportedly topped $800 million in 2024. One hero SKU, scarcity drops, influencer hype, and cultural cachet turned a 100-year-old thermos company into a juggernaut.
⚠️ Drinkware category growth has cooled—from 38% to 14% YoY in 2024—but Stanley shows how focus + story can unlock massive upside.
🛒 Trader Joe’s
While grocery foot traffic broadly stagnated in 2024, Trader Joe’s posted a 6.2% year-over-year increase and opened 34 new stores. Some locations saw traffic gains of 3–11%, outpacing competitors. Their ~4,000 SKU model (vs. 30,000–50,000 in a typical supermarket) and cult-like private label strength—private label hit $271 billion in U.S. sales, up 3.9% YoY—show how tight curation and loyalty drive real, defensible growth.
🧥 Patagonia / Worn Wear
Patagonia’s resale and repair model is small but mighty. Worn Wear revenue is roughly $5 million annually, but it grew ~40% year-over-year recently, and in 2024 alone they repaired 30,000 garments in Europe. By telling people to buy less, Patagonia has deepened loyalty and attracted younger, more values-driven consumers.
🧼 P&G
Even the giants are bending to this new reality. In FY 2025, P&G’s organic sales rose ~2% with flat volume. Price and mix did the work. EPS grew 8%. When a company with their scale is relying on mix—not sheer expansion—you know the growth model has shifted.
🦷 Colgate-Palmolive
Q1 2025: Net sales of $4.91 billion, adjusted EPS of $0.91—both beat expectations. Colgate raised its guidance to low-single-digit growth for the year. Nothing flashy, just disciplined execution and portfolio strength in a tight environment.
📈 What This Means for Brands in 2025
This isn’t a “down year.” It’s a different game.
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Growth is coming from mix, loyalty, and clarity—not volume.
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Portfolio simplification is now a competitive advantage, not just a cost-cutting exercise.
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Hero SKUs, operational rigor, and data muscle are becoming the real growth levers.
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Consumers aren’t asking for “more.” They’re asking for “better.”
The winners won’t be the ones yelling louder or flooding shelves with line extensions. They’ll be the ones who understand what’s truly essential to their consumers—and execute against it with precision.
✍️ Final Thought
The “Enough Economy” isn’t a threat. It’s an invitation to focus. To stop chasing noise. To build brands that people actually want to stick with—not just try once and forget.
The question isn’t “How do we sell more?” anymore.
It’s “How do we become indispensable when enough is enough?”