Study, study, study – and other key learnings from our INSIGHT 20:21 week

Last Friday saw us complete the fifth and final day of INSIGHT 20:21 – a week of webinars run exclusively for our manufacturer client base. The aim was to give them a firm grip on what is actually happening in the wildly changing UK wholesale market at the moment.

Fully-booked webinars and a regular flow of post-session questions point towards a highly successful week. This is hardly surprising when the need for insight and data is now greater than ever with our industry being pulled one way and another by local lockdowns, the rise in Convenience and the ever-increasing pressures on the Hospitality sector.

For those of you missed any of the sessions, we have pulled together a list of some of the key outtakes from our busy week:

Monday: Top-line analysis of the UK wholesale market

• Repeat customers won’t be put off – While they may not be buying as much as they were before the lockdown, this group will continue to buy into their go-to categories, regardless of the conditions
• Alcohol has found its balance point – With the significant downturn in on-trade business, off-trade has helped the category offset a large chunk of these losses. However, don’t expect a full recovery until the government lifts the 10pm curfew on hospitality

Tuesday: A focus on Retail Convenience

• The flagship categories remain crucial – While consumers looked to the convenience channels for low priority products, sales in flagship categories like Soft Drinks, Tobacco and Confectionary remained resolute
• Ongoing opportunity – Our data shows that spending in convenience stores remains much higher than last year. With local lockdowns being applied more widely across the UK, customers who want to continue to benefit must ensure range stocking is optimised

Wednesday: A focus on Foodservice

• Yay for Coastal customers – The summer holidays and the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ initiative provided a widespread boost for the Foodservice sector in July and August. Customers in coastal regions saw some of the biggest sales uplifts with the rise in staycations another significant factor
• Nay for Urban customers – On the flip side, customers in urban areas, especially major cities, continue to struggle. Customers here will be in hibernation mode until consumer confidence returns and more people start heading back to the office to work

On both Thursday and Friday, attendees had the chance to get to know specific categories in more detail. They were also given a peek into how we advise our customers on best practice insight techniques.

Message of the week

Our overriding message to attendees throughout the week was a simplistic one that didn’t involve the provision of stats or trends. It centred around the notion of study.

Having the right people with the right platforms and the right amount of time to study your wholesale data is vital for success. Without studying the data properly, you just won’t be able to make the most of the exciting opportunities that now exist within wholesale.

To find out more about the insights we presented or to arrange a demo of OneView – the platform that produced all of our INSIGHT 20:21 findings – click here.

-Andrew Linehan-