Introduction

Retailer presentations typically focus on two main objectives: introducing a brand’s new items onto the shelf or expanding the current assortment with additional items from the same brand. When preparing for a pitch, it’s essential to understand the buyer’s goals for the year or category and ensure your brand aligns with their objectives to create a win-win scenario.

Understanding the Audience

A retail buyer is a professional responsible for planning, managing, and selecting goods to be sold in retail stores. Their goal is to ensure their company remains competitive. They might hold various titles, such as buyer, category manager, or forager, each with specific responsibilities and varying degrees of data knowledge. These individuals are primarily concerned with the performance of their store section.

Remember, they are very busy and have hundreds of vendors contacting them. Don’t waste their time, and make sure you get their attention!

Retailer Presentations for New Brands

New brands approaching retailers for the first or second time focus on increasing their distribution. Often, these products are new to the market and may lack competitive retail sales data. However, there are several elements new brands can present to strengthen their case:

1. Problem/Solution: Entrepreneurs should identify a significant problem their brand aims to solve. They must highlight the existing imperfect solutions and demonstrate how their brand offers a superior solution.

• Example: If a brand produces a beverage that uses all-natural sweeteners to cater to health-conscious consumers, the entrepreneur should highlight the demand for healthier alternatives and how their product fills this gap better than existing sugar-laden options.

2. Origin Story: This is the narrative of what inspired the entrepreneur to embark on their journey.

• Example: Sharing a personal story about how the founder struggled to find healthy snacks for their children, leading them to create a nutritious snack brand can be compelling.

3. Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Communicate what sets your product apart from others and how this differentiation is conveyed to the consumer.

• Example: A skincare brand might emphasize its use of rare botanical ingredients sourced from sustainable farms, which benefits the skin and supports environmental conservation.

4. The Team: Introduce the key personnel responsible for realizing the brand’s vision and their qualifications.

• Example: Highlighting team members with extensive experience in the food and beverage industry and previous successes in launching successful products.

5. Marketing & Store Support Plan: Outline the strategies for supporting the product launch and rollout, including demos, free fills, marketing promotions, and swag.

• Example: Propose a series of in-store tasting events combined with social media campaigns and influencer partnerships to boost brand awareness and drive initial sales.

In addition to these qualitative elements, new brands should also present quantitative data to back up their pitch. This can include market-level syndicated data showing the potential impact of the brand on the market.

Retailer Presentations for Incumbent Brands

Incumbent brands, which have already established themselves on the retailer’s shelves, focus on maintaining and expanding their presence. These brands closely monitor competitors’ pricing, promotion, and marketing strategies, adjusting their trade spend to optimize lift percentages and drive trial to their brand.

1. Price Promotion: Analyze competitors’ sales and velocity growth, review their promotions, and identify the most effective strategies.

• Example: If a competitor saw a significant sales lift from a 20% discount promotion, consider implementing a similar strategy, potentially timed to precede the competitor’s next anticipated promotion.

2. Trade Marketing: Utilize trade promotion tools to enhance brand presence and drive sales.

• Example: Developing a loyalty program for retailers that incentivizes them to promote your product more prominently in-store.

3. Lift for Promotion: Determine the optimal timing and depth of discounts to maximize promotional effectiveness.

• Example: Analyzing past promotional performance data to identify the most effective discount rates and promotional periods, such as offering a higher discount right before peak shopping seasons.

By leveraging retailer or market-level syndicated data, incumbent brands can make informed decisions about their promotional plans and ensure they are effectively targeting their competition.

Retailer Presentations for Mature Brands

Mature brands aim to defend their shelf space by using pricing, velocity, or new item introductions to maintain or gain market share. These brands often have long-standing relationships with buyers and category managers, which they leverage to advocate for additional SKUs.

1. Continued Innovation: Introduce new items to replace underperforming ones and suggest a list of deletes based on item velocity.

• Example: Propose launching a new flavor variant of a best-selling product to maintain consumer interest and replace slower-moving items.

2. Velocity Quintiles: Use this method to rank items by velocity, identifying top, middle, and bottom performers. This analysis helps in making decisions about product assortment and shelf space allocation.

• Example: Present a report showing that your brand’s top-performing items consistently rank in the top quintile, justifying their continued presence and potential expansion on the shelf.

Mature brands must demonstrate their products’ market fit, ensuring their value proposition is clear and compelling. They should also provide data to show how their products align with the retailer’s customer base and overall category performance.

Building Long-Lasting Relationships

Working with retailers involves building intimate, long-standing relationships, especially in the early stages. Maintaining these relationships is crucial even as the brand grows and expands into new markets. Retailers are more likely to support brands that have a clear value proposition and can demonstrate their potential to drive category growth.

This narrative provides a comprehensive overview of the essential elements needed for successful retailer presentations tailored to the brand’s stage in the market. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the audience, presenting a strong value proposition, and building long-lasting relationships with retailers.

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