Tim Ringel is Founder and CEO of Meet The People (MTP), which is positioned as an alternative to the traditional advertising holding company model.

Since founding MTP in 2021, Ringel has built an international group of unified but independent agencies bringing together key marketing services under one umbrella. The structure allows for fully integrated but deeply specialized solutions, from Creative and Design to Activation and Measurement.

Prior to founding MTP, Ringel spent over two decades in senior leadership roles across major advertising networks and independent agencies, developing expertise in building scalable marketing organizations and guiding brands through digital transformation. Under his leadership, MTP has completed 10 strategic acquisitions and grown to roughly 800 employees across the U.S. and Canada, serving Fortune 500 clients and emerging brands alike.

MTP recently announced a strategic alliance with KD Global USA to help European small and mid-sized businesses establish operations in North America through an integrated solution combining import management, logistics, creative, e-commerce, and growth marketing.

Let’s dive into MTP’s recent strategic alliance with KD Global USA. What gap in the market does this partnership address? And why is now the right time for this kind of collaboration?

There’s a significant gap between the services large international networks provide and what small to mid-sized European businesses actually need when entering North America. The big networks are optimized for Fortune 500 global accounts with multi-million-dollar budgets. They’re not set up to serve a €50 million ($50M USD) German manufacturer or a Swedish DTC brand looking to test the U.S. market.

These European SMEs face a chicken-and-egg problem: they need marketing and e-commerce capabilities to generate demand, but they also need the operational infrastructure—import management, warehousing, fulfillment, FDA compliance—to actually deliver products. Most agencies only solve half the equation, and that’s where companies get stuck.

The timing is critical because of how the retail landscape has evolved. Success in North America increasingly means winning on Amazon, Walmart, and Target—platforms that require both sophisticated digital marketing and flawless operational execution. A European brand can’t just ship products and hope for the best. They need integrated solutions that work from day one.

What makes this partnership unique is that Patrick Koehler and his team at KD Global USA handle the complex operational side — they’re the import company of record, they manage warehousing and fulfillment, they navigate FDA requirements—while our team at MTP builds the creative assets, sets up the e-commerce infrastructure, and drives performance marketing. It’s a complete market entry solution, not just a piece of it.

MTP is described in the release as having “European DNA” while also being focused on the North American market. How does this cultural positioning differentiate your approach from traditional holding companies, and what advantages does it provide to European clients specifically?

I’ve spent my formative years in Germany and headed companies in the UK. Many of our senior leaders have deep European roots or have spent significant time working across Europe as well. That’s not just biographical trivia — it fundamentally shapes our perspective with all our global clients.

When a German Mittelstand — a small-to-medium-sized business — or a French luxury marketer or a major American multinational brand approaches us, they’re not just looking for marketing services. They want a partner who understands how global businesses operate, how decisions get made, what their risk tolerances are, and how they think about long-term brand building versus short-term performance. There’s a seamless cultural translation that needs to happen, and we provide that naturally.

Traditional U.S. holding companies often approach global clients with a very American playbook — aggressive growth targets, constant pivots, a bias toward disruption over stability. That can create friction. European businesses, particularly SMEs, tend to be more deliberate, more focused on sustainable growth, more concerned with maintaining brand integrity. We get that because we come from that world.

At the same time, we’re not a European agency trying to operate in North America from across the Atlantic. We’re based here, we understand the U.S. and Canadian markets deeply, and we know how to navigate the regulatory environment, the retail landscape, and the consumer behavior patterns. So we can speak both languages — literally and figuratively.

For any client, that means they get the cultural comfort and trust of working with people who understand where they’re coming from, combined with the local expertise to actually succeed in a very different market. That combination is rare, and it’s exactly what these businesses need.

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The partnership offers a 360° solution combining import management, logistics, creative, and e-commerce. In your experience, what are the most common mistakes European businesses make when trying to break into the U.S. and Canadian markets without this integrated approach?

The biggest mistake is underestimating the operational complexity. European companies often think, “We have a great product, we’ll just ship it to the U.S. and start selling.”

Then they discover the reality: customs regulations, FDA requirements, if you’re in food or cosmetics, product liability insurance, warehousing costs, returns management. It’s overwhelming, and it’s expensive to figure out on your own.

The second mistake is treating North America like a larger version of their home market. Consumer behavior here is fundamentally different. What works in Germany doesn’t necessarily work in Texas. The marketing messages, the channels, even the product positioning often need to be adapted. I’ve seen European brands launch with beautiful, sophisticated creative that completely misses the mark because it doesn’t resonate with American consumers.

Third, they underestimate the importance of the digital shelf.

In Europe, many brands still rely heavily on traditional retail distribution. In North America, if you’re not winning on Amazon, you’re leaving massive revenue on the table. But success on Amazon requires specific expertise—search optimization, advertising strategy, review management, inventory planning. It’s a specialized skill set that most European companies don’t have in-house.

The fourth mistake — and this one’s critical—is trying to do everything themselves from day one. They hire a small team in the U.S., rent office space, build out infrastructure, and burn through capital before they’ve proven product-market fit. That’s backwards. The smart approach is to partner with people who already have the infrastructure and expertise, test the market, prove the concept, and then scale up your own operations once you understand what works.

What the KD Global partnership solves is all of these problems simultaneously. We handle the market entry, the creative, the e-commerce setup, and the demand generation, while KD Global manages the operational complexity. European businesses can start selling in North America within months, not years, and with a fraction of the upfront investment.

MTP has made 10 brand acquisitions since its founding in 2021, the recent addition of Yeoman Technology Group being the latest. The intent behind that deal was to strengthen MTP’s retail media capabilities. How does your acquisition strategy support clients navigating platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Target — which are also critical to the KD Global USA partnership?

Our acquisition strategy is simple: we identify capabilities that our clients increasingly need, and we bring in the best specialists we can find rather than trying to build those capabilities from scratch. Retail media is a perfect example.

When we acquired Yeoman Technology Group, we weren’t just adding headcount or buying revenue. We were bringing in a team with deep, specialized expertise in managing organic and paid strategies across Amazon, Walmart, and Target. They’ve built proprietary technology for optimization, they understand the nuances of each platform’s algorithm, and they’ve proven they can drive results for mid-sized DTC brands — exactly the profile of many European companies entering this market.

This matters enormously for the KD Global partnership because retail media success isn’t just about running ads. It’s about understanding how search works on each platform, how to structure product listings for maximum visibility, how to manage inventory to maintain Buy Box eligibility, and how to coordinate promotional calendars. These platforms are complex ecosystems, and winning requires specialized knowledge.

For a European SME working with us and KD Global, they get the benefit of Yeoman’s expertise without having to hire an entire team or spend months learning these platforms through trial and error. We can launch them on Amazon with optimized listings, strategic advertising, and proper inventory management from day one. That’s the kind of integrated capability that makes market entry actually work.

More broadly, our acquisition approach — building a portfolio of specialized agencies under one umbrella—gives clients access to deep expertise across multiple disciplines without the bureaucracy and overhead of a traditional holding company. When a client needs retail media expertise, or performance marketing, or shopper marketing, or creative, we can bring in the right specialists quickly and coordinate their work seamlessly.

The advertising industry has shifted toward shorter-term, performance-driven engagements rather than long-term retainer relationships. How does this evolution in client relationships influence the services MTP offers through partnerships like the one with KD Global USA?

This shift has been accelerating for years, and it’s fundamentally changed how agencies need to operate. Clients are working in quarterly cycles now — $250K, $350K projects where you need to demonstrate ROI quickly or you’re out. You can’t run massive overhead structures on that model.

What that means is you need to be fast, you need to be flexible, and you need to show results. The KD Global partnership is designed exactly for this reality. We’re not proposing a three-year brand-building engagement with a massive retainer. We’re saying: let’s get you set up, let’s start generating sales, and let’s prove this market works for you — all within a few months.

For European SMEs, this performance-driven approach is actually ideal. They don’t want to commit millions of dollars upfront to test the North American market. They want to make a reasonable investment, see tangible results, and then scale up if it’s working. That’s exactly how we’ve structured the partnership.

This evolution also reinforces why our model of specialized, independent agencies works better than traditional holding companies. We don’t have layers of account management and bureaucracy that need to be fed regardless of results. We can assemble lean, senior-led teams focused specifically on a client’s objectives, execute quickly, and adjust based on performance data.

The clients who are succeeding in this environment are those who embrace agility and experimentation. They’re willing to test, learn, and iterate rather than spending months on strategy decks. Our partnership with KD Global embodies that philosophy — we get European brands into market quickly, we measure what’s working, and we optimize in real time.

With MTP’s teams now tracking around 800 full-time employees across the U.S. and Canada, how do you maintain the “lean, senior-led” approach you emphasize in the KD Global partnership while scaling the business?

It’s a deliberate structural choice. We’ve grown through acquiring specialized agencies that maintain their own identities and operational independence. So rather than building one massive organization with centralized processes and layers of management, we have a portfolio of focused teams, each led by experienced operators who know their domain deeply.

When we say “lean, senior-led,” we mean that client teams are staffed with people who have real expertise and decision-making authority, not junior account coordinators managing timesheets. For the KD Global partnership specifically, European clients work directly with people who understand market entry, retail media strategy, and e-commerce execution — not someone three years out of college who’s reading from a playbook.

The scale we’ve built gives us capabilities and resources, but we’ve been intentional about not letting that scale create bureaucracy. There’s no layers of approval needed to execute a campaign or make a strategic pivot. The teams closest to the work make the decisions.

This is also where our acquisition strategy pays dividends. When we brought in Yeoman, we didn’t dismantle their team and absorb them into some generic “digital marketing division.” Michael Healey, their founder, stayed on, the team stayed intact. And they continue operating with the autonomy and speed that made them successful in the first place. We just gave them more resources and connected them to more clients.

The challenge as we continue growing is maintaining that balance—having enough scale to serve enterprise clients and invest in capabilities, while staying nimble enough to move at the speed our clients need. So far, the model is working. Our client retention is strong, we’re expanding relationships, and we’re continuing to win new business based on our ability to deliver results without the traditional agency baggage.

For European SMEs looking at the North American market, they don’t need 800 employees working on their business. They need the right 10 or 15 people with the right expertise, backed by the infrastructure and capabilities that scale provides. That’s what we’re built to deliver.

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