If we were to look at phrases that have cropped up during the recent recessionary times in the consumer goods sector, “private label” has to be among those at the top of the list.

From clothing to cereals, toothpaste to televisions, there is hardly a category that has not seen retailers trying their hand at creating own labelled products.

The first motivation for most retailers to move into private label is margin. On first analysis, it appears that the branded suppliers are making tons of extra money by being out there in front of the consumer with a specific named product. The retailer finds that creating an alternative product under its own label allows it to capture extra gross margin. Typically the product category picked at the earliest stage of private label development would be one for which several generic or commodity suppliers are available.

At this early stage, the retailer is aiming for a relatively predictable, stable-demand and easily available product whose sales would be driven by the footfall that is already attracted into the store. A powerful bait to attract the customer is the visible reduction in price, as compared to a similar branded product. If the product can be compared like-for-like, customers would certainly convert to private label over time.

However, maintaining prices lower than brands can also be counter-productive. In many products, while customers might not be able to discern any qualitative difference, they may suspect that they are not getting a product comparable to one from a national or international brand. And while private label can drive off-take, the price differential can also erode gross margin which was the reason that the retailer may have got into private label in the first place. Over time, such a strategy can prove difficult to sustain, as costs of developing, sourcing and managing private label products move up.

The other strong reason a retailer chooses to have private label is to create a product offering that is differentiated from competitors who also offer brands that are similar or identical to the ones offered by the retailer. Department stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets around the world have all tried this approach – some have been more successful than others. The idea is to provide a customer strong reasons to visit their particular store, rather than any of the comparable competitors.

Of course, when differentiation is the operating factor, the products need more insight and development, and closer handling by the retailer at all stages. A price-driven private label line may be sourced from generic suppliers, but that approach isn’t good enough for a line driven by a differentiation strategy. In this case, costs of product development and management increase for the retailer. However, to compensate, the discount from a comparable national brand is not as high as generic nascent private label. In fact, some retailers have taken their private label to compete head on with national brands – they treat their private labels as respectfully as a national branded supplier would treat its brand.

So what does it take to go from a “copycat” to being a real brand?

Third Eyesight has evolved a Private Label Maturity Model (see the accompanying graphic) that can help retailers think through their approach to private label, whether their product offering is dominated by private label, or whether they have only just begun considering the possibility of including private label in their product range. The model sketches out a maturity path on five parameters that are affected by or influence the strength of a retailer’s private label offering:

• consumer knowledge and insight
• product design and quality
• pricing
• promotion
• supply chain & sourcing

(Click here for a larger image)

In some cases, retailers may have multiple labels, some of which may be quite nascent while others might be highly evolved, clear and comparable to a national brand. This could be by default, because the labels have been launched at different times and have had more or less time to evolve. However, this can also be used as a conscious strategy to target various segments and competitive brands differently, depending on the strength of the competition and their relationship with the consumer.

The interesting thing is that size and scale do not offer any specific advantage to becoming a more sophisticated private label player. Some extremely large retailers continue to follow a discounted-price “me-too” private label strategy where even the packaging and colours of the product are copied from national brands, while much smaller players demonstrate capabilities to understand their specific consumers’ needs to design, source and promote proprietary products that compare with the best brands in the market.

For a moment, let’s also look at private labels from the suppliers’ point of view. As far as we can see, private label seems to be here to stay and grow. Suppliers can treat private labels as a threat, and figure out how to ensure that they retain a certain visibility and relationship with the consumer. On the other hand, interestingly, some suppliers are also looking at private label as an opportunity. They see the growth of private label as inevitable, and would much rather collaborate in the retailer’s private label development efforts. This way they can maintain some kind of influence on the product development, possibly avoid direct head-on conflict with their own star branded products and, if everything else fails, at least grab a share of the market that would have otherwise gone over to generic suppliers.

If you are retailer, I would suggest using the Private Label Maturity Model to clarify where you want to position yourself, and continue to use it as a guide as you develop and deliver your private label offering.

If you are a supplier concerned about private label, my suggestion would be to gauge how developed your customer is and is likely to become, and ensure that you are at least in step, if not a step ahead.

Of course, if you need support, we’ll only be too happy to help! (Contact Third Eyesight to discuss your private label needs.)

Retailwire.com prompted a discussion on what, if anything, should grocers and other stores be doing to accommodate the growth in stay-at-home dads?According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the recession is putting more men out of work than women, which has led to an increase of stay-at-home dads who are increasingly taking on the traditional women’s roles of childcare, housework, school life, and shopping.

Here’s my contribution to the Dad wishlist: salespeople who don’t look down their noses when asked a (“stupid”) question Mom would never have dreamt of asking. (Also, considering this is the gender that apparently never stops to ask for directions, please treat the question as close to a life-or-death emergency.)

Delhaize and Unilever may not yet have felt the need to visit a relationship counseler, and of course, the jury’s still out on who (if anyone) will actually win in their battle.

For now, Unilever has lost shelf-space for around 300 of its brands at Delhaize stores.

Delhaize may potentially lose some of the sales that those brands got for it, in case consumers want a specific brand rather than a private label or a substitute brand.

The consumers lose not just in terms of their choice being reduced, but perhaps also in becoming confused about the specific value / benefits of competing products when the certainty of their customary brands is removed. Remember, brand loyalty is built on the predictability of a repeated experience over a period of time. If  you remove that factor from the purchase, each purchase becomes an experiment again, until a similar predictability is found.

(For those who missed the previous post, you can read it here.)

Referencing this battle, reactions to a discussion in at least one online poll on www.retailwire.com seem to favour retailers, or equally blame both retailers and suppliers. Only about a quarter of the respondents felt that retailers were not being fair. Considering that the respondent universe comprised of professionals from retail companies, suppliers as well as service providers, this seems to be a surprising result. Or perhaps not? Perhaps brands are no longer delivering a significant value to be able to command a premium over private label?

Some of the reactions from that discussion are reproduced below with permission from Retailwire.

 

• It’s hard for me to feel for both retailers and vendors when they obviously do what’s best for themselves, regardless of the long-term impact. In this case though, I would tell Unilever to go aggressive and pull all their lines from Delhaize. Then up the marketing of these lines with a cooperative marketing program involving the other retailers. Let Delhaize try to survive with shelves full of private label products and see how long they last. (Marc Gordon, President, Fourword Marketing)

• First, you seem to be talking more about Europe than the U.S. and that’s a different animal. However, given the universality of the question, I’d say first that the best and worst of people and companies come out during hard times. The best redouble their efforts to build meaningful long-term relationships with their trading partners. Unfortunately, it seems that most are simply trying to squeeze an extra penny or two out of the other. To your specific question–No! CPG companies are only starting to rationalize their portfolios. There are still way too many products out there simply for the sake of putting their name out there–not because the product moves. Some manufacturers are starting to cut back on their lines, but I suspect much more is needed. As to developing private label, what do you expect? Retailers have been copycating for years. But I think consumers have gotten wise to the fact that just because it looks like a brand doesn’t mean it has the same quality. And to any retailer who can’t do any more than copy, shame on them! (Len Lewis, President, Lewis Communications, Inc.)

• Fast moving consumer goods companies still need to rationalize brand portfolios in many cases, as so many retailers are finding higher profits in reduced SKU counts, without losing shopper loyalty. Depending on how this shakes out with specific retailer strategies over time, this may or may not make room for more local brands and niche players in some instances. Private label is a whole different animal today than it was even four or five years ago. The top tiers are not just inferior substitutes for national brands; they are national brand equivalents (or better) and widely recognized as such by consumers who are switching, and are not likely to come back. As for retailers copycatting, that’s always been a factor. Sometimes retailer behavior is outrageous, but there are laws protecting trade dress, etc., and branded manufacturers frequently litigate, and win. (Warren Thayer, Editor, Refrigerated & Frozen Foods Retailer, BNP Media)

• There is significant brand proliferation in FMCG. Think about cereal, ketchup, salad dressing or the myriad of other categories that have duplication on top of duplication. I led an industry-wide study that proved retailers could remove 12 – 18 percent of the actual SKUs from a given category (almost across the board) and not lose sales–in fact retailers will grow their sales (by unit volume and revenue). Consumers want true variety and differentiation – not the same thing in the same size. How many red ketchups in the 24oz bottle do you really need on the shelf? In many cases, there should be a couple of national brands and the store brands.
  The study also showed that the very large marketing dollars thrown at retailers to help promote products are in many cases not enough to cover all of the downstream costs and activities retailers engage in to accommodate duplication of brands. The inventory carrying costs alone are staggering. The FMCG companies will not want to hear this, but without fail, we found that there is too much duplication and with careful consumers, retailers should make sure they are offering the very best solutions for their customers while maximizing profits and opportunities. (Kevin Sterneckert, Research Director, Retail, AMR Research)

• How many shoppers (in the US, anyway) would drive out of their way to get Unilever soap? Probably not too many. Price, proximity and shopping habits are stronger than most CPG loyalty. Higher ticket items, like durables, and higher involvement categories like skin care, have more resilience. Retailers are understandably using the recession as a catalyst to drive sales of private label. Are they playing fair? Well, no.  Manufacturers are over a barrel, giving as much information as they can in order to stay in good standing with retailers. Further, some retailers have even used promotions that pull on national brand strength to promote private label. Publix Supermarkets ran a Buy-One-Get-One, where shoppers could buy a national brand (Thomas’s English Muffins) and get the Publix private label brand free. This drove trial – and presumably–conversion to their brand. No, they aren’t playing fair. The question for national brands is how to stay relevant and on shelf. (Liz Crawford, President, Crawford Consulting)

• Technology and collaboration should be helping to solve this problem, and it is a problem that existed before the current downturn and will continue when the recovery comes (hopefully very soon!!). If the retailer can show empirically that the new product lines do nothing to add to the profit mix, or worse do something to harm it, at the store, the supplier should yield and remove or not introduce the items. If the manufacturer can show empirically that the new product lines work to bolster the profit mix at the store level, the retailer should yield and add the items. This may be over-simplifying the situation, and there will always be exceptions, but without collaboration both retailers and suppliers are going to lose and the shopper will suffer as well. (Ron Margulis, Managing Director, RAM Communications)

• “SKU Rationalization” is a dangerous game…as the volume of sales per item does not necessarily reflect the impact to the brand as a whole. The push-pull of private label vs. branded product has been going on a long time and it’s not stopping any time soon. While it’s possible to create an apparel store built solely on private label merchandise, I don’t believe it’s possible in FMCG. All those advertising dollars have, in fact, made a difference. It’s also true that not all private label merchandise is create equal. I might be okay with generic canned food, but there are other products that have a distinct difference in quality. Q-Tips, Band-aids, some cheeses come immediately to mind. There’s a reason why book sellers carry slow movers. There’s a reason why apparel retailers buy a full compliment of colors, even if the percent contribution isn’t the same across all of them. Similarly, there’s a reason why FMCG retailers need to carry brands. It adds to their own brand credibility. (Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner, RSR Research)

• I’ll take on whether retailers are “playing fair” by copy-catting national brands/morphing them into private labels: 8-10 years ago, I would have cried foul; these days, it’s par for the course. Yet another reason why vendors have to keep their innovation pipelines full or risk being one private label switch away from extinction. Think of your retailer knocking you off as the sincerest form of flattery (if you can bear it)! (Carol Spieckerman, President, newmarketbuilders)

• As indicated in the poll questions, there is sufficient blame on both sides. Retailers are dealing with manufacturers who force impractical line extensions through financial influence (incentives) detracting from a balanced category. Private Label is skimming the cream of category sales and threatening to take a disproportionate amount of shelf space. Private Label also can trade down category average pricing through poorly thought-out pricing schemes that do not reflect the market place. The extreme in either direction reduces the optimization of the consumer-centric effort we are all chasing. Manufacturers are the Mecca of product innovation. Private Label merely mimics. When we deviate from true innovation and the goal is to reduce the shelf space of competitors, everyone loses. The leap to Private Label is a result of cash-pinched consumers looking for a bargain. Private Label has a place in retailer strategy, but it should not be the entire strategy. Nor should the overwhelming ownership of space by a single brand. The premium or angel customers will continue to buy brands that exhibit the features and benefits of quality and consistency. Which customers do we want to develop as our base? Angel customers or bargain hunters? By lowering standards, quality and differentiation, we move into a downward spiral into Heck. Manufacturers must put forth innovation and quality as the model. Retailers need to maintain the balance in the categories that maintains a profitable mix of customers. It is about strategy and thinking beyond next week. Ask John Galt. (‘GMROI’)

• There were several reports on just-food.com last week out of the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) conference in Florida about what some of the bigger brands plan to do about rationalizing their portfolios. Some were particularly interesting and relevant to this discussion. As for the sub-debate about differences between the US and the ROW (rest of the world)–also very interesting and relevant especially when looked at in the context of globalization vs consumer preferences for locally produced food (a subject on which there is still much to be said as it cannot possibly be, in my view, an either or proposition). ( Bernice Hurst, Managing Director, Fine Food Network)

• For FMCG, a CPG firm must ensure they have a brand strategy to address the intended audience. Most will say they have that, but the truth is that they try to “cover the Earth” with a wide assortment to capture any and all consumers they can. In these economic times, there will tend to be even less “rationalization,” so to speak, since CPG firms will try to grab any demographic who is spending money.  Of course, regions vary in their propensity to embrace things like private label, however there are great examples across the globe of deep penetration of P/L, some of which have already been mentioned, and also Trade Joe’s in the US. P/L success has more to do with intentions of the retailer, rather than the line of products, specifically. (Ralph Jacobson, Global Consumer Products Industry Marketing Executive, IBM)

• Where’s the data? Which consumers are buying which products? Which ones are not selling so well? Where’s the demand? Both sides can play the win-lose drama as long as they like and both will lose. (Camille Schuster, President, Global Collaborations, Inc.)

• Brands are the initiators of product and package innovation.
  • Until Private Label companies or a collaboration with retailers can fund research and development and spend back big dollars back against the brand, the brands will always have customers looking for their new products.
  • Retailers cannot give up the slotting fees that brands pay for shelf space. That is why many stores get more branded skus then they probably need.
  • I am not sold that manufactures can’t execute with creative accounting, “Brand partnership stores.” Retailers work on slim margins but as more retailers self manufacture there is AN opportunity to sell to yourself.
    (‘YOURBOYS’ )

About 7 months ago a spat occurred between the leading retail company in India Future Group and branded supplier Cadbury’s, with respect to margins offered to the Future Group. (A friend described it as a Bollywood saga.) Future Group had also previously had run-ins with other suppliers including the likes of Pepsi. (The previous post is here.)

Now there’s a European film noire sequel in the making, in a battle between the Belgian retailer Delhaize and European FMCG big daddy Unilever. Delhaize has suspended purchases from Unilever as, according to Delhaize, Unilever is making “unacceptable demands” that the chain stock more Unilever brands.

Like other branded suppliers, Unilever has obviously been impacted across Europe and the US as retailers have become more sophisticated in their approach to private label and squeezed out brands that they have been able to replace with their own products.

Given further weakening of the economic scenario, it is likely that consumers would switch to cheaper private labels offered by retailers, and retailers would be tempted to give over even more shelf space to their own labels where they get higher margins than branded products – a continually losing spiral for the branded FMCG companies.

According to a consumer survey carried out by an agency in Flanders in northern Belgium, apparently 31 per cent of shoppers polled were choosing to shop at chains other than Delhaize, and another 19 per cent were not happy with Delhaize decision (but there doesn’t seem to be indication yet that they would switch). Most of the customers who said they were remaining with Delhaize are either switching to other brands or to Delhaize’s own label products.

However this brawl ends, and whether it turns out to be a win-lose or a lose-lose situation, even this survey demonstrates that the retail store has the upper hand – less than one-third of the surveyed customers displayed their hard-core brand loyalty by switching to other stores.

That is obviously a worrying sign for branded suppliers who have invested humongous sums of money and decades of effort in developing their brands. But it also raises questions about whether the consumer is really perceiving any value out of the billions in advertising and millions of man-hours spent by the FMCG companies in developing the nth variation of toothpaste or detergent.

Tough times raise tough questions, and the ones that comes to mind are these:

• In recent years FMCG companies have rationalized their brand portfolios, but have they done enough?
• Are they really clear about the value the remaining brands are delivering?
• Are the retailers really playing fair when they build up so-called partnerships with suppliers, only to take on board the product learnings and then develop own-label copycat products (sometimes down to package colouring and graphics)?

What do you think?

In the last few months, I’ve interacted with retailers and their suppliers from a number of countries in North America, Europe and Asia and, except for a handful, the conversations have not been happy.

In November-December companies in France, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom were dealing with a season where there was as much red on the P&L statements as in the Christmas shop windows. In January 2009, the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York had participation that was somewhat thinner than in past years, but the gloom in the atmosphere was thick enough to slow everyone down.

On the other side, the factory of the world, China, had been battered by a Year of the Rat that brought increasing costs, erratic power supplies, slowdown in orders, safety concerns and product recalls. All of this culminated in reports of factory closures and migrant workers at railway stations on their way home for the Chinese New Year holiday carrying not just clothing, but all their possessions including fridges and TVs. The resultant unemployment figures expected currently range from 20 million to 40 million people.

The Indian retail sector, of course, has had its share of pain. In an idle conversation on a sunny December afternoon, a real estate broker in Ludhiana had a pithy description for one of the retail chains: “Unhone apne haath khade kar diye hain. Bakee logon ne abhi tak toh haath neeche rakhe huey hain – unke bhi upar ho jayenge.” (“They have thrown their hands up in despair. The rest still have their “hands down” – but they’ll also give up eventually.”)

On the one hand you have the gloom-seekers. In the eyes of some of these people, the retail boom is over. In the eyes of others, the retail boom was all hype anyway, a big bubble of artificial expectations.

On the other hand, you have other people asking some uncomfortable questions: here’s a country that apparently has the largest population of under-25s, where millions of new jobs have been created and incomes have been growing. How can retail businesses be showing a decline in their top-lines?

I don’t think anyone has all the answers, but I can offer at least one speculation, borrowing from the title of a book that came out some years ago, named “Irrational Exuberance”. Robert Shiller’s first edition was related to the dot-com stock bubble, and his 2005 edition added an analysis on housing bubble that was developing at the time. He had, in turn, borrowed the term from the US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan who in December 1996 had said in a speech: “…how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions…?”

We now seem to be in such an unexpected (but was it really unexpected?) and prolonged contraction. Of course, consumers are feeling more cautious about spending, even if their actual income has not been affected (just as it wasn’t affected when they were feeling suddenly wealthy 12-18 months ago). Obviously, stores that should not have been opened will now get closed, or excessively large stores will be reduced in size. Companies that are over-stretched may collapse completely.

But I would label the mood prevailing now “irrational despair” as far as a consumer market such as India is concerned. From a position of over-optimism, the pendulum seems to be swinging to the other extreme of utmost misery, dejection and complete pessimism, and I think that is a swing too far.

I think it’s worth reminding ourselves of the factors that make India a market for sustained consumer growth. The country looks likely to have a large under-25 profile well into the next several decades. These young people will grow older and get into jobs. They will get married and therefore expand the number of consuming households. If the policy-makers don’t really mess up, real incomes should go up. Infrastructure projects should largely remain on track, regardless of the political party or parties in power, facilitating industry, trade and wealth distribution.

So the time is right for business plans that have sound fundamental assumptions – or as the cement ad says: “andar sey solid” (solid from within).

I’d like to repeat issues that I have highlighted earlier as top priority for retailers and consumer products companies in India. These are as follows:

1. Realistic demand estimation: Let’s work with realistic sales expectations, and not expect all consumption to multiply like cellphones have in the last few years.
2. Productivity Analysis: As a retailer (especially in food and grocery), margins are thin. Except for marquee locations there is no excuse for continuous losses. Store productivity depends on merchandise availability, staff capabilities and store operations, customer traffic and a host of other factors, and you need to know what’s working and what isn’t.
3. Moderated growth: Many retailers in India have had tremendous growth in scale without growth in sophistication in processes or people. Some have been driven by motivation to capture market share, others driven by their investors who want an exit, and a few might have been driven by ego. I’m not asking anyone to grow slower that they want to, or slower than they should. However, I would say: do look at Intel. A manufacturing company that makes its own products obsolete in an industry where rapid change has been the norm for the last 40 years. Intel alternates changes in its production and supply chain processes, and products – it doesn’t change everything at once.
4. People: A leader of the industry pointed out a few months ago that there is no shortage of people in India. But the race to the top of the heap (or as it seems now, the bottom of the loss-making pile) has created artificial scarcity of talent. One benefit of the downturn is that artificially inflated compensations for people jumping on the “retail boom bandwagon” will disappear (at least for now). If we can use the experience of people who have been in modern retail trade in India for decades, and train others who are fresh but committed, it will provide a more solid and lasting impact for businesses.

A number of companies worldwide that we know as market leaders and businesses to be emulated found their feet in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That should give some hope to entrepreneurs and professionals.

However, does that mean that only bad companies or unprofessional managements will fail in the current downturn? Certainly not. Does it also mean that all good companies or competent entrepreneurs will succeed? Again, the answer is, no.

Some bad companies will manage to ride through this trough, while some really deserving people will run out of cash, ideas and opportunities. Life and “natural selection” processes are not fair.

But, by and large, if we can get our heads down and focus on getting the right people together, making money to get through and having something left over to invest in the future of the business, we would have more chances of succeeding than by over-stretching, or by swinging to the other extreme and being totally defensive.

I won’t even attempt to predict how long the current downturn will last. The Great Depression lasted a whole decade, was “walled” by the Second World War, and the first blooms of real recovery only appeared in the early-1950s, or about twenty years from the first downturn. Other recessions have been shorter. In 2000, after the dot-com bust car bumper stickers in the US quoted a political satirist, saying, “I want to be irrationally exuberant again.” Within a few short years, many people were showing those very signs.

We can be pretty sure that such a time will come again. But I’m also quite sure that durable companies are unlikely to be built on bursts of such exuberance.