Espresso: How To ABSOLUTELY SMASH Your Buyer Meeting - Harry Clarke

0:06I interviewed Rory Sutherland and he talked about the restaurant graveyard yard uh like this theory about the restaurant graveyard it's that you you always hear about all the great restaurants that make it but you never hear about the thousands of restaurants that didn't make it so you're like oh i'm gonna launch a burrito business or i'm gonna launch the next franco manca you hear about all these businesses that like the franco mancas that have taken off but you don't hear about the fucking graveyard of businesses that that didn't make it and actually it's it's the same in fmcg and i've interviewed a lot of brands that have said great like, and to be honest, I've been shouting about this as well, about create a category of one, create a category of one, create a category where there's no competition.

0:45For example, Moju Shots is a great example of that. Moth RTD drinks, great example of that. And I'm like, and it can be a beautiful blessing in that there's no path. You kind of have carte blanche on how you pitch it to the retailers. But, and that there's a huge opportunity for huge white swan growth. but at the same time there's there's brands like yourself where it's like oh my god i wish there was some sort of of trodden path and i think this is why i love doing these conversations is you learn so much live it's like yeah well yeah you can create a category of one but actually it's quite good having a steer of of how things are done what yeah yeah i love the idea like pitching to these retailers what was the pitch to say right you haven't got a champagne isolate a pims isolate but you need one like how did you show them they needed something that they didn't know they needed i love that i always love asking that well well funnily enough i think there's there's an interesting point here which is the the sort of weird and wacky and innovation like we sort of had in some ways that was a really easy way to get a meeting because we were sort of so out there on at that point there wasn't something like that in the market so we actually never we didn't have a huge issue getting meetings because people saw it it wasn't just another another of something you know um something that um you know had a slightly different ingredient profile or slightly different um makeup of some sort so so in terms of unlocking some initial sort of meetings we were um we were pretty good at that actually um i think i think naturally and you know this is where you know sort of work with brands now i think i think once we got into that room we probably bogged it up um quite quite sort of aggressively um not bogged it up i think we did the same thing that every up what does that mean so bogged it up like you know messed it up you know so sort of when we got in the room our pitch wasn't probably amazing um and and i think i think what we did which i see so many founders do at the moment or lots is a sort of common sort of founder mistake is they get that meeting with tescos and they go in there and we just talked about the brand for an hour so we just walked in there and talked about how lovely our brand was how lovely our packaging was look at all the events we've attended um look at some of these influencers we've worked with all that stuff and you know you know we you know that that whole thing sort of needs to be reframed which is sort of in my view you're spending probably about 10-15 minutes on the brand and a lot more time on the category opportunity and how you can help them grow the category and and all those bits um so So we sort of, but the one bit where we always did perk up the interest was on the point of incrementality.

3:25Because, you know, there really wasn't anything like us in the freezer at that point. We were sort of significant, at the beginning we were quite considerably more expensive than anything else in the freezer. So, you know, we had a quite good story to tell, which is therefore if we can get people to trade up from something like, So we sat in the adult refreshment category. So other brands in that would have been the likes of Solero, probably being a mainstream player in that space, the adult monies. So we could trade people up by a couple of pounds to buy something with sort of alcohol based to it.

4:04And it was a sort of a new occasion for consumers. We had quite a compelling pitch to sell into the retailers. And actually, after we launched our brands, we were able to secure listings in supermarkets. They weren't always plain sailing. One of the challenges that we had was around positioning. So the alcohol lollies that we had were all between 4 % and 4.5%. So from a legal perspective, you had to be 18 and over to consume a product like ours. And although there's no sort of clear-cut, hard-and-fast rule in terms of from a positioning perspective um some of the retailers were um um they they they were they were wary of putting our products next to near in the same freezer as where a kid might consume their product so we we often had challenges in terms of um in terms of positioning and just sort of would they be comfortable putting something with alcohol in the same sort of freezer bay as something like a clipper um and that was that was often a challenge that we sort of got back it wasn't necessarily um something that all the retailers because we work with lots of retailers and lots of retailers ended up doing um own label versions of our products and and did it so but it was a common sort of feedback that we got we'll get on to that and i want to unpack and i always fucking say that word but like i want to unpack that because that's a whole uh wild delicious kind of territory to explore is is once you're actually in the supermarket there's a whole game of chess into into into where you actually put position yourself in store um because that that can make or break a listing and you know i see so many of these drinks brands that go in but it's like a four pack in the back of the store and it's like it's never gonna fucking work do you know what i mean um but you but what you said is you said i bogged it bogged it up um got the meeting bogged it up there'll be a lot of people listening to this who will have a meeting with a sainsbury's waitrose a j j s and a cardo next week say say they're going to go in there and they're going to just slather on the brand which everyone's great at what are the things they must land to to demonstrate the category opportunity and i know it's category specific and brand specific but what are some of the three to four things they should have in their deck so that so they don't fuck it up so i so i think and i just want to sort of reassure you know the brand is super powerful and you know it's in a way to emotionally you know to emotionally connect also with the buyer and i think at an early stage sort of connecting with buyers and people emotionally is a sort of superpower that bigger brands don't have so i just want to sort of caveat that point you know don't just walk in there and don't talk about your brand just just manage that carefully because it's it's a very sort of easy thing for people just to keep going on about because it's quite personal going back to your question about the three sort of four things i think i think you've obviously lots of people talk about data and insight and i think that is really that is useful to have you you need to have an understanding of what's performing well in the category and what is the tail of a category so the tail being this sort of you know the bottom of the category that's not performing that's not adding growth to the category you know so i think you know one of the challenges for brands is some of that data is quite expensive um so they might think okay so where where do we sort of get that data from um i think if you can afford to get data data's always got to be in there and you've got to have an understanding of what's performing what's not performing because that's what the buyer when they're sitting on the other side often on their laptop that's sort of what they're looking at they're going to be looking at the percentage of growth and decline and what's in that category that's in growth and that's in in decline i think i think also what what What I always like to do when speaking to the buyers is really, you know, again, looking at like, you know, I often go in and I very much like I like to really know what's on the shelf.

8:00So I know what's if I've got me to a car, I pretty much know top to bottom what's on that shelf. And actually, I'd always go in there and take a picture of it. And I'd also then even if it's in a little bit of drawings, I start to map out everything in that category. So what sort of subcategory does everything sort of fall into in that category? And then when you can do that, you can even quickly, even if you're a challenger brand, see whether over-indexing and under-indexing on things. Quick one, guys. Espresso's got a brand new sponsor, Unleashed. Unleashed is inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software.

8:37We use Unleashed daily at Ireland's. I bloody love it. We've got our admin time in half, saving approximately 30k a year. Why use it? Save money, save headaches, save stress. get granular clarity on your margins know where your stock is, don't miss availability look, your favourite brands literally use Unleashed as their backbone, Candy Kittens Tiny Rebel, Trip, all use it religiously look, there's a link in the show notes please feel free to book a call with Josh he's a wonderful sales team at Unleashed they're amazing, even nothing comes of it and even better news, you'll get your first month free if you reference Hungary thank you sorry for sounding like a Luddite but yeah please explain if we maybe maybe let's pick an example of of this yeah what do you mean by over indexing and under indexing and the subcategories i don't maybe yeah i'll let you pick a category maybe ice cream or whatever yeah okay fine so so if we're sitting in in the ice cream category for instance um you're we're going to be looking at the bay of the ice cream category um so if we sort of um look at sort of the sort of tub 500 um so the 500 gram sort of tub sort of area um you know within that range they will have some of their core products so you're always going to have your ben and jerry's you're going to sort of have your hagen dars in sort of 500 mil tubs then then you're also at the bottom you're probably going to have some of your one and two liters like kelly's ice cream some of the bigger formats in there then you're probably you're going to have some of your sort of lower calorie and vegan products so they as a sort of planogram so the planogram being how they position everything in the freezer or fridge or the fixture just by looking at that fixture you can you'll be able to see what they've got a lot of in that fixture so when i say over index i mean what what have they got in that fixture um that is taking up perhaps the majority of that bay um so in the ice cream um scenario you know it might be a brand but it also might be a flavor so for instance you know they might have you know two three bays and shelves of ben and jerry's but then they might have a lot of hagen darts but then across that they probably got loads of vanillas in there so you can take take quite as a key argument them and say fine vanilla is a core flavor within the ice cream category but do you really need six different vanilla skews in there would tell me how that is gonna then be driving that incrementality when you've got you know you've got six vanilla flavors um you know some of them might be from big well-known established brands um and some of them might be from smaller brands and that can help but you know and just being open and honest with those bars and asking them those questions can you explain to me why you need six manila ice cream variants in your category and i'm bringing you something new and different um and trying to push those sorts of questions over to them in a sort of clearly visual perspective i think always helps love that just for listeners why is incrementality so important and like what's your definition of it because i even asked chris d that's the founder of well not the founder he's the founder of um maltzac which is a whiskey company but he was the old ceo of booths and he was the director of food at harrods yeah but in your opinion mate like why do you think why do buyers actually give a fuck about why do they care about incrementality so much well because you know unless it's an online retailer they're not getting any more space right the shelf isn't getting bigger so you know they need everything in that in the fixture and space that they've got they need everything to be performing at its absolute maximum so if someone can go into that category and but not let's use ice cream because we're talking about it now someone goes in and buys a vanilla ice cream a tub of vanilla ice cream but they also end up coming out of that purchasing um that purchasing moment and they've got a pack of pops you know that is just that's just adding more top line and there's no other equivalent within that category so all it's it's just adding that two three four pounds on top of that purchase above um and and and that's not what they that they need they just can't have any sort of they're having element any element of trading off and it's just not going to grow the basket spend or grow the spend in the category and and i suppose if retailers are so competitive against other retailers so if they can be the brand that's got the new sorry if they can be the retailer that's got the new brand they want that that small one percent difference when they've when the volumes are so massive it's huge i think that this is the way you've detailed that is beautiful mate and i think that's that's the roaring success of little moons back to the point of you know such little moons is the perfect example of they were so so different they were 90 different but there was still a 10 trodden path and that they were ice cream whereas i think you guys were so different but you may have only had that one percent of trodden path one and two you were so young you were like 23 whereas i know live and howard like this when they went into retail they would they'd already built a massive business in uh food service uh so they they had that kind of safety net so i think there's there's real interest in that it's like be different but not so different and that's one thing that uh one thing that juliet barrett said is be different but not so fucking different than no one knows who you are i think it's it's a it's an art not science um and then to your point about to your point about like showing the category opportunity when you're in the meeting that is fascinating and that's something i toy with all the time because james bailey the ceo of waitress came on the podcast and said go for the hearts not the heads and i genuinely believe people make decisions with their hearts and justify with their heads so i think what what teasing this out and you know pulling at the weed series is like if you could maybe get to 60 to 70 percent hearts which is brand, brand, brand, slather on that brand.

15:00But if you get that 30 % of this is like, okay, this is what's in it for you. This is the opportunity for the retailer. Then it's like, well, not game, set, match, pass me the oranges, but you're well on your way. And I think there's so much in that. So I want to talk about... Yeah, I also think, you know, I think we've also just got to be, you know, the sort of buying landscape, I think, has changed massively over the last sort of, certainly like the last two, three years in terms of, we don't need to go into all the details, but everything that's happening in the sort of the wider market. So I think these, and I'm not disagreeing with the point that you made in terms of getting the percentages right, but I just think buyers are being so much more calculated in terms of the decisions that they're making.

15:50So I think it's just sort of those necessary, very like if they were going to potentially make something a punt and we said punt which is more sort of um you know the heart side i just think those decisions are sort of more considered at the moment so um they're just trying to find that right right balance well yeah you're you're you're closer to me than me mate you're selling for way more brands so so when you say the buyers the landscape slightly changed yeah over the last two three years which it kind of well it objectively has yeah why when you say buyers are being more calculated calculative to whatever what do you mean by that so again at the moment you know it depends it looks at you know let's think about um you know in terms of where we are from an economic economic perspective um you know we've got you know inflation we've got inflationary pressures through the market um they're dealing with you know they're dealing with a lot of price increases um that are being sort of put through put through especially from some of the bigger players so you know lots of the sort of the procter and gambles the unilevers the diageos you know there's price increases going through the market um so there's then also naturally um lots of sort of ongoing sort of um joint business plan conversations that i believe are taking sort of longer but i just think um these sort of negotiation processes um or or more i should frame it in terms of the opportunity that challenges i think brands have in terms of getting the attention of the buyers is getting a bit smaller um because they're sort of they're preoccupied by some of you know the larger multinationals that are delivering you know significantly the larger bulk of their spend they've got they've they're putting through price increases they're sort of having pressure so that's where the focus is going to and and of course there's there's lots of noise about challenge challenger brands and they're you know through the work that we're all doing but um in terms of and and and in terms of like you know great things like you know future brands the aquare and co-op you know there's lots of sort of good accelerators but that is sort of helping thank you so so much for listening it honestly means the world to me i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day let's be having ya if you want the fun episode it will be in the show notes a link will be in the show notes the full episode thank you so much please leave friends as well means the world to me