Michelle Hsiao Gets Product Brands Made, Paid, and on Shelves

Michelle Hsiao can tell within the first sentence of a conversation whether she is the right person to help. “Our top-line sales have grown, but our profit has not.” Or “I have a fantastic idea for a product/brand, but I have no idea how to make it happen.” When a founder says something like that, Michelle leans in. The discernment to know exactly what she does and what she doesn't is what built her business.

Michelle Hsiao is the founder of Revenue Growth Advisors, a fractional COO and consulting practice for product-based businesses. A member of the Entreprenista League, she is coming up on her 3-year business anniversary, built on almost 25 years in corporate retail with names like Macy’s and Boscov’s.

“The further I’ve gone along, the more I niche down and the more that I really focus on what I do better than anyone else in the world.”

Here's how Michelle turned decades of retail experience into a practice:

Get it made, make money, get it on the shelves

That line is Michelle’s motto, and it maps to the 2 ways founders find her. The first is the idea stage, when someone has invented something or has an idea and needs to understand what it actually costs to bring a product to market. The second is the proof-of-concept stage, when a brand is ready to sell wholesale into Target, Whole Foods, boutiques, etc.

From there, she works on everything. That means: 3PL fulfillment, co-packers for food, purchase order funding, and finding the right manufacturer when a brand jumps from making 500 units in North Carolina to 50,000 overseas. Her categories run wide, from jewelry, apparel, and wholesale food to home goods, toys, consumer appliances, and now wellness and supplements.

Two questions that mean it’s time to talk

Michelle listens for specific triggers. One is the profit gap. “They’re selling more, but they’re not making any more money,” she says, which is a sign of a pricing, expense, or sourcing problem. The other is the founder who says something like, “I really want my product in stores, but I don’t even know how to get started.”

When a question falls outside her expertise, she says so. “I’ve got an amazing network of people  that I can refer you to who are fantastic at that,” she says, and more often than not, the person she refers to is another Entreprenista.

Why AI can’t build a product alone

Michelle uses AI across her own operations, but she is direct about its limits in manufacturing. “AI doesn’t understand the complexities of manufacturing,” she says. A founder who asks a chatbot to recommend a factory in China can end up with a random supplier that never solves the real problem.

She points to a client expanding into the U.S. who needed entirely new packaging, down to the nutritional information and ingredient callouts that carry legal risk. “If she just threw it all into AI, it wouldn’t have caught all this,” Michelle says. Her view is that AI is best as an amplifier once human expertise has set the foundation, not as the starting point.

The best way to start is with a complimentary 30-minute call. You can connect with Michelle on LinkedIn or learn more about her services at therevgrowthadvisors.com.

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If Michelle’s approach to helping product founders scale with real expertise resonates, the Entreprenista League is a community of women founders who value connection, shared experience, and practical business insight as they grow. Learn more about the Entreprenista League right here.