With endless change, flux, launches and relaunches in the e-cigarettes market over the last few years, the category can be chaotic and difficult to manage for retailers. We’ve decided to bring some order to proceedings and are working with blu to bring some order to the category in Woodlands Local for the first time.
by Antony Begley
E-cigarettes, as all local retailers are well aware, is a category that is in massive growth and it’s also one which is as attractive to retailers as it is to customer; it’s a real world of opportunity. But it’s also a category that brings very real challenges for retailers, not least because of the almost overwhelming number of SKUs brought to market by what often seems like an endless array of manufacturers. A complex portfolio of product formats and types coupled with a brand new vocabulary – clearomisers, liquids, vapes, cartridges – means that providing your shoppers with the right range, presented in the right way can be exceptionally difficult.
That situation has not been improved by the fact that the suppliers establishing themselves as the key players have so far taken brand-led approach only, rather than a broader category approach. All of them, for instance, have chosen to produce huge counter top merchandising units designed to stock only their brands. If your store is anything like Woodlands Local you’ll know that there’s simply not the space to use of these huge units, let alone the three or four of them you might need for your customer base.
Practical solution
The solution? Well, we spoke to major supplier blu, owned by Imperial Tobacco, to establish a core range for the first time, and all presented in the way that most retailers will end up presenting the category: on a standard shelf behind the till.
“A counter top unit is a great way to present the category to your customers and explain the category to them, but we fully appreciate that many stores simply won’t have the space to do so,” explains Nichola Grant, Category Development Manager at blu. “So we’re working with SLR and Woodlands Local to help deliver a pragmatic solution that ticks all of the key category boxes and easily to replicate for other local retailers in Scotland.”
The first challenges was getting the range right. Like most stores I’ve seen, the range in Woodlands Local is chaotic, with no strategy or plan. A few free samples from reps, a cheap deal or two in the cash and carry, a few lines bought in response to customer requests. Consequently we had a huge selection of brands, big and small, and a baffling array of accessories with very inconsistent sales across the category.
So the first step was to run the Epos data and see where we were. blu requested the last 12 weeks sales as well as data from this period last year and we quickly established that what we suspected was true: lots of strong products with good rate of sale but just as many lines that simply don’t sell and don’t merit space on shelf. And remember – the space behind the counter is very valuable indeed and every line on there needs to pull its weight in terms of cash margin.
The result of that audit is reproduced here, highlighting the lines we decided to maintain, add and delist. This new range was basically the first time we had taken an overall category approach and ensures we now have the correct balance of products, including vitally important accessories like chargers and clearomisers.
Buying it in
One interesting challenge when buying the new products in the range was how complex the buying procedure can be. The cash and carry we used in Glasgow – JW Filshill – did indeed have every line we needed but it took quite a long time and some lengthy discussions with a couple of staff in the tobacco room to establish that the products we were buying were absolutely the correct ones, particularly given the jargon involved. There’s a clearly an education job to done throughout the supply chain.
This highlighted the need for our staff to fully understand the category so that they can help customers should they ever get any tricky or more technical questions. Nichola Grant and her team will return soon for a training session – and we’ll pass on what we learn then in the next issue.
POG
With the products safely purchased, it was time to get down to business in the store. Grant had produced a store-specific planogram for us but as the shelf we are using is a standard one metre tobacco gantry shelf, the starter-for-10 planogram will be more or less ideal for most local retailing outlets in Scotland.
Grant explains: “In order to have a solid core range with every SKU you need, you only need to dedicate a single metre of shelving to the category to tick all the boxes. We’ve kept it nice and tight and easy to replicate for other retailers, and it brings some order to the category that we hope Gerry and his team and their customers at Woodlands Local will appreciate.”
Merchandising
With the planogram in hand, it only took us half an hour to have the entire shelf looking neat, tidy, well stocked and easy to understand for customers. We’ve focused on three of the biggest selling brands in:
- blu
- E-Lites
- Vivid
And we’re stocking the three key formats:
- Cartridges
- Liquids
- Disposables
With the stock in place, the shelf looks great and we think it will prove attractive to our customers.
“It’s very clear that e-cigarettes is a difficult category for local retailers to stay on top of and manage properly, but what we believe we have achieved in Woodlands Local is a great starting place for all retailers,” says Grant. “Of course the category will continue to evolve in future and we may see the end of disposable products in the not too distant future for example, but this planogram is a solid offering that all retailers can confidently use as the basis for their own fixture.”
