How Leading Consumer Brands Emerged Leaner, Stronger, and More Valuable from 2019–2025. LOGO’s Matter.

The last five years have been among the most intense stress tests in modern business history. Consumer brands have faced a relentless series of macro shocks — each one forcing operational reinvention:

– 2020–2021: Global pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, inventory mis-alignments, above-trend consumption from government payments, and rapid shifts in consumer behavior.
– 2022–2023: 50-year-high inflation and the fastest interest rate hike cycle in modern history caused tremendous damage to consumer sentiment with stocks & bonds crashing in 2022.
– 2024–2025: New trade tariffs, potential squeeze of margins for brands that import goods, more inventory management lumpiness and lingering effects of inflation driving consumers to want even more value from brands.

For most of the 2010s, consumer companies operated in a benign environment — stable interest rates, modest inflation, reliable supply chains, and predictable consumer spending. As you might image, the Consumer Discretionary Sector Index showed stellar performance from March 9, 2009, to January 1, 2020, with a 22.7% annualized return versus the S&P 500 Index at 17.85% over that period.

Since the end of 2019, the stable conditions that allowed for strong returns have been a bit more infrequent. One would expect the returns of the stocks involved to also be potentially lumpy. Here’s the data: over the trailing 3 years ending August 14, 2025, the Consumer Discretionary Sector shows a rare & significant underperformance period of annualized returns at 11.51% versus the S&P 500 Index at 16.34%, largely due to the strong returns in the tech sector versus other sectors.

Here’s the opportunity today for investors.

Not every company thrives when conditions are more difficult, but brands with high brand relevancy, pricing power, and balance sheet strength come out the other end of turmoil leaner, more operationally fit, and more profitable than at any time in their history. And as conditions normalize, these are the kinds of companies well positioned to command higher valuations than they’ve historically enjoyed. As AI deployment gains momentum across industries, the companies that were forced to run more efficiently and that deploy AI tools to drive even better operating efficiencies, will begin reporting superior metrics. The re-rating could be sharp and swift.  If you follow Shopify, the leading brand powering other companies’ e-commerce efforts, you have seen what these positive earnings surprises do to a stock’s valuation.

Here’s how great brands respond to adversity and why the turmoil can lead to long-term competitive advantages:

1. The Pandemic as an Accelerated Fitness Test

When COVID-19 shut down economies in early 2020, consumer brands had to rewrite their playbooks overnight.

The challenges:
– Store closures and foot traffic collapses.
– Supply chain disruptions from Asia to Europe.
– Surging e-commerce demand creating fulfillment bottlenecks.
– Rapid shifts in consumer preferences (home goods up, formal apparel down).

How leading brands responded:
– Operational agility: Retailers like Nike and Lululemon accelerated direct-to-consumer digital investments that were planned over years into months.
– Product line optimization: Companies shed slow-moving SKUs to focus on high-turn, profitable items.
– Supplier diversification: Brands reduced dependence on single geographies, building redundancy and flexibility.

By mid-2021, the best operators weren’t just surviving — they had transformed bloated supply chains into lean, responsive networks.

2. Inflation Shock and the Return of Pricing Power

As economies reopened, pent-up demand collided with supply shortages. Inflation soared to levels not seen in 50 years, peaking above 9% in the U.S. in mid-2022.

The challenges:
– Input costs for raw materials, freight, and labor surged.
– Consumers faced higher prices for essentials, compressing discretionary spending.

How leading brands responded:
– Dynamic pricing strategies: Leaders like Procter & Gamble, Chipotle, McDonalds, Mondalez implemented multiple price hikes, paired with smaller pack sizes or product innovation to preserve volumes.
– Efficiency drives: Every dollar of spend was re-evaluated — from marketing channels to manufacturing processes — to offset cost pressures.
– Brand equity leverage: Strong consumer loyalty enabled premium brands to raise prices without losing share.

The result? Many leading consumer companies not only passed on costs but expanded gross margins, proving that strong brands can maintain pricing power even in inflationary environments.

3. Interest Rates and the Higher Cost of Capital

From near-zero in 2021, U.S. interest rates climbed above 5% by 2023 — the fastest pace in decades.

The challenges:
– Debt refinancing costs surged.
– Leveraged acquisitions became more expensive.
– Consumer sentiment fell to the floor & value-seeking became the norm.

How leading brands responded:
– Balance sheet discipline: Many reduced leverage to avoid expensive refinancing.
– Capex selectivity: Investment dollars were funneled only into projects with the highest returns or strategic necessity.
– Product lineups were re-assessed, and suppliers were asked to give up some margins to serve value-oriented consumers.

This discipline created companies with cleaner balance sheets and higher return thresholds — a structural improvement that will persist even when rates decline.

4. The Tariff Layer: 2024–2025 Trade Shocks

Just as inflation and rates stabilized, new rounds of tariffs were announced, targeting imports from major manufacturing hubs. The goods sector and the stocks tied to it took a meaningful hit on the news, many of which continue to struggle as pricing power has become more difficult.

The challenges:

– Input costs rose again, particularly in categories dependent on overseas manufacturing.
– Supply chains faced renewed complexity.

How leading brands responded:

– Local sourcing acceleration: More manufacturing and assembly was moved closer to the end market.
– Supplier diversification 2.0: Companies had already learned in 2020–2021 not to rely on single points of failure — now they doubled down.
– Product redesign for tariff optimization: Some altered materials, origin points, or assembly processes to reduce tariff exposure.

Far from starting from scratch, the capabilities built during the pandemic — agility, supplier diversity, rapid product iteration — became the toolkit for this new challenge.

5. Why These Shocks Create More Valuable Companies

Each of these events — pandemic, inflation, rising rates, and tariffs — has forced consumer brands to operate with unprecedented discipline. They have streamlined supply chains, optimized SKUs, reinforced pricing power, strengthened balance sheets, and improved capital allocation discipline.

And then there’s the eventual AI deployment that will happen across sectors and industries. Headcounts will stay flat or fall, productivity will increase, profit margins will increase, revenue per employee will rise, customer engagement should rise, and overall profits and free cash flow will rise. You know what happens to stock prices generally when important operating metrics rise sustainably? When a company tends to trade at a 13-16x multiple and operating metrics rise and sustain at the new level, the multiple re-rates higher. As an investor, you generally want to get ahead of catalysts with this size and scale.

Macro headwinds won’t linger forever and great companies use these volatile periods to enhance the underlying business so when the normalization phase arrives, the stocks look a lot cheaper when the earnings surprises start rolling in. This is the future we see for most leading consumer brands today.  Great businesses don’t lag indefinitely; the positive catalyst is straight ahead.

Important Disclosure: The above data is for illustrative purposes only.  This information was produced by Accuvest and the opinions expressed are those of the author as of the date of writing and are subject to change. Any research is based on the author’s proprietary research and analysis of global markets and investing. The information and/or analysis presented have been compiled or arrived at from sources believed to be reliable, however the author does not make any representation as their accuracy or completeness and does not accept liability for any loss arising from the use hereof. Some internally generated information may be considered theoretical in nature and is subject to inherent limitations associated therein. There are no material changes to the conditions, objectives or investment strategies of the model portfolios for the period portrayed. Any sectors or allocations referenced may or may not be represented in portfolios managed by the author, and do not represent all of the securities purchased, sold or recommended for client accounts.  The reader should not assume that any investments in sectors and markets identified or described were or will be profitable. Investing entails risks, including possible loss of principal. The use of tools cannot guarantee performance. The charts depicted within this presentation are for illustrative purposes only and are not indicative of future performance. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.