Advice is just a click away
Premier Foods’ Convenience and Wholesale Channel Director, Steve Kelly, explains why spreading best practice and category advice across the channel could make all the difference to your own balance sheet
We all know retailers are often time pressured but also eager to get insight and advice on key categories, so finding a way to effectively communicate to them is important for suppliers and wholesalers to achieve maximum sales potential.
In a world increasingly focusing online, providing category and merchandising advice to customers is one of the big advantages that trading through the convenience channel allows brands such as Premier Foods. We know the personal relationships between wholesalers and retailers are crucial, and ensuring we make the most of that to pass on advice is good for every party in the supply chain.
MONEY-MAKING ADVICE
To aid this, we’ve launched a dedicated source for convenience that’s packed with insight and advice to help retailers sell more. Called Your Grocery Partner, the website provides category advice and shopper trend information in the key grocery areas we play in: cake; cooking sauces & accompaniments; flavourings & seasonings; quick meals & snacks; desserts; and home baking.
Each category section gives you an overview, some advice on how to succeed in the category, information on the opportunity, who the shopper is and what a retailer can do to grow sales further by making educated ranging and display decisions. There’s also information on Premier Foods’ core range and planograms to help retailers create a shelf plan. Everything is in one place that’s easy to access and always available whenever people want it.
The idea may primarily be targeted at retailers, but the category insight carries a lot of value for wholesalers too. Not only does it give a guide of which products you should include in your depot’s range but the merchandising advice and sales guidance is perfect to absorb and pass on to retailers when they’re in the depot – allowing you and your teams to offer added value that’s sure to endear you to customers.
We are encouraging retailers and wholesalers to use the site to see how it can support them and really understand what information is available to them. The aim is that wholesalers will see the value of the resource and then point their customers to the website by sharing it on their own websites and digital channels. The stockists page on the website lists wholesalers too and can link through to wholesalers’ websites to return the favour.
GROWING SALES
The wholesalers and retailers paying the most attention to advice available on Your Grocery Partner are the ones we expect will see their sales increase. We’re trying to grow category sales in the convenience channel, so everybody along the supply chain will benefit.
Suppliers have lots of information, market data and insight to hand. The big challenge is how to share that in easily digestible chunks for retailers to put into action when they’re relatively limited by the time they can spend analysing their ranges. This is the same for wholesalers who need to find a way to pass on advice, so we believe we’ve found a way to support them with this new website. After all, if the convenience channel is going to prosper, we need to work together and make sure we’re communicating best practice to shift more stock.
category advice convenience data Premier Foods retail sales suppliers trends
