Insprie
A cross-category line-up of unbranded consumer products, a face cream jar, aluminium shampoo and laundry bottles, effervescent tablets, a vitamin tin, drinks and packaged food on a charcoal surface

Insprie Labs, New Zealand, Australia and the United States, with international growth capability

Operating partners for consumer businesses facing growth, change or pressure.

Insprie works alongside founders, boards and investors to identify what is constraining performance, provide the senior capability required and carry the work through execution.

Discuss a business challengeSee situations we solve

Confidential, without obligation, and answered by a senior member of the Insprie team.

Experience at a glance

40+
Years
Combined operating, entrepreneurial and leadership experience
US$65M+
Capital deployed
Deployed by Insprie principals since 2021
NZ$140M+
Current business revenue exposure
Annualised revenue across current operating, governance and investment interests
20+
International markets
Reached by businesses built and led by the team
4,000+
Retail doors reached
Global retail footprint reached by brands built and led by the team

Built, operated and invested, not merely advised.

Why businesses bring in Insprie

Why businesses bring in Insprie.

01

Fix or transform a business

For businesses facing operational pressure, weak performance, leadership change, cash constraints or a material transformation.

Explore transformation →

02

Build and grow a consumer brand

For established consumer businesses seeking stronger products, brands, channels, marketing performance or international growth.

Explore growth capability →

03

Add senior operating leadership

For businesses that need an interim, fractional or embedded executive who can assume real responsibility and carry the work.

Explore embedded leadership →

The constraint

The symptoms are rarely the problem.

The visible problem is often downstream of the real constraint.

  • Demand is often the first place performance shows up and the last place it is created. Range, pricing, availability, channel economics and proposition clarity all surface as a sales number.

    Usually involves Demand · Product · Direction

Find your constraint

Situations we solve

Situations we are brought into.

Most conversations start with a specific problem rather than a service line. These are the ones we are asked about most.

View all situations we solve →

  1. 01The CEO has resigned.
  2. 02The board isn't functioning.
  3. 03A product recall has landed.
  4. 04Sales are growing but cash is disappearing.
  5. 05The business has outgrown the founder.
  6. 06International expansion isn't working.

Evidence

Experience where the result matters.

Much of our work involves commercially sensitive situations. We share experience without identifying businesses where confidentiality prevents it.

Consumer health

Australasian consumer business

Situation
A multi-market consumer business required greater operating discipline across finance, logistics, technology and management while undertaking a material operational transition.
What Insprie did
operating assessment. transformation planning. management cadence. financial visibility. supply-chain programme. leadership support. implementation planning.
Result
Established a clear 100-day programme; strengthened management visibility; materially reduced implementation risk.

Read this engagement →

Household and personal care

New Zealand consumer products business

Situation
Revenue was growing while cash tightened. Inventory had grown faster than sales, margin was measured at a company average, and forecasting was built from ambition rather than demand.
What Insprie did
thirteen-week cash forecasting. margin rebuild by product, channel and customer. inventory and replenishment reset. supplier and terms review. weekly operating cadence.
Result
Improved working-capital visibility; established a new operating cadence; material inventory reduction.

Read this engagement →

Beauty and personal care

Consumer brand entering a larger market

Situation
An offshore expansion had absorbed more investment than planned without reaching viable scale. The board needed an independent view on whether to invest further, refocus or withdraw.
What Insprie did
market economics rebuild. distributor and channel assessment. commercial plan reset. board recommendation.
Result
Established transformation priorities; materially reduced implementation risk.

Read this engagement →

Food and beverage

Private investor assessing a consumer acquisition

Situation
An investor required an operating view of a consumer business inside a short decision window, covering revenue quality, margin structure and whether the operation could deliver the growth case.
What Insprie did
commercial due diligence. operational due diligence. management assessment. integration and 100-day planning.
Result
Materially reduced implementation risk; created a clear 100-day programme.

Read this engagement →

See our operating experience →

How clients engage us

Four ways to engage an Insprie operating partner.

The right structure depends on the situation, the pace required and how much of the work the business needs us to carry.

How Insprie engagements are structured →

01

Advisory

Senior Insprie people working alongside boards, founders and leadership teams on important strategic and commercial issues.

02

Projects

We take responsibility for defined business outcomes.

03

Embedded Leadership

Sometimes a business does not need another consultant. It needs an experienced person inside the business.

04

Investment & Partnership

For a small number of businesses where there is strong strategic alignment, Insprie may invest capital and work alongside the founders as a long-term partner.

Our people

Senior people, directly involved.

Engagements are led by experienced Insprie principals from the first conversation through to delivery.

Brianne West, Co-Managing Partner at Insprie

Brianne West

Co-Managing Partner

Brianne West is a microbiologist, entrepreneur and internationally recognised founder best known for creating Ethique, the pioneering beauty brand that helped transform solid, plastic-free personal care from a niche idea into a global consumer category.

Tristan Roberts, Co-Managing Partner at Insprie

Tristan Roberts

Co-Managing Partner

Tristan works across governance, investment and operating roles in founder-led and private businesses, with particular experience in consumer businesses undergoing growth, transformation or significant change.

Meet the people behind Insprie →

INS/OS Diagnostic

Find the constraint behind the symptoms.

A 24-question assessment taking roughly six minutes. It produces a score across the six INS/OS dimensions and shows where the constraint is most likely to sit.

Take the INS/OS Diagnostic

INS/OS

Business performance is a system.

Direction, demand, product, delivery, economics and organisation are connected. Improving one dimension while ignoring the constraint elsewhere often makes the problem worse.

01 / Direction

Where are we going, and what matters?

What the business is trying to do, and what it has decided not to do.

Capability that carries this →

Typical symptoms

  • Everything is a priority
  • Board and management are not aligned
  • Resources are spread across too many initiatives
  • Strategy exists on paper but not in the plan

Constraints underneath

  • No agreed definition of what the business is optimising for
  • Market and channel choices never narrowed
  • Capital and attention allocated by history rather than by return
  • Decisions escalate rather than resolve

What we deploy

  • Strategy reset
  • Priority sequencing
  • Resource and capital allocation
  • Board and shareholder alignment
Take the INS/OS DiagnosticExplore INS/OS →

Intelligence

Situation Notes.

Practical operating insight for founders, boards, investors and leadership teams.

Read Insprie Intelligence →

End to end

From formulation and brand creation through to manufacturing, retail and scale.

We work across the full value chain of a consumer business, product and formulation, brand and packaging, supply and manufacturing, channel and retail execution, and the commercial disciplines that decide whether growth is profitable.

Product formulation in a laboratory, a cream base weighed on a precision balance beside pigment dispersions and sample vials

Formulation and product

Product development, cost of goods and specification

Brand creation in progress, printed colour proofs, a colour chip fan, typographic specimens and blank packaging mock-ups on a studio bench

Brand and packaging

Positioning, identity, structural and graphic design

A consumer goods production line, stainless steel filling and capping machinery running aluminium bottles and glass jars

Manufacturing and supply

Sourcing, production, quality and freight

A premium retail bay with a consumer range merchandised in disciplined blocks across oak and steel shelving

Retail and channel

Range architecture, buyer strategy and execution

Explore all eight Insprie capabilities →

The Insprie team and network at the AmCham New Zealand awards in Auckland

AmCham New Zealand, Auckland

The wider Insprie group

Different businesses. Shared experience and standards.

Insprie sits alongside two specialist businesses that extend the group's capability across brand creation, business ownership and governance.

Each operates independently, with its own purpose, clients and commercial model. Together, they reflect the breadth of experience behind Insprie: building businesses, governing them and working inside them when performance, growth or change demands more.

About the Insprie group →

Incredibrands

Building the next generation of consumer brands.

Incredibrands creates and grows ethical, plastic-free consumer brands designed to achieve meaningful commercial scale. Its first live brand, Incrediballs, is rethinking drinks through plastic-free, dissolvable formats.

Incredibrands gives the wider group direct, current experience in product development, formulation, brand creation, manufacturing, supply chain, go-to-market strategy and the realities of building a consumer business from the ground up.

Explore Incredibrands ↗

Northbridge Governance

Independent judgement when governance affects value.

Northbridge Governance provides principal-led independent director and board advisory support to founder-led, investor-backed and regulated organisations navigating growth, capital, transition, scrutiny or underperformance.

Its work includes independent director and chair appointments, board effectiveness, governance reviews, pre-transaction and pre-IPO governance, board restructuring and sensitive governance interventions. It is a specialist business within the Insprie group that operates independently from Insprie's advisory and investment engagements.

Explore Northbridge Governance ↗

Start a conversation

Tell us what is happening.

You do not need to diagnose the problem before contacting us. Describe the business, the situation and what needs to change. We will tell you plainly whether Insprie is the right partner.

Request a confidential discussion

No obligation. No sales hand-off. We respond within two business days.