Are you currently searching for sales opportunities on the Polish fruit and vegetables retail market? Or perhaps you are currently preparing for entering Polish market and you don’t know what fruit and vegetables you should offer to Polish retailers? In this article you will find unique knowledge about most wanted products within the fresh fruit and vegetables category on the Polish market.
Good offer for Polish fruit and vegetables retail market
I always say that the good offer is the one that hits the need or problems of the retail chain. In other words, it brings some added value to the retailer. Therefore, in order to attract the buyers attention, your offer needs to possess some level of uniqueness. In fresh fruit and vegetables category, you can build this uniqueness either in the presentation of you as a supplier or in the presentation of the product you are offering. In this article I will share my experience on the preparing the product offer.
Lazy suppliers
But first a little bit of complaining – typical Polish thing by the way. From my experience, 90% of suppliers wishing to start cooperation with retailers are lazy. They usually offer most common, most basic products that are the easiest to obtain and provide the best return for them. In other words, they present commercial offers that are very convenient for them. This is for sure easy, but let me tell you one thing. If it is easy for you, it is most probably easy for dozens of other suppliers too. Conclusion? The buyer you are trying to reach is probably receiving tens of offers like yours weekly. And most probably ignores all of them. Why? Because it does not bring any value to him.
Unique value
The unique value of offer means that the product addresses needs or problems of the retail chain or buyer (hint: they sometimes differ). And it is not a rocket science that what is most wanted by the category manager is usually most difficult to obtain by the supplier. So you have two options: either you create a simple offer and spend hours trying effortlessly to attract buyer’s attention or you may spend those hours on searching for solutions to buyer’s problem on Polish fruit and vegetables retail market and once you find it – you will have his/her attention straight away. You can bet on that!
Assortment
Before we dive into analysis of most wanted product, firstly we should be aware of the magical word: assortment. This is a starting point for analysing fresh fruit and vegetables category and it may tell you what fruit and vegetables you should offer to Polish retailers.
Index, SKU
One of the category manager’s tasks is to manage an assortment. Technically, this involves “listing” and “delisting” individual “indexes” or in other words SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). An index or SKU is a particular product in a particular package with a particular name. So, for example, carrots loose, carrots 1kg pack and carrots 500g pack are three different indexes. Sometimes same product with different varieties may have different SKU’s (for example many Polish retailers use separate SKUs for different varieties of apples), sometimes it falls under one SKU (if you come across 300g blueberry bucket in Poland somewhere in October, it may be both Biloxi or Ventura – the details of variety are then presented on the packaging).
Listing, delisting
Listing is the insertion into the assortment and delisting is the removal from the assortment. The terminology may sometimes differ, but the principles are the same. If the product is listed, it means that:
- the buyer secured deliveries of the product by successfully closing negotiations with suppliers,
- the product might be ordered to the store from distribution center/supplier.
If the product is delisted, it means that the stores are no longer able to order the product from warehouse/supplier.
What is assortment management?
Within each category there are different types of indexes that have different goals. Some generate margin, some generate value turnover and some generate volume. Some have terrible numerical results but they help build a certain image for the store. “The fun” of arranging a list of indexes into a meaningful whole that will ensure that all the buyer’s goals are achieved is assortment management. So if you want to know what fruit and vegetables you should offer to Polish retailers, you should know their assortment and understand it’s flow to offer proper products.
Fresh fruits and vegetables category division
There are multiple divisions of products invented by category management specialists. Personally I have never used any. I developed my own which I would like to share now. It includes 3 types of product: basic, seasonal and niche. It can be applied to the fruits and vegetables category or even subcategories (like berries, grapes etc.). What is important is that one product may skip from one category to another during the time.
Basic all year products
This division consists of basic products that have been within the fresh fruit and vegetables category for decades. Very often these are relatively easy to obtain products. The supply is covered by one or many countries of origin. Within this division the key word is availability. The Polish client expects to find bananas, potatoes, tomatoes, apples or oranges every day during the year. So when thinking about what fruit and vegetables you should offer to Polish retailers – this should be your starting point. From my experience, many suppliers do not include anything else in their offer apart from basic products. This is a mistake. Basic products are a must and you won’t move on without them, but having only basics in your offer will get you nowhere in 95% of cases.
Seasonal products
This division consists of products that are widely available only for specific periods of the year. At the same time, their impact on KPIs and sales is usually very high and very often they are heavily promoted during the season. To give a few examples from Polish market: sweet cherries, Polish plumbs, asparagus, fig, mini kiwi, peaches or nectarines. The key word here is timing – buyers often want to start the season as the first and end as the last.
Niche products
Niche product can be invented in 3 ways:
- introducing a completely new product that hasn’t been sold yet (for example – forest cranberry),
- introducing seasonal product outside the main season (for example nectarines and apricots during the winter),
- introducing well-known product with altered specification (for example white strawberry).
The key here is differentiation. Niche product usually do not have a big impact on sales but they do a great job attracting the customers to come to the store and they are often used in marketing/folder actions
How to determine most wanted products for each division?
Now when you know my division of product, we may finally get to the point. Most wanted products on polish fruit and vegetables retail market are those that add some value to each of the divisions that I mentioned.
Basic product
When offering basic products, you need to think outside the box. Sending a simple offer for tomatoes or pepper is unlikely to bring any results. What you can do is to draw the buyer’s attention to quality aspects of your product by offering a specific variety of the product with exceptional taste, caliber, brix etc. Sometimes that is connected with an attempt to build a brand, which is however a very difficult thing to do in the fruit and vegetables category. A good example of the above is the SekoyaTM blueberry variety, which was presented to retailers as a product with exceptional quality and now is slowly transforming into a brand. Another example are premium varieties of oranges or seedless varieties of grapes or watermelons.To sum up, your offer for a basic product should not be basic and should exceed the buyer’s expectation.
When offering seasonal product
From my experience, the best idea in seasonal products is to offer very late or very early varieties which allow the retailer to start the season. When I worked as a category manager I always had a lot of pressure to be the first to start the season for seasonal products. Therefore for seasonal products you need to try to be the first and last to offer. Again, I have seen dozens of offers for products sent in the peak of the season. That is not going to work if you want to start working with retailers. In the peak of the season your offer is one of the many, but at the beginning of the season it might be the only one.
Niche product
In this category every offer is good. Therefore, if you already put some basic products into your offer with exceptional parameters, added some super early varieties of seasonal products, you can now add cherry on the top (metaphorical by the way, cherry is no niche in Poland). Think of anything that comes to your mind and send it. Even if it does not work out, then at least you create an impression of an innovative supplier. Try to source for the product from non-obvious directions, check if any of your product can be produced in different colours or shapes or perhaps send an offer for something that is sold only on your internal market but is appropriate for exporting. Remember – one day, some buyer in Poland received an offer for blueberry and at that moment that was a niche.
Before clicking “send”
Creating a good commercial offer for a Polish retailer might seem complicated but you just need to follow a few simple steps. If you want to get to an expert level, you might think about adding some important information about your company or differentiating your offers depending on particular retailer. If you are still confused and would like to talk about your offer, feel free to contact me and book 15 minutes free consultation.