Spotlight

SalesOut IRi

Marcus Vallance, head of wholesale & foodservice, SalesOut IRi

BWI: How has SalesOut helped wholesalers grow sales in the past 12 months?

MV: Through our deep relationships with our current wholesale partners, we help to identify the parts of business where the headroom for growth is greatest, or those parts of the business where additional assistance may be needed. To do this, we use the technology and experience of data analytics and AI to focus on range, pricing and promotional planning. Providing wholesalers with access to the breadth and range of knowledge that we can offer, in easily accessible formats, enables them to use this data and share it within their business, ensuring they go on to make betterinformed decisions.

FAST FACT

Over half of customers surveyed have changed where they buy their groceries in the past three months

This equates to 86% of students, an opportunity for wholesalers to help customers pick up additional spend through brands younger shoppers trust

What is the greatest challenge that September 2019. Alcohol in particular the wholesale industry faces? saw the biggest drop in the channel, but Inflation is the obvious answer here, saw the largest spike in retail – indiwith our wholesale inflation tracker cating customer switching that has still indicating it won’t be slowing down not yet returned to pre-Covid-19 times. anytime soon unfortunately. As ever, Impulse categories have seen a hefty it will take wholesalers, suppliers 50% decline in foodservice. and partners working together to react nimbly and What trends and oppormake the best decisions tunities are emerging in a rapidly changing market. Covid-19’s Get in touch to find out how your customers’ priorities that customers can take advantage of? impact is also still a big are shifting* UK shoppers are challenge for wholesal- making significant and ers, particularly in food- rapidly evolving changes service. The sector may to buying habits in reaction have made a strong recovery to the cost inflation challenge. since the low of the first UK lockdown, Recent research has shown how but total foodservice buying customer shoppers are changing their behavnumbers in July this year were nearly iours with half of consumers surveyed 900,000 short of what was recorded in revealing they had changed where they buy their groceries in the past three months – this increased to 65% when looking at under-24s specifically, and 86% of students. Our ability to make data and insight more visible and accessible allows wholesalers to look ahead and spot opportunities off the back of trends to allow them to expand own label ranges. For example, to meet a specific price for retailers catering to this younger audience.

What is SalesOut’s greatest achievement in the past year?

It’s great to see our wholesale partners gain so much from the services we supply and one of our greatest achievements this year is the work we have done with Blakemore. We have been working with them for several years, which has led to us supporting them on their promotion strategy. We were able to work with Blakemore to demonstrate how to benchmark price elasticity at SKU level and help them understand what the best promotional mechanic was. It’s always satisfying for us to see the positive results our wholesale partners can gain and the added value they can receive when using these resources.

What advice would you give wholesalers looking to grow sales?

We are helping our wholesalers continually drive the data agenda and move together from the initial data sharing to the next stage of data-informed decisions for forecasting, range, price analysis and media driven marketing to drive the purchasing of the right products for the outlet.

Data can fuel an empowering conversation when you have it all at your fingertips and everyone is aligned. The businesses that succeed in the future will be those that have visibility right through from the wholesaler to the consumer, and that will be enabled by through-the-line forecasting. l

*salesout.co.uk/salesout-book-a-call All research was carried out by SalesOut