Your Next Move - Inside the Engine of Retail Distribution

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

In this season of Your Next Move, we’re bringing you conversations with founders from the 2025 Inc. 5000 list, recorded at our Your Next Move booth at the Inc. 5000 Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, where entrepreneurs share what it really takes to build, scale, and sustain a growing business. In this episode, Inc. staff reporter Ali Donaldson speaks with JD Hayes, co-founder of Legacy Retail Solutions, a Bentonville-based company that helps CPG brands land and scale inside the world’s largest retailers. Ranked number 899 on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list, Legacy has improved its ranking three years in a row — a rare feat in today’s retail landscape.

Brought to you by Capital One Business. When it comes to growing your business, sometimes you need more than financial investment. You need personal investment. That's what Jeff Plotner, Capital One Business customer, and co-founder of Brackish, discovered after a unique groomsman gift in the form of a turkey-feather bow tie grew into a successful men's accessory line. But when they were ready to expand, Jeff turned to his Capital One representative, Alex Parker, who wasn't just an advisor, but a brackish customer. Because of the encouraging conversation with Alex,

Jeff launched a woman's line scaling the brackish brand to the next level. Because at Capital One, it's not just business. It's relationships that help you do more business. Learn more at Capital One.com slash business cards. Hi, I'm Mike Hoffman, editor-in-chief of ink, And you're listening to Your Next Move audio edition, produced by Inc. in Capital One business. In this season's audio edition, we're bringing you conversations from the Your Next Move pop-up

studio at the Inc. 5,000 conference this past October in Phoenix, Arizona. You'll hear Inc. writers and editors interviewing the founders of some of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. In this episode, Inc. staff reporter, Ali Donaldson, speaks with J.D. Hayes, co-founder of Legacy Retail Solutions, which was number 899 on the 2025 Inc. 5,000 list. Now, Legacy Retail Solutions is a CPG advisory firm that's grown 470% over the past three years. Allie starts by asking JD what he credits as the single biggest driver of growth and what he believes will matter most over the next couple of years.

Okay, J.D., we're going to start. You're going to introduce yourself. Tell me with the company briefly about what the company does and your number. Okay, fantastic. J.D. Hayes. I'm the co-founder. of legacy retail solutions, part of the Traverse Group of Families. Legacy Retail, we're based in Bentonville, Arkansas. We largely work with CPG companies to help them get their products listed at the world's largest retailers being in Bentonville, Arkansas. There's one there called Walmart. You may have heard of it, yeah.

We may have heard of it. We service a lot of the big box retailers, though. We work with Home Depot, Costco, Target as well, Lowe's. And then, of course, Amazon is obviously a big player in the retail. as well. So we work with clients to service them and getting their products listed in those retailers and on those shelves. And we help them in their supply chain, whether it's warehousing needs, Omnichannel strategy, helping them prepare their products to be listed online, demand planning, forecasting, all that sort of stuff. So really sales leadership and then on the backhand

operationalizing and making sure that the goods arrive on the shelf and their merchandise properly promoted and the buyers are happy and the merchants and the manufacturers are happy. So, Jady, we're talking, you're here because you all have had massive growth over the past. few years, what would you credit as the single biggest growth driver that has gotten you here? And when you look over the next 12 to 24 months, what's the biggest growth driver that you're going to be focusing on? Okay. I also failed to mention our number.

This is our third year on the list. And we're number 899 this year. It's very ironic and blessed that we actually have been improving our number each year. Very nice. It makes the list. It goes down. It goes the inverse, right? It goes to a higher number.

We've actually been in acquiring a lower number. a lower number and this being our best at 899 so we're really proud of that i would say that really our success has been the brands that we work with and distribute we've had a little bit of lightning and a thimble so to speak we work with some very iconic brands our focus is distributing those brands primarily in the club channel so Costco and sam's club and these are very iconic brands like pome as an example we're the distributor for them of their of their trading card game and it's been on fire i believe next year's their 30th anniversary as well so there's just a lot of hype around it a lot people don't know, but trading cards have actually been the number one asset performing class since

1974. People are now collecting them and putting them as part of their portfolio is quite amazing. But we've been building off that brand and other brands like Magic that have properties as well, ventured into the sports trading card arena as well. So we're doing work with like Upper Deck, you know, some other guys in that field that we're probably not going to name right now. But yeah, Panini would be one. So it's been a fantastic ride. And so that's what's gotten us to this point. and we think there's something about the collectibles. And so we're just looking forward. It's about all creating value for the shoppers and bringing even new and exciting things to retail.

You know, retail is the pioneer of what's happening in the world. That's where the real money exchanges hands and you've got to be fresh, you've got to be new, and you've got to be priced right, and you've got to be on point. And so we're looking for what that next evolution is and what we call the collectibles world. Is it going to be the Labubo? Well, maybe. There's a lot of things out there. I'll just leave it at that.

There's a lot of things out there. We have several things in the pipeline that we're very excited about. That you think could be the next Lubbu. Could be the next Labibu. So you're going to have to let us know when that happens. I will. And so, you know, like you said, Jady, that you have been lowering your number on the NG-5,000, increasing that growth. That's so difficult because one of the hardest things about growth is sustaining it.

How have you done that? And what sort of tradeoffs you had to make to sustain that growth? Well, great team. great talent. You know, there's a lot of people that contribute every day to this business. And that's just first and foremost. People say they're in the people business. And I mean, we really truly are on the people business. So our teammates are dedicated and they really put in the grind. There's, you know, sometimes sacrifices made professionally, personally, because they're so passionate about the brands that they're working on and where we're going. And I'll be honest,

I mean, it really feels like not work across the organization. And yeah, I'm supposed to say that. but I think if you even went down into the bottom of the teams, you would find that people truly do enjoy what they're doing, and they're so passionate about the brands that it doesn't even feel like work. And our biggest team has to be run out of the office on a Friday afternoon at 5.30. It's like, guys, go home. So I think just having that passion, and that is very something that has been a little bit of a secret sauce for us.

Okay, JD, if tomorrow somehow 30% of your budget got cut, what's going? What's going to stay? How would you handle that? Are you reading our emails? we actually we're facing that. Okay, we've had, well, we've had some allocations that we're dealing with. And so it has been an issue where we definitely have to, you know, try to right size that and make sure that we're placing bets in the appropriate places.

And we've had to have some hard conversations, both with our brands and our retail partners. But, you know, at the end of the day, being a distributor, you're kind of middleware. And so you don't as much control your own destiny as you would really like if you're the manufacturer, which we are not. in that regard. So we have to kind of deal with the cards we have and try to make the best of it. And I think the team's done a tremendous job doing that. But really just staying Uber focused on the P&L and making sure that when we have to make these tough decisions that we're looking at margins and we're seeing where can we really afford to make these cuts and where can we not afford to make these cuts. But yeah. And take me into some of those P&L or there's certain places where you're like,

okay, we can cut that software. We can do without this and other priorities that we really need to keep this. So far, we haven't had to make the hard decisions to make the cuts. We've been very blessed and very fortunate. We continue to grow. And even with the cuts, we're still projected to grow, which is, again, very, very blessed and fortunate for that. But I do think that you have to constantly be evaluated, I mean, the tech stack is one that is ever evolving. I mean, you can spend a small fortune. You get mesmerized and whizbang by all these, you know, things. And of course, the demos are always amazing, right? And then it comes integration. But yeah, tech is a big part of it, but I go back to one of the comments I made earlier.

We still really are a people-based business, a relationship-based business, and it's that that we have with our brands. And how did you handle having this conversation with your team? How do you approach bad news in general? Well, fortunately, again, great people. We have a general manager, Jesse, that runs the retail distribution part of our business, and I've never encountered and worked with somebody that is so close and so dialed into, their business and really knows where the bodies are buried. But I would take, he had to go a very

positive approach. In fact, he just shared with me today. We were walking a local club here in Phoenix. And he said, you know, I sat the team down last week and I said, hey, there's a lot of things going on in the economy right now. We even saw some notices today from one of our big customers had a lot of layoffs. And Jesse just really imposed on the team that, hey, look, there's a lot of turmoil that might be out there. But, you know, we are in a good position. We work with great brands and we are a you know we're maniacal about finances with our business we really try to run it like a fortune one very smart about things and just giving people that peace on mind that there is stability here and you know that really resonates with people and means a lot i don't think people think

that much about how important that is but boy it's important and so jenny i cover retail this business is constantly evolving how is your business evolved in that space are you working with different brands do they want to look differently on the shelf and store, is the distribution different in terms of where they want to be in the country? What's changed about the business? Well, there's been several changes, none more so than the emergence of e-commerce, right? You know, the old days, you would sit down with a retailer and they'd say, you know, do you know where the closest store is? And the reality is, the phone in your pocket now is the closest store to you. And we are an instant society. But e-commerce is a big one.

And that requires a different set of activity, you know, the content and, you know, the imagery and, you know, the keywords and all that sort of stuff, the online marketing. In the old days of retail, you know, you would sell the goods and you would try to support the retailer that we're going to help drive the traffic to get the pull off of yourself. And we do that with packaging. We do that, you know, with marketing, whether it's TV, print, whatever. But nowadays, it's just completely different. And with the Omni Channel, you have to have a strategy around servicing anybody, no matter how they're shopping, whether it's in a physical store or on an online mobile. And, you know, speaking of you come, how are you thinking about AI with your business,

Are you implementing it right now? Are you thinking about it? Where can that help you be more efficient? Well, I try to use it personally a lot to be more efficient and just kind of my task and whatnot. But we are really trying to test the edges on it. There's no question. It's going to have an impact. Well, one thing we've done is we've blocked certain websites actually from our access points on our machines.

We're trying to stay into just certain ones that are in part of our ecosystem. So we've decided that co-pilot was going to be the one that's in the Microsoft, off that's what we're going to use. That's really the only one that we've allowed. But there's no question that AI is going to have a big impact. I think it's going to have less of an impact on the relationship-based part of what we do, right, in the actual sales of the transaction where I think it's going to become super efficient is on the backside on operational. So thinking about demand planning, like being able to foresee trends from POS and then, you know, communicate that back upstream to manufacture on, hey, we need to peel back about, you know, 8% on this bill because we're having a

softening. I think the AI will be able to help to do that. And that's one big area. I think testing is another area AI will generate on. And then I had one of just the analytics, transportation, that'll be another one that I think that AI is going to play a big role in. So we use those levers in our business, but we don't own those levers, so to speak. Those are other plug-ins that we have to do, kind of integrated services. And because, Judy, like you said, that your business is so relationship-driven, and it's so human. Is your team thinking about how to even be better at those relationships using AI,

whether that's like, I'm really going to research the hell out of this client before the meeting, and I'm going to be, you know, 10 times better than I would have been before because it might, you know, have an insight I didn't think about. Yeah, I'm kind of sitting here laughing a little bit

because, and this is no surprise probably to the listeners, but the young interns, so we have a lot of interns that come through a program. Tell us about the Gen Z interns. Man, they are amazing. They are so smart. I mean, oh my gosh. like so much smarter than I was when I was that age and how fast they think and how how they're

able to go get them. They have adopted AI like crazy. And you could give them a project to go research a brand that we're maybe exploring with or we have meetings coming up with somebody and we want to really understand to your point about. And I mean, they are just able to go out and put the most amazing top line executive presentations and recaps together with imagery and facts and facts and data and it's just amazing. And boy, it's so it's a way different pace, but they're amazing. There's hope for the future. There's hope. Yeah, I will say a lot of the younger generations used to get a bad rap. This current one that's coming up, they are wicked smart. I'm excited for them. As grown this fast, how have you approached hiring? And how do you approach, you know, not wanting to

over hire, too, but still wanting to make sure the team isn't stretched too thin? That's hard to thread the needle. we probably ask too much at times of our team and probably stretch them too far. We're trying to get better at that, but it seems like no matter how fast we move and that the business just keeps because of, again, the brands that we play. And the retailers that we focus on, that's the other thing is our retailers are the big ones that really move volume. And I also think, you know, the earlier point you made about some of the things that are happening, it's no question if you're in retail. Any of you're a consumer, you're hearing all the talk about tariffs and the impacts that that's having.

A lot of the stuff that we do is domestic. And so our retail partners have leaned in because we sell actually in the toy category, the trading cards are in the toy category. And if you think about historically where toys come from, they come from parts of the world that are not in a good spot right now from a tariff perspective. So in some regards, you know,

it feels as though that we are being leveraged to help offset some of that tariff exposure. And so that's been another big part. But we really focus on people that have a hustle about them. That's a big part for us. You've got to really have that that hustle. People that can really create value is another thing that we look for. Just people that can really communicate. Those are, I'd say, three of the big, big buckets. And we're very intentional about hiring. It's a long process with us. It's a couple phases to get through it. And we have people that, and we feel very blessed

that people like really want to be there. And I mean, they're advocating for themselves that they want to be there. And so we feel very blessed that we're attracting good talent. When we come back, Allie asks J.D. What he looks for when building his team. But first, a quick break. Starting a business comes with a share of ups and downs, which is why staying true to your vision is essential. A non-negotiable for Romeo and Milka Rogali,

Capital One business customers and co-owners of Ross plant-based restaurant in New York. Romeo and Milka took a leap of faith when starting their own restaurant, gutting an empty space and building it from the ground up. Every pipe, every wall, every detail. But building from scratch came with a heavy financial burden, which is when they turned to their Capital One business card. With the flexibility of the card's no preset spending limit, they were able to spend more and earn more rewards

while bringing their vision to life. Today, Ross's success is proof that with passion and the right support, it's possible to make your dreams a reality. Learn more at Capital One.com slash business. cards. And J-D., when you're making that balance between wanting to build out the team but not over hire, what kind of roles do you think are better fits for? Okay, there's as this young, up-and-coming, smart, young Gen Z. Maybe they can grow into this role versus what are the roles that you think you do need to hire for outside? As we have hit scale, we have brought a lot of

things back in house that maybe we're outside in the past. Just having the speed that we need to be able to move. Getting caught up and having to go outside is really hard. In terms of where that generation is being, it's really a lot of the research that I would say has probably been the big thing that they've been done. They're just so quick to adapt to tools and services. We just rolled out, finally had a really nice successful ERP system rollout, and we started with the financial and accounting module. We had a failed one two years ago, led by myself and my co-founder because we didn't think we're business people and we didn't think about things in the way that this younger and now we just came through it and the accounting team was way more robust with younger people and they didn't

know our system that we were implementing but they just had the technical savviness they just understand how things work and so i would say around tech and platforms and research kind of that maybe the the down and dirty like work that people overlook sometimes everybody wants to you know have that client interface or that customer interface and whatever, and that's, that's needed. But you've got to have the bullets in the gun, and that's what they are so good at doing is giving the bullets in the gun to be able to go execute. And JD, as the company, the team have grown, how have you maintained a sense of culture, like kind of hustle you talked about by still, but also still knowing that this needs to be professional? We're very intentional about our culture, and we're very intentional about who we

hire, and that is the number one way to protect your culture. We don't try to force the culture. It's like having a nice yard. I mean, you've got to let it sprout and you got to let it go. But every once in a while, you get a weed and you got to, you know, spray the round up and kill that. But we have a certain profile that we look for. Somebody that, again, creates value, has that hustle. There is, actually did an article for Ben Sharia at Inc. Magazine on this last year, preparing for the conference when I came. I filled out the CEO survey. And he called me and said, there's a question you filled out here that an answer you gave. I want to write a story. It's very interesting. It was about what do you look for when you hire. And we really look for people that have played some sort of organized,

collegiate, or otherwise organized at a high level of sports because they understand discipline, they understand teamwork, they understand commitment, they understand hard work, right? And there is a profile with that, that at least in our business, we just see over and over some of the highest performers just constantly, for some reason, they're athletes. I mean, I've definitely heard that. I've covered a lot of these professional athletes who have now become founders, investors themselves. And that was like something that, you know, Alex Morgan had told me. She was like, look, like my whole job is professional soccer players getting negative feedback. It's getting better. Like, I'm used to that, which I think is a great quality having an employee. Yeah, they'll,

they'll take it. They want to improve themselves. They want to get. I mean, it's one of my coaches said growing up, it's like, you want to worry when your coach doesn't say anything. Absolutely. Yeah, if they're not giving you feedback, that's, they don't think you can do it. They don't think you can do it. That's 100%. Talk to me about a recent. Talk to me about a recent. mistake you've made? Probably not following my gut. I've had a couple times here recently. I don't want to get into this specific,

but it's like, you know, I just knew something was probably wrong or it wasn't the right thing. And we have one of the things in culture is like, you know, if you really feel about something, you need to step up and, you know, say something about it. And we kind of had a,

we had a failure with an individual in the company that didn't really align to the values of our company. And it went a little too far. And I just feel like, a let down and a mistake was that we didn't catch some things earlier on. And we took a real cultural black eye and a company black eye. And I just took the ownership of that along with my co-founder. We said, look, we're going to own this.

It's an ugly situation. Should have never happened. We're sorry. We're going to do everything we can to prevent it in the future. So if you're in this seat, trust me, you make mistakes all the time. And I think owning up to it, that's what people want to hear. Yeah, we actually did that in our annual meeting with everybody in the room. We were very intentional about it and really just owned it.

And that might have been one of the more over the course of a three-day event, probably had more feedback on, hey, just really appreciate what you guys did with that because you didn't have to do that. We talked a little about tariffs. What do you think is the biggest external risk to the company over the next year, 18 months? Fortunately, and part of the reason why we've had the growth that we've had and been able to be so fortunate to be on this list is not only are we working with iconic brands that I talked about, but I go back to where we do business.

Like, our retailers are the retailers that are actually growing, right? Because there's a lot of retail that's not making it right now. Retail is kind of tough. And so the rich are getting richer, so to speak. And so as more closures and more things happen, the retailers that we have really lined ourselves with are really just going to. So while the economy, so as an example, Walmart usually thrives, right, in a down economy. Walmart is a very important customer to us.

you know, the wholesale channel, Costco and Sam's, people are going to be pinched. They're going to go look to buy in bulk. And we kind of have this like insulated thing, but I tell you, it's, um, the economy tariffs. I mean, that's really the two things tearing us down. And then I guess at the end of the day, too, our brands could always make a choice to go a different direction. Maybe they want to go direct. Maybe they don't want to use us. And that, that would be catastrophic to us. How do you handle that kind of retention for your clients? It's all about the value. It's creating the value. A lot of people that middleware I have found and they always try to play the hide the salami with the clients and the customers and kind of keep people down to the know I will tell you we've done just the opposite

we've invited our clients to be a part of the conversation with our customers we think them seeing the difficulty that it takes to to really work day in and day out with these big retailers that we deal with it's a grind it's an everyday grind and letting them see the punches and the blows that it takes, we think it's a good thing than trying to hide them from it. Because if you don't see, then you don't really know. It's kind of like an example. Just recently, we've been kind of studying the great game of business as an example. And one of the principles in that is if you don't share with the people, the real health of the company and how much the company actually makes, and oftentimes they think the company makes like eight

or ten times more than they actually do. So there's actually value in just being honest and open about How is the company performing? And it's similar in how we do business with our customers and our clients. So letting our clients see the nitty-gritty and where the rubber meets the road and doing business with the retailers. That sometimes can help protect that relationship. It's a boy, I just don't know if I want to deal with that every day. It's tough. They like being the guys that can come in and the Knights in Shining Armour and fix the problem.

After we've kind of dealt with it and deal with the options and then we tell the client, hey, this is really what we've got to do. They like being able to come in and be a part of the solution and not have to get down into the grid of it, if that makes sense. In this sort of uncertain environment, Judy, is there anything you look at that was really helpful for growth in the last three years? But you're like, this is not going to work anymore. We've got to stop. Well, I wouldn't wish a global pandemic on anything, on anybody ever again. But for us, boy, it just.

People were shopping. They were shopping at the retailers that we were doing business with. And the categories that we play in are toys, home. in pets. And if you go back and look, those were the three categories that were off the chart. So, you know, iconic brands in all those categories. We've mostly talked about the toys, but we work with a lot of pet brands, both on treats and hard goods, but also in home. And, you know, home is a boy during COVID, you know, a lot of people invested in home. And so whether that's, you know, decor, whether that's, you know, textiles, whether that's countertop and cutlery and

whatever, like people were investing in that. Did you have to tell your team, you know, we cannot count on that sort of growth. This is just sort of an unnatural shock. It's going to come back down. We were actually in the alcohol business for a number of years, representing alcohol. That was another one. There was an outside shock. Representing an alcohol company out of Florida.

They turned a lot of their alcohol production into sanitizer production, as a lot of companies were. And so all of a sudden, we were selling hand sanitizer for retail use, but then we were also selling hand sanitizer to our retail customers for their own internal use. So they were needing it for their own staff and their break rooms and whatnot. And so there was like a whole other element of selling to our customer that wasn't the end customer. It was for their own internal consumption, right? And so we would have conversations exactly what you said.

Like how ironic is this? Like we would never have thought that our customer would be our customer in these other ways. And like, boy, this is, you know, how long could this last? And you know, it didn't last forever, obviously, but we maximize it while we could. How do you approach leadership? And is there a hard habit that you're trying to break or one that you're trying to say, I want to aspire to this habit? Well, I served in the military before I did this. And I was in the Air Force. And I grew up as a military brat. So I'm a very disciplined individual by nature. And I'm accustomed to having standards and maintaining standards. And so I try to. not to be so overwhelmed about certain things. I've got a little OCD as well. And so I've had to work hard to not be as regimented as I like in my personal life because that's not how everybody is

wired. I have to just kind of let things go sometimes like, you know, if there's a mess on the counter in the break room because trash you can't throw it in the trash and I'd think to myself, why can't you just throw it in the trash, you know? And used to, I'd want to, you know, make a deal about it and say, well, can't we just pick our trash up? But, you know, at the end of the day, yes, I would love for that happen, but not everybody's wired that way. So I've had to really peel back and learn to be a little bit more subdued and not just such a hard charger on things like that. I've had people tell me, you know, you don't get so worked up, you know, so I'm trying to not get so worked up. I think that's a good note to end on, JD. Thank you so much. It's been great.

That's all for this episode of your next move. Our producer is Blake Odom, editorial editing and sound design by Nick Torres. Additional editing from Sam Givauer, and Tad Wadams, and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. If you haven't already, subscribe to Your Next Move on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And your next move is a production of Inc and Capital One business.