CFI was running outsourced marketing and getting outsourced results. The product was strong. The category was generic. Customers were shopping on price. The founder felt the margin pressure and didn't see that the answer was positioning.
I built CFI's marketing operation from scratch. Five people. Zero to in-house. Then I led the Axon sub-brand launch. Not as a separate product. As a repositioning. Axon became a category frame for the solutions side of the business. New positioning. New offer architecture. New brand voice. The market suddenly saw a company solving their problem, not a company making parts.
Axon became 80 percent of company revenue. CFI grew from $30M to $50M+.
The revenue came from the same customers they'd always had. Once positioning was clear, those customers saw the value. Pricing power came back.