Carol Spieckerman

FD Buyer: Let's Try Coordinating the Time of Category Reviews

March 8, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
Let's say you're a manufacturer with a new product breakthrough, and you're ready to present it to the trade this month. But let's also say that several of your key retailers won't be reviewing your category until the following January. Would an effort at standardizing which categories are reviewed when be beneficial for the industry?      [more...]

To me, it is up to the supplier (and individual marketing and account teams) to know each retailer's review schedule and to plan their business accordingly; not the other way around. Working with multi-national, multi-channel brands, I see this problem quite often--retail is a component of their business but not all of it, so they plan their promotional calendars outside of retail then try to cram it down into retail. When a retailer says "We're not ready" or "You're too late," some become indignant. These days, standardization and retail are strange bedfellows!