Just a month into a trial of a range of £1.50 price-marked premix cans from Diageo, sales are already rocketing as customers buy into the winning combination of quality from a trusted brand and great value.
by Antony Begley
We are now well into the second month of our trial project with Diageo on their new price-marked £1.50 premix spirit cans. Premix spirits have always sold relatively solidly in the store but with prices well over the £2 mark, the products tended to be bought by a small, dedicated band of customers who purchased them regularly. Very few new customers bought into the category.
The launch of new price marked cans at £1.50 signalled an opportunity to bring more of our shoppers into the category, delivering great quality products from trusted brands, but at significantly lower selling prices. The products have been on sale for around six weeks now and we’re delighted to report that, almost across the board, the price marked cans have how delivered very significant growth.
Perhaps most surprising has been the huge success of the Gordon’s Gin & Slimline Tonic variant. This was a product that sold in very low volumes historically but has suddenly exploded in the new price-marked format. The average sales volume for the eight weeks running up the trial showed average weekly sales of only around 5 cans. In the first few weeks since the new price-marked packs were introduced, that volume has risen to an average weekly total of over 22 cans, an increase of 340%!
The weekly sales averages are now as follows:
| Product | Average weekly sales volume for 8 weeks before trial | Average sales volume during trial | Variance |
| Gordon’s Gin & Slimline Tonic | 5 | 22 | +340% |
| Gordon’s Gin & Tonic | 13 | 18 | +38.5% |
| Smirnoff & Cola | 10 | 5 | +50% |
| Smirnoff & Diet Cola | 4 | 9 | +125% |
| Captain Morgan’s & Cola | 8 | 3 | +62.5% |
| Smirnoff & Cranberry | 6 | 10 | +66.6% |
The sales figures are very encouraging, although they were undoubtedly boosted by using high quality merchandising units, shelf talkers and POS. The spring-loaded shelf units serve to keep the fixture permanently faced up as well as ensuring the correct number of facings is reserved for every SKU.
We decided upon double facings for every product to both maximise impact on presence on-shelf in the chiller, as well as ensuring great availability and minimising the restocking work required.
We will continue to monitor the sales over the next month and provide a full update in the next issue. So far, however, it’s fair to say that the range is a winner with our customers!
