ABOUT USEvery mandate is led by a principal — end to end
Independent strategic advisory built on 35 years’ experience across 900+ consumer brands, applied from first briefing to final recommendation.
INDEPENDENT STRATEGIC ADVISORY The FMCG advisory firm built for the operator’s side of the table.
Cowan & Associates works with FMCG and CPG businesses held by private equity, and with the sponsors and investors behind them. Our principals combine commercial and brand management experience from corporate FMCG with founder experience in raising and managing private equity capital, and in building brands into businesses with realisable value.
The value of that combination is pattern recognition. In legacy businesses and in early-stage ones alike, brands fail for a small number of recurring reasons, and most of them are visible well before they show up in the numbers a board is looking at.
Portfolio companies fail on the distance between the investment thesis and what the management team can see in its own numbers. Cowan & Associates closes that distance, and says plainly when the asset will not carry the plan.
OUR ORIGINSFounder and managing partner Michael H Cowan spent the first two decades of his career inside global FMCG and consumer businesses — Procter & Gamble, Warner Lambert, Diageo, PepsiCo and AC Nielsen — working across strategy, brand, commercial and executive leadership.
He left Nielsen in 2007 to build his own consulting practice, which has operated ever since across strategic advisory and executive interim mandates, including work with Mars, KP Snacks/United Biscuits, Red Bull, and McDonald’s.
Alongside that work, Michael built a challenger drinks company, founding Mont Beer and backing brands the market had not yet fully priced, including Sipsmith, Tuatara and Tenzing. Some subsequently went to trade sale or private equity.
Picking those brands early was not luck. It was a read on the small set of factors that determine whether a consumer brand becomes an asset: whether the proposition travels beyond its founding market, whether the economics survive scale, and whether the team can execute the plan it has written.
Since 2023, the practice has worked exclusively with both enterprise and private equity clients across fast-moving consumer goods.
Cowan & Associates applies that same commercial read on behalf of sponsors and the businesses they hold — often before capital is committed, and while there is still time to change the outcome.
ASSOCIATES NETWORKOur network is assembled, not retained.
The firm is built on subject-matter expertise and strategic judgment—it holds no permanent bench. Every mandate is led by a principal, with specialist capability brought in only where the brief demands it.
The composition of a team is disclosed before a mandate begins. Nothing is subcontracted without the client knowing who is doing the work.
WORK WITH COWAN & ASSOCIATES