OUT THE BOX

NOW THAT’S A GOOD IDEA…COKE D2C WEBSITE

COKE JOINS THE D2C TREND

COKE IS THE LATEST COMPANY TO JOIN THE GROWING LIST OF MAJOR MANUFACTURERS SELLINGPRODUCTS DIRECT TO CONSUMERS, A TREND THAT COULD HAVE AN IMPACT ON LOCAL RETAILERSDOWN THE LINE.

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?

D2C. Or, to give it its full Sunday name, Direct To Consumer. Coke has just unveiled a new website called Your Coca-Cola where it’s selling a limited range of its products straight to consumers.

HOW DOES THAT WORK THEN?

Shoppers just order online as they would do via any other online retailing site. Their orders are then delivered direct to their door. There’s also free delivery on orders over £30 and the offer of a £5 credit for shoppers who ‘refer a friend’.

SO IT’S PARTIALLY A DATA PLAY?

You would have to assume so. Over time they would develop a database of customers and would be able to analyse their shopping patterns and habits, just the way Amazon does.

BUT IT CUTS OUT RETAILERS AND WHOLESALERS?

It does indeed. Although the range available is very limited and there’s a lot of glass bottles, which perhaps suggests that Coke might be offloading a lot of the on-trade stock they haven’t been able to shift during the pandemic with hospitality being closed.

IS IT NEW?

No, many major suppliers like Pernod Ricard do it, albeit usually on a very small scale. But don’t be surprised if it continues to grow in future. The benefits of D2C to suppliers are obvious: grow a database of customers they can talk directly to, reduce costs, more control over how the brand is presented and so on.

SHOULD RETAILERS BE WORRIED?

It’s probably unlikely to get to any sort of scale big enough to concern retailers any time soon – but it may be a sign of what’s to come in future.