Challenger brand consultancy YF has removed membership fees from its long-running community, making it free to join for brands.
The move – designed to offer improved support for challenger brands as they bid to “tackle the high stakes retail market” – comes as research by YF revealed only a tiny proportion were currently profitable.
The consultancy firm cited NIQ data from 2025 that showed challenger brands now represented 16% of total supermarket basket spends – representing their “strongest year yet”. However, a YF poll, conducted last month at its Opening Night event in London, revealed just 5% of these brands were turning a profit.
Removing fees from the YF community would help tackle this issue, YF said, with members gaining access to an always-on moderated WhatsApp network, including functional channels across sales, marketing, operations, finance and NPD.
YF said it had, over the past decade, become “known for supporting brands with advisory and hands-on delivery across commercial and supply chain”.
Its services include sales acceleration, fractional national account management, outsourced supply chain management and factory sourcing.
The community aimed to “sit alongside those services as YF’s free engagement layer: a place where founders and functional leaders build capability, access insight, and gain knowledge and connections”.
YF will replace the fee with a short application form to assess the stage of the brand and the role of the individual joining, “ensuring the network remains relevant, high quality and action orientated”, it said.
“Growth and profitability can co-exist, but it requires a different operating model to what we have always known,” added YF MD Phil Peters.
“Opening the community helps brands learn faster, benchmark against clear standards, and build stronger peer networks. It also gives our retailer partners earlier visibility of the most credible emerging brands coming through the market, at the point they are ready to scale.”
Alongside the community relaunch, YF has also announced a further investment in its Sales Acceleration services, following calls from retailers “to see more high-potential brands that are genuinely ready for scale”.
The firm, which works with many of the UK’s leading supermarkets and high street retailers, will select a small number of the “highest-potential, market-defining” new brands this year to partner with, supporting them to rapidly expand visibility and presence across the market.
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