Hi All,
Thanks for reading, I’m looking for some advise / ideas on reaching our end customers...
Background:
Our family business (me and my Dad) sell ingredients to (mainly) Chinese takeaways through Chinese supermarkets and wholesalers. My grandad developed a product (ingredient) for this market in the 60’s which really took off and is used in almost every Chinese takeaway in the UK now. However in the 80’s recession he lost the business and sold the product to a large company who are selling it now with an eye-watering margin.
We’ve launched our own brand of this product which is selling ok, we have distributor in Europe and sales in the UK are slowly growing but we’re nowhere near where we aimed to be.
The situation:
The market leader has a loyal following, it is perceived to be the best quality in the market.
Now there are also multiple cheap products which are lower quality.
Our product offers the same quality as the market leader but as a much lower cost (because we don’t have a large company infrastructure to maintain).
However we’re finding it hard to get new wholesalers to take it and grow as much as we’d like because we’re not the market leader or the cheapest.
We have a strong brand, a strong product and I can see our position in the market, the hard part is telling the market and influencing them to try us.
Plan so far:
I’m thinking that we need a push / pull strategy; push the product to wholesalers and try to get Chinese takeaways to pull (request) the product.
Push: I think this’ll just be a case of me talking to and trying to influence wholesalers to try our product and see if it sells, so direct selling mainly.
Pull: This is where I’m really stuck. How to reach thousands of businesses without a sales team. Somehow I need to tell them that we can save them money without having to sacrifice quality of their meals. I’m sure it’s a message they’ll want to hear if I can just work out how to tell them.
I know how many takeaways there are in each county of the UK so I can target geographically, I need to find a way to reach them as efficiently as possible (it’ll just be me doing this). The communication tools I’ve thought of so far are: calling, media ads, social media, direct mail & samples (expensive).
Is there anyone on there that has experience of the foodservice industry, takeaways etc or some creative ideas on how to reach these businesses?
Thanks so much!
Thanks for reading, I’m looking for some advise / ideas on reaching our end customers...
Background:
Our family business (me and my Dad) sell ingredients to (mainly) Chinese takeaways through Chinese supermarkets and wholesalers. My grandad developed a product (ingredient) for this market in the 60’s which really took off and is used in almost every Chinese takeaway in the UK now. However in the 80’s recession he lost the business and sold the product to a large company who are selling it now with an eye-watering margin.
We’ve launched our own brand of this product which is selling ok, we have distributor in Europe and sales in the UK are slowly growing but we’re nowhere near where we aimed to be.
The situation:
The market leader has a loyal following, it is perceived to be the best quality in the market.
Now there are also multiple cheap products which are lower quality.
Our product offers the same quality as the market leader but as a much lower cost (because we don’t have a large company infrastructure to maintain).
However we’re finding it hard to get new wholesalers to take it and grow as much as we’d like because we’re not the market leader or the cheapest.
We have a strong brand, a strong product and I can see our position in the market, the hard part is telling the market and influencing them to try us.
Plan so far:
I’m thinking that we need a push / pull strategy; push the product to wholesalers and try to get Chinese takeaways to pull (request) the product.
Push: I think this’ll just be a case of me talking to and trying to influence wholesalers to try our product and see if it sells, so direct selling mainly.
Pull: This is where I’m really stuck. How to reach thousands of businesses without a sales team. Somehow I need to tell them that we can save them money without having to sacrifice quality of their meals. I’m sure it’s a message they’ll want to hear if I can just work out how to tell them.
I know how many takeaways there are in each county of the UK so I can target geographically, I need to find a way to reach them as efficiently as possible (it’ll just be me doing this). The communication tools I’ve thought of so far are: calling, media ads, social media, direct mail & samples (expensive).
Is there anyone on there that has experience of the foodservice industry, takeaways etc or some creative ideas on how to reach these businesses?
Thanks so much!
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