david abrahams

The Founder and CEO of this small regional brokerage on the East Coast hired me to build the supermarket brokerage division for her company. I reported directly to her and got a chance to learn everything I needed to know about brokering with large chains. As the Supermarket Business Manager, I represented almost 100 brands and was in charge of presenting their lines to supermarkets in the Midwest and East Coast regions. My work involved calling on large grocery chains like Wegmans and Publix, and getting shelf space for the likes of: ✪ Coconut Bliss ✪ Rhythm Superfoods ✪ Sambazon ✪ Lotus Foods ✪ Ito En ✪ And more In this role, I developed extensive relationships with buyers from large and small retailers, distributors and distributor key account managers. The main challenges in my work revolved around the flaws in the broker business model. I ended up leaving due to the lack of opportunities to innovate and provide the standard of care I wanted to provide to all brands in my portfolio.

After my success in building the Kalahari food brand, I decided to offer brand management consulting services. This is where the first version of iLevel Brands was born. I co-founded the company with an acquaintance who quickly stepped aside. That’s when I brought my brother and two other people on board to help me. Together, we helped emerging brands create and manage their go-to-market strategies in order to grow their revenue stream to sustainable and predictable levels. Our work put dozens of food brands on thousands of shelves nationwide. Our clients included startups and brands like: ✪ Arctic Zero ✪ Attitude by BioSpectra ✪ Go Raw ✪ GlutenFreeda ✪ Qbel Foods ✪ And more. As a consultant representing food brands, I got to see from a high vantage point and wide scope what brokers really did for clients. This made me realize for the first time how broken the traditional broker model really was and how easily I could fix it if I pulled from my engineering experience and knowledge of the natural food industry.

Launched an entrepreneurial venture with business partner to establish the first truly “Authentically South African” food product brand in the USA under the Kalahari brand. Challenged to create the products, manage packaging design, establish relationships with South African manufacturers, spearhead business formation and financing, develop new sales opportunities and lead the organization through exponential growth. Developed and managed a national broker/distributor network covering grocery, natural, club, drug, mass and convenience store channels for multiple product lines. Personal account responsibility for: Safeway, Kroger, Publix, Ahold, CVS, Costco, 7-Eleven, Valero Energy, Rite Aid, Whole Foods, Wild Oats, UNFI, Tree of Life, Millbrook, Kehe, McLane. Spearheaded the development/launch of the Kalahari Red Tea line establishing the red tea subcategory in the supermarket channel resulting in placement in over 8,000 stores within 18 months.

Mannesmann Dematic is a global leader in providing intelligent intralogistics and material handling solutions to large corporations. To date, they have developed and implemented more than 4,500 integrated systems for some of the world’s biggest companies. In my 10 years with this organization, I oversaw the design and implementation of all hardware logistics for high-speed sortation systems. My work helped many multi-million-dollar distribution centers for businesses like Amazon, UPS and FedEx run smoothly. This role gifted me with the foundation in systems management and information flow that I used to build iLevel Brands many years later.

CEO, Inc at iLevel Brands

Activities and Societies: AEPi