The snack food space is dominated by just a handful of players within the Americas, and these established companies have several advantages. First, they’re able to lock up valuable feature and display presence through large integrated marketing and trade deals. They also leverage category captainship status to win favorable retail shelf space and assortment, and they have the economies of scale needed to run national consumer promotion and ad campaigns that are only efficient for brands with >60% ACV distribution.There is however room for smaller and emerging players in this space. In fact, more than one third of the Americas' snack food sales in 2019 were from smaller or independent brands, but emerging players in this space need to take on a “challenger brand” mindset, with emphasis on the following:Differentiation– Be extremely choiceful and focused on your unique value proposition within the category. Kind bars (+9%), Cello Wisps (+150%), Skinny Pop (+11%), and Pirates Booty (+4%) are examples of recent emerging brands who have excelled by aligning with “healthier snacking” trends and niche flavor profiles, and by providing a truly differentiated offering.Win Around the Competitionrather than competing directly against them. For example, cheese snack brand Cello Wisps opted to wait until the morning after the Super Bowl to drop ads promoting their baked cheese crisps as a solution for healthier “guilt free” snacking.Use Smaller Scale and Agility as a Competitive Advantage– Our experience across multiple CPG categories is that independent brands can launch new products in less than half the time as established players, as they’re not bogged down by cumbersome “large company” processes, politics, and approval layers. Agile players benefit from streamlined decisions while still having adequate processes to focus and prioritize resources. Smaller players can also partner with retailers to promote in ways that major brands are unable to do - for example, region or even store-level customization of shopper marketing deals, or promoting purchases in conjunction with retailer’s adjacent products.