Fusion, a business-to-business integrated marketing agency focused on fresh produce and grocery in the retail environment, was named a top ten retail marketing service company by Retail Tech Insights magazine.

New-age retailing is a complex paradigm. On one end of the spectrum, there are hundreds of vendors and suppliers who try to get their products faster to market and sell them across retailers. On the other end, there are smart retailers who know their marketplace but often rely on vendors to learn more about the categories on offer, the ways to sell more, and methods to expand distribution within the chain. In this complex landscape, becoming a category leader is not an easy task for a vendor or a supplier. However, California based Fusion has found a unique methodology that leverages the true power of retail marketing to make their clients into category leaders.

"Retail marketing is both a science and an art," says Steven Muro, Founder and President at Fusion. "We believe that by combining the science and art of marketing with strong client relationships, you can develop impactful programs and campaigns, which lead to client success."

As an integrated B2B marketing agency specializing in the supply side of the retail chain, Fusion works with suppliers and vendors that go to retail, providing them with the tools and ammunition required to build their sales and distribution process.

Established in 1997, Fusion was quick to identify the lack of coordination between sales and marketing departments within companies. Leveraging this opportunity, Fusion set out on its journey to fuse its clients' sales and marketing strategies. Today, with a focus on the fresh produce and grocery retail environment, Fusion offers its customers the highest level of support through research, innovative solutions, analytical insights, and creative execution.

While the goal of many companies in the market is to get as many clients as possible, Fusion's idea is to work with a select group of clients and go very deep. In fact, one of Fusion's original clients from 24 years ago is still their client today.

According to Muro, many clients looking for a marketing platform or a solution often know where they want to go. But they don't know how to get there. "It's our goal to dig in deep with them and help them define their business questions. And once we do that, we can offer them the solutions that will get them to where they want to go, instead of shoehorning them into what is available," he says.

From building a strategy to attending its clients' board and staff meetings to working with sales and marketing teams, Fusion is thoroughly entrenched in its clients' business. The company houses a research, marketing, creative, and executive team to successfully carry out these tasks.

We believe that by combining the science and art of marketing with strong client relationships, you can develop impactful programs and campaigns, which lead to client success

Also, in today's highly complex solution environment driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data lakes, Fusion offers what most businesses are looking for: simplicity. A company can have many questions: "How do I understand the solution simply? How do I use it, not just at the marketing level, but across different departments so that all of the company can use that strategy?"

Fusion answers all these questions with the power of simplicity. The company's robust tools take the complex research and information and simplify it so that the person who uses it doesn't have to be in marketing or sales to understand it. "You can actually hand it over to customer service or any department, and they can quickly understand the purpose of this information and how they can use it in their day-to-day jobs," says Muro.

These features have helped Fusion earn a lot of accolades. Among many of its success stories, Muro recalls Fusion's association with an offshore client that had a product in the U.S. handled by a third-party distributor. Unhappy with the sales, the client was looking to establish offices in the U.S. Fusion worked with the client to identify distribution points for their product by studying consumer patterns and data from consumer insights. By combining consumer research with its proprietary methods, Fusion pointed out which retailers in which segments were best suited for the client. In addition, Fusion also created retailer-specific profiles that forecasted the client's projections when they set up a distribution channel with a retailer. This not only proved to be a go-to-market strategy but also an effective sales strategy for the client. "Within four years, the client set up offices on the East and West Coast, and is now the number one product in its category," notes Muro.

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