Never let the other fellow set the agenda..

logoThere was much anticipation by both consumers and retailers in South Texas in 1976 when Coors expanded.  Coors had been available in N. Texas for about 10 years and was the largest selling brand in all those markets so it seemed it would be a slam dunk to do the same in the southern part of Texas.

The largest grocery chain for beer in San Antonio at this time was not HEB it was a chain called Handy Andy.  HEB soon added beer but it was still a year from doing so.  Even though Schlitz was by far the #1 selling brand, Handy Andy gave Coors huge well space almost equal to what Schlitz had at that time.  The roll out date finally came in late spring that year.

By the time we arrived at the Handy Andy stores that first morning, the stories had already made the shelf space for Coors and was ready for the beer.  Since we delivered cold product off refrigerated trucks, the beer went directly into the space.  In the first store by the time I had unloaded 10 cases in the box, and returned with another 10 cases, the box was empty!  The demand was so great that we could not keep the boxes full of Coors.

C-stores were the same, as we were putting Coors singles in the shelf from the back, they were pulled out before we could even fill the row up!  It was a beer distributors dream.

That first month we worked 6 days per week delivering and merchandising accounts.  It was not until several months after we introduces Coors that market share finally settled down at 13% share.  Even at that number we kept up Saturday merchandising for all the major chains.  It was expected by the retailer.

Fast forward to today and we see that almost every beer wholesaler has a merchandising department because without one, simply put, you are in trouble.  Retailers are not going to merchandise your product, especially when your competitor has merchandisers in their store.

A new merchandising intelligence company, Quri, which provides consumer level data on merchandising beer across thousands of stores during holiday periods recently provided information that during the period between the times of St. Pat’s day to Easter, nationally distributed beers had out of stocks (OOS) 25% of the time!

For Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, Guinness, Corona, and Stella, their on-shelf availability ranged from 77% to 92% during this time.  For every 2% of out of stocks, brands of this size can expect a 1% loss in sales.  In addition to these numbers, the survey reviled that more than half of these brands had no shelf price sticker.

Assuming that these numbers are true, would it not seem that the ABI or MC distributor would know about all of this?   Retailers would be either calling the distributor for merchandising or throwing out the distributors products.  With 25% OOS, one would think both ABI and MC would know?

If true, than the question is, do crafts have too much shelf space and are the cause of these OOS?  Either way, if these numbers are verified and continue, expect to see some major changes in merchandising in chains.  If the numbers are not represented of what is happening, Quri will have some explaining to do.  No one likes to run out of product, especially beer wholesalers.

Never let the other fellow set the agenda….

Beer Fodder;  http://www.criticalpast.com/video/656…


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