Eric Ryan: Touring foreign grocery stores with designers sparks best product ideas
Eric Ryan · Serial founder Eric Ryan: How to disrupt a sleepy category | Masters of Scale · Apr 23, 2026 · at 3:13
Serial founder Eric Ryan (Method, Olly) explains his creative playbook for discovering and developing new consumer packaged goods concepts.
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“I think it's still arguably my best tactic for developing new ideas is to be in a foreign market, ideally with a creative or a couple of creatives with you. So you can sketch as you go, cup of coffee in hand, incredibly jet lagged. Nobody can bother you because you're on a 12 hour time difference. And just when I think you walk, when you walk through a foreign retail store, you just look at everything a little differently, particularly if you can't read the language. So you have to rely a little bit more on like form and graphic design.”
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