THE GOAL

The largest privately owned brewery in Germany approached us to carry out a sales promotion project that wasn’t available to them through the traditional route to markets.

The traditional route to markets, like wholesalers, do not usually offer sampling exercises as an additional service for their brewers and other drinks producers. This brewer specifically wanted to carry out a sampling exercise of products and personalised presentation packs for their contact at each venue which is why they chose us for this project. 

The goal was to hand deliver each pack to the contact listed by the client and, if that wasn’t possible, to accurately record the name of the person the samples were left with. Following on from this, the aim was for their UK sales team to follow up with them to secure the sales. 

Brand-to-hand projects are a service we excel in as a business and we have been supporting the likes of M&S and The Metro with multiple campaigns across London and its surrounding areas. We are trusted in this area of work by new and existing clients, due to our continued success.

THE CHALLENGE 

A key concern for our client was the accuracy of deliveries, which included the correct product range and branding, as well as personal written communications. Each venue was being delivered two different types of products, as well as a full POS pack and a hand-written personalised addressed pack to the key contact at the venue. Therefore, we had to ensure that the right pack went to the correct venue. 

We historically haven’t worked on projects that have required us to work to such precise detail but this is what our customer wanted, in order to make sure the samples were given directly to the decision maker and we adapted to ensure their goals as a business were met. 

As each delivery was specifically labelled with the contact at each venue, the order fulfilment for this project was more specialised than our usual operations for our other clients. This in turn made our internal warehouse order processing more complex than the orders we’d usually fulfil. 

OUR SOLUTION 

As the order fulfilment for this client was more complex, we had to learn about the products that were being sampled and educate our drivers and warehouse team, to ensure the sampling was completed with the accuracy that was required. Due to this being a sales sampling project, we had to work within the timeframes provided by the client, in order for their sales team to follow up with the venue in a timely manner after the samples had been delivered. 

We mitigated the challenges we could potentially face when working on this project by ensuring every element of our operation was checked numerous times by different people within the team. 

A clear line of communication was also paramount to this project, from the planners in logistics, to the pickers in the warehouse, to the drivers on the road. Every single person needed to know their part to play to ensure the sampling exercise converted to long-term sales partnerships for the client. 

As a third-party logistics company, we are the custodian of our customers’ products and provide a direct delivery service which allows them to continue to grow their relationships directly with their chosen venues. 

‍CUSTOMER’S SUCCESS 

We had a 97% delivery success and 37% of all deliveries were handed to the designated contact at the venue, as well as all the deliveries being completed within the timeframe set out by our customer.