Convenience Store Products and Grocery Store Products Are Not Created Equal
The path to growth for many manufacturers lies in their capability to get product placement at the best stores and in front of the best customers. In the world of Grocery, Convenience, and Specialty stores, accessibility is the chief concern.
While working with your distributors, brokerage partners, and retailers, your goal may be to get all of your products into all of the retailers. If you’re in all the stores, you automatically have a better chance of increasing sales, right?
Not always the case. With this strategy, you’ve probably encountered these two outcomes:
- The effort completely outweighs the result
- Most of your accounts won’t carry your products
So, what’s the underlying issue here?
Taking a step back from our product manufacturing view, we must understand the overlap between Grocery Store products that sell well and Convenience Store products that sell well isn’t as large as we hope.
Here are three reasons why you may be experiencing confusion and what you can do to find clarity.
1. Inherent Differences among Convenience Stores
It’s a popular thought that when you produce convenience store products, they need to be in every convenience store everywhere. This can prove both difficult and costly. While we may have a favorite C-store in mind, the reality is that regional differences, customer bases, and their respective product mixes vary wildly.
It’s not enough to have a great product suited for convenience stores; you now need to take into account which retailers and distributors make the most sense for my products. Conducting proper market research is well and good—having a partner who’s worked in the space and who can provide a detailed action plan for product placement based on competitor and market data is crucial. having relationships with distributors and big names in the space, however, is pivotal.
2. Limited C-Store Space Encourages Reliance on Winning Products
Convenience stores have less floor space than grocery stores. While this is old news, it does bring up a critical point: convenience stores are only concerned with winners. They’re not interested in giving up two feet of inventory space on a product you think may work. They want to see results.
Because of this limited space, C-stores are rather skittish about making any changes unless they’ve seen a solid history of product sales growth at a similar retailer. Numbers talk. It’s unlikely that many C-store retailers or distributors will choose to take chances on new products without assurances. And while sales reports are great, relationships with distributors and big names in the space are sometime more pivotal.
3. Customers Shop Differently at Convenience Stores
Take a second to think about how you browse grocery store products. Now, visualize how you browse convenience store products. While most of your trips to a grocery store include specific shopping lists and calculated trips down the aisles, your trips into convenience stores are haphazard, more or less.
These differences factor greatly into your products’ C-store sales. You may have a great product, but unless it’s merchandised correctly for convenience stores, your won’t see impress sales numbers. If your products aren’t catching customers’ attention, they’re very likely to stay on the shelf for a long time and ultimately be discontinued.
After learning which products play well in which markets, you still need to consider how you will brand and market your products to stand out against those well-known brands who’ve been holding shelf space for years.
Trust an Experienced C-Store Sales Agency to Take Your Product Sales to the Next Level
Wracking your mind and spending precious time trying to figure out which products will perform best in convenience stores may not be the best use of your time. You have products to optimize, teams to manage, and other leadership responsibilities. The Kelly Brand Management (KBM) team has a wealth of industry experience and has developed strong relationships with the right distributors and retailers to take the guesswork out of convenience store sales strategies.
To find out more about if the KBM team is the right fit for your business, reach out to us for a free consultation. We’re ready to start the conversation.
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