Tanu Grewal, AlEn USA’s VP of marketing, innovation and e-commerce.
AlEn is like the Procter & Gamble of Mexico, but bringing its leading household goods north of the border had challenged the company for years.
Rival Colgate-Palmolive got a big head start, moving its Suavitel and Fabuloso brands up from Mexico in the late 1990s, a process AlEn USA started only this millennium. But on her watch as VP of marketing, innovation and e-commerce, Tanu Grewal is helping make up ground in a hurry for the Cloralen, Pinalen and Ensuenuo laundry and cleaning brands.
With the limited budget of a challenger brand and no big established sales force like rivals have, Grewal has built AlEn from a regional to national presence across mass, grocery, dollar and do-it-yourself channels.
As an immigrant from India, she already overcame challenges getting into the U.S., then built a marketing career with Whirlpool and Kohler.
“I’ve worked with Fortune 100 companies and been fortunate to turn around brands like Maytag and work on global brands like Whirlpool,” Grewal said. “But I wanted to go to something more entrepreneurial. A clean slate and building three brands from scratch was very interesting.”
She’s doubled the top line and bottom lines for the brands and turned AlEn into a Hispanic category advisor on some big retail accounts. She’s also launched an innovation staff and process to build single-product brands into multi-product category players. And she’s moved from an early focus on retail media with Amazon and Walmart into a broader brand marketing plan with help from WPP’s VMLY&R.
Our co-presidents [Mauricio García Muñoz and Andrés García Villarreal of AlEn]. The company was started by two brothers. And it’s the third generation. This is my third family-owned business in three different countries. And this by far is the most professionally managed family-owned business that I’ve ever seen.
“IdeaFlow: The Only Business Metric That Matters.” The book is all about ideas, and how sometimes it’s not the quality of the ideas, but the quantity of the ideas, and how every problem can actually be reframed as an idea. If you have more ideas, then some of them will actually turn into projects and some of them will be profitable.
If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not learning.
I really admire Chobani. They have a philosophy of being honest and truthful and helpful. I think it carries into their product, which is great. But I think it also carries on the purpose—the way they work with refugees. It’s easy to get success and forget about where you came from. But to carry on that and make that the ethos of your mission of your company I think is very commendable.
Adaptability.
