It’s no secret that the private label market is evolving rapidly and picking up steam in the U.S. In fact, customers recently ranked Trader Joe’s and Aldi in the top five for favorite grocery stores[1]. Additionally, the launch of Lidl in the U.S. market in 2017 puts added pressure on U.S. consumer goods companies and grocery retailers to control their costs whilst reducing prices in order to remain competitive.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market may set a new standard for online grocery and force traditional retailers to leverage ‘e’ strategies. In response, more and more retailers are using private label to enhance their overall brand image and differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive landscape.
In addition, the pressure to reduce the product development lifecycle process has become more important than ever. To keep up with the ever-changing marketplace, private label partners must be able to identify opportunities and risk more quickly by translating relevant, often fragmented data into meaningful, actionable insights.
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Consumer goods companies require supplier agility and speed to market to promptly create unique, innovative products that distinguish their brands. This has forced an evolution of strategy, to balance quick ‘me-too’ developed products with slower, but more innovative premium brands. Competition now takes place between supply chains, not individual companies. This means that retailers and suppliers can no longer work in silos. They must work closely together as strategic partners to deliver innovative products, improve the customer experience and optimize the efficiency of the supply chain.
Innovation Through Collaboration And Insight
Developing and evolving a trusted partner network can save retail professionals time and effort by helping them gather relevant market knowledge, build relationships, and share company and product data. From product brief to product launch, including product specification and packaging, an established network can enable retailers to seamlessly communicate with manufacturers throughout the entire product lifecycle.
Executives also require actionable insights based on accurate data to monitor, track and achieve private label strategy and objectives. It is important that insight is delivered to a user based on their specific role and the frequency they require, in order to make correct and fact-based business decisions. Once this information is received, the user can then conduct further analysis, understand priorities and take the required action. By unifying data scattered across their organization, business teams can connect the dots, and discover new ways to accelerate product development and innovation to serve customers better.
The benefits of effective collaboration impact every aspect of a business and ultimately, saves valuable time. Through collaboration, retail companies can improve their speed to market and cost management and mitigate key business risks. Collaboration also can increase efficiency in the event of crisis management, such as a product recall, while eliminating the costs and inefficiencies of food waste.
Profiting With A Private Label Management Solution
The greatest successes in private label come when colleagues and partners work closely together to address external trends and deliver what customers want. private label management solutions can help unify and coordinate these efforts, and boost private label performance.
More than ever, retailers and suppliers need a common platform for private label, which combines a proven solution, efficient processes, empowered workers and engaged partners. Leveraging a single source of integrated private label information can help users save time and effort. Decision makers can gain superior visibility into private label processes through high-level dashboards, meaningful analysis and benchmarks. Sourcing teams can negotiate better by measuring supplier performance and component costs, and quality teams can mitigate risk by quickly pinpointing and correcting supply chain bottlenecks.
Collaboration Is Key To Private Label Success
The retail sector is more competitive and complex than ever, and retailers and suppliers around the world need new ways to adapt. Therefore, it’s critical for retail companies to collaborate more efficiently to save time and effort. Effective collaboration results in huge productivity gains from product brief to product launch, enabling all stakeholders to share meaningful data insights, adapt quickly to a changing market and make better business decisions.
Suppliers are product masters with deep expertise about their portfolio, while retailers are brand masters with direct lines to their customers. By working together more efficiently, they can serve customers better and earn their trust with successful, unique private label products.
Shaun Bossons has been Chief Revenue Officer for Trace One since 2016 and before that served as Executive Vice President of Global Sales. He is a thought leader in the areas of private label management, category management and consumer loyalty for the retail landscape. Bossons has a deep background in retail optimization and collaboration, having worked in the industry for over 20 years in a number of executive leadership roles. During this time he has created, evolved and executed sales, marketing and partner strategies for a number of global market-leading solution providers. Previously, Bossons served as the Head of Apollo at Aldata Solution Oyj and as a key contributor to its Member of Management Council since 2009. Prior to that he served as Global Senior Vice President of Apollo Solutions Group at Information Resources, Inc. (formerly SymphonyIRI Group, Inc.) and had growth, development and management responsibilities for the IRI Apollo space management platform of retail optimization solutions.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/marciaturner/2018/01/18/publix-and-wegmans-named-americas-favorite-grocery-stores
