New market intelligence reports cater to co-mans

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New market intelligence reports cater to co-mans

30 Mar 2026

Mari Rydings

Mari Rydings is a versatile content creator, editor and marketer with experience developing dynamic, results-driven materials for B2B and B2C audiences. As the editorial director for Avant Food Media, she leads the day-to-day editorial operations for the company’s print and digital magazines, newsletters and social media platforms. Outside of work, she loves reading, hiking, putting together jigsaw puzzles and spending time with her husband and their twin daughters.

KANSAS CITY, MO — Co-manufacturers are in high demand these days, with brands seeking them out for reasons that stretch beyond straightforward manufacturing, including brand strategy, product innovation and speed-to-market.

In many cases, the relationship between co-man and brand has evolved from transactional to partnership, with manufacturers operating as an extension of a customer’s R&D team. Often, co-mans look to current and emerging trends for new product ideas that might interest their clients.

Therein lies the challenge. Co-mans often have limited access to budget-friendly, third-party market data, and when they do, they don’t have anyone internally who can analyze tens of thousands of data points.

JPG SupplyIQ, the newly created supply side-focused arm of brand consultancy JPG Resources, is hoping to solve those challenges with its monthly market intelligence reports. Fueled by JPG’s consumer studies insights and NielsenIQ data, the reports, which cover bakery, nutrition bars and non-alcoholic beverages, were developed specifically for co-manufacturers to help close the information gap.

“There’s some volatility with what co-mans, especially the smaller ones, are dealing with,” said Jane Ko, senior strategist with JPG Resources. “Brands change their forecasts or come to their co-man with a project, then suddenly change their mind. We identified a need for getting them innovation signals earlier through an independent source of data versus what their clients bring them.”

“The reports are tailor-made for co-mans that are doing R&D work, having strategic conversations with their brand customers, and know how they want to grow their business and optimize their clients. We wanted to put another tool in their tool belt to help them make better decisions faster.” — Kevin Weigand | M&A diligence lead | JPG Resources

The reports are themed around specific market segments and offer digestible pieces of data, key takeaways, mini case studies, actionable insights, innovation signals and consumer behavior drivers, such as shifts in purchasing or eating habits.

“The reports are tailor-made for co-mans that are doing R&D work, having strategic conversations with their brand customers, and know how they want to grow their business and optimize their clients,” said Kevin Weigand, M&A diligence lead at JPG Resources. “We wanted to put another tool in their tool belt to help them make better decisions faster.”

Ko said having access to market information and signals sooner will also help co-mans evaluate inbound requests more effectively because they’ll have data on which to base their decisions vs. instinct only, and that’s important, especially when a large capital investment might be required.

“Because we work with so many brands, we see so many innovation signals,” she said. “We do a lot of consumer studies and concept testing so we can identify patterns, themes and ideas early. In the intelligence reports, we pair these insights with what we’re seeing in the NielsenIQ data and bring everything together for co-mans in a way that tells an interesting story.”

For more information, visit JPG Resource’s website.

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