About

Julie Nelson is an accomplished retail and consumer goods start-up executive with 25+ years of general management, merchandising, marketing and wholesale leadership experience. She is passionate about paying it forward and helping founders and entrepreneurs realize their wildest dreams. After 13 years building and leading various divisions at Petco Julie was recruited as the first employee and President of Made by Nacho, a premium cat food brand co-founded by Chef Bobby Flay and CPG icon Elly Truesdell. Within the first 20 months on the job Julie built the strategy, product and team and scaled to a broad assortment of products with hyper-growth in national distribution to PetSmart, Petco, Chewy, Amazon and DTC. Today, Julie is an advisor, consultant and mentor to consumer brands.

Experience

13 year leadership tenure at Petco

Head Merchant/Business Unit Leader for the Dog Food division, Petco's largest business at $1.2B; Head Merchant/Business Unit Leader for Cat Food/Treats/Litter division. Head of Category Marketing & Vendor Partnerships. Created Petco's first Wholesale & International division. Head of Business Development for Pet Services division.

President of hypergrowth pet food startup brand Made by Nacho

Recruited as the first employee by co-founders Chef Bobby Flay and CPG icon Elly Truesdell to build the strategy, product and team from concept to hypergrowth. Highlights include: 4ft shelf space and off-shelf display at all PetSmart stores within 9 months of first day of my employment; direct-to-consumer site concurrent with PetSmart launch; on Amazon within 6 months; on shelf at all Petco stores and on Chewy.com 12 months after PetSmart; entered into independent pet specialty 9 months after Petco. Grew assortment to 65 SKUs across dry, wet, treats and toppers.