srcg wake-up: Delivering retail growth by better meeting shoppers’ needs

A large group of senior convenience and food retailers from the Europe, The Middle East, Africa, South Asia, South East Asia and the USA gathered in Dubai on 21 April for C-store Connections; three days of presentations, workshops and ‘speed dating’ meetings. srcg director Scott Annan went along…

The business theme was ‘retail growth by better meeting shoppers’ needs’ and I will go into the presentations a little later.

‘Big name’ retailers included BP Europe; Circle K International; Petronas Malaysia; Emarat UAE; Petron The Philippines and Spinach from India. Food-to go played an important role with Coffee Planet, Kudu Restaurants, Simply Coffee & Subway all participating.

Over 800 individual meetings were scheduled over two days with 20 minutes to make your case and agree any actions. I discovered that 20 minutes means exactly that and I was chased away by the timekeeper when I overstayed my first meeting. He was less polite at my second and last offence!

The teambuilding highlight was an afternoon dune bashing in Toyota Land Cruisers, camel riding, dune boarding and desert cricket (don’t ask), followed by dinner and entertainment under a blanket of stars. Those dunes are scarily big. Great fun.

I chaired the opening day and delegates heard excellent presentations form Circle K International, BP Europe and Emarat and Circle. The day started with an excellent retail tour with senior management on hand in each store to answer questions. After the retailer presentations delegates attended three from six concurrent workshops and the plenary session topic ‘space rental or category management: which is best for sales?’ stirred a lively debate. Circle K and Emarat both emphasised the importance of franchising in their business model and the critical need to maintain store standards and retail execution.

John Patton VP International, Circle K made the first presentation with the theme of ‘Successful Retailing: it’s all about satisfying customers’ needs’. The Circle K brand is owned by Alimentation Couche-Tard headquartered in Montreal. Couche-Tard is a multi award winning convenience retailer with around 10,000 owned and franchised stores across 9 countries, including the recent acquisition of the US ExxonMobil’ ‘On The Run’ stores.

At the core of their success is the creation of unique customer experiences based on the demographic shopping behavior of their customers. Couche Tard calls this ‘The Chain of One’; they utilize the same brand but change the offer depending on the location profile. srcg is proud to have developed the Circle K category management platform which lies at the core of ‘Chain of One’ and helps create that unique experience.

Project Impact is a concept to create a (store) meeting place that is differentiated by merchandising and marketing at specific locations. Each store contains the core merchandise that satisfies their regular customer base, but in addition has many tailored products for the shoppers specific to that location. A simple concept, but one which lives in the execution and which many fuel convenience retailers simply don’t get right.

The largest Circle K franchise businesses in Hong Kong and Japan are leaders in supplier collaboration, in what are traditionally ‘opaque relationship’ markets. They share data, seek out mutually beneficial and unique promotional opportunities, and drive new innovative ideas and products for their customers.

John closed with the message ‘focus all your efforts on shoppers and they will come’. This message was not lost on the many Gulf Region retailers who have always sold space or exclusive supply contracts to suppliers with little or no consideration of shoppers’ needs!

Darren Smith, Emarat Retail Marketing Manager and Robert Onion, CEO Circle continued the theme with ‘The role of branding in successful franchising’. Emarat is state owned and operates 170 sites with 90 convenience stores branded Emarat Plus and Emarat Shop. Emarat and Circle have developed ‘Bakeria’ branded bakeries and ‘Café Arabicca’ coffee corners. Emarat is the first fuel retailer in the Region to operate stand alone (no fuel) C-stores, branded Freshplus. Darren’s big message was ‘compliment your market by differentiating your offer’.

On the retail tour, I saw evidence of Emarat’s differentiation versus their major competitor ENOC, albeit the fuel to store conversion rate was only a few points higher in the Emarat Plus store versus the ENOC ‘Aqua’ branded flagship site. The ENOC site was extravagant and reminded me of the massive and excessive stations that the global oil companies built before they had to concern themselves about ROCE and sales per square foot.

I am an espresso ‘arrogantcia’ and approached the proffered Café Arabicca coffee in the Emarat site with some trepidation. I had to drink my words as it was excellent with an authentic taste and texture’. Well done to Emarat.

Robert emphasized the importance of branding and execution consistency across company and franchised stores in growing revenues and customer reputation. The Freshplus brand positioning is near Starbucks and Costa and close to Spinneys, the leading Dubai premium grocer that works with Waitrose.

At the core of Freshplus’ customer proposition are relevance, value and experience, targeting busy families and the young with a high quality offer. Bringing this ‘modern fresh’ personality to convenience stores is a first for Dubai and I will watch closely if the store disciplines can be maintained in new franchisees.

Andy Davis, Trading Director BP Europe continued the theme with ‘Growing sales: doing it differently’. Andy opened with some oil retail humour regarding oil companies wanting to be retailers and building assets too big for the offer. Many heads nodded.

He walked us through BP Europe’s journey from tobacco and impulse store, through Wild Bean Café in Connect sites and Petit Bistro in Aral sites in Germany, to the latest developments with M&S Simply Food in the UK. The retail strategy detail stimulated lots of note taking, particularly positioning the offer versus major competitors such as Tesco Express, Starbucks and McDonalds. The most powerful message was in developing a destination offer, outside of fuel, through their affiliation with the best premium food retailer, Marks & Spencer.

Andy finished with a challenge to all the retailers in the room to ‘be great at delivering your core business but be honest where your offer ‘gaps’ are and don’t be afraid of working with others’.

I took the plenary session and was a wee bit worried that everyone would be worn out after a full day and have departed for the pool or their rooms. My concern was misplaced as we had a full house to review the day and debate the common practice in the Middle East and Asia of selling store space to suppliers, versus growing sales by delivering shoppers’ needs. Every retailer that I met with in the speed meetings wanted to talk about how they could change their business model to be more shopper focused.

I closed the day with an invitation to read ‘It Happened in India’ by Kishore Biyani, in my mind the best category management book, ever. I encourage you to buy it, read it and then read it again!

Scott F Annan, director srcg

C-Store Connections is a knowledge sharing and business networking event designed for multiple retailers and suppliers of consumer packaged goods, retail equipment, technology and services.

It was organised by OpenRoom Events (formerly Downstream Events). Their next forum, C-Store Connections UK and Ireland, focuses on the convenience market in those regions and takes place from 17-19 June in Marbella. For further information, please contact Emma Faure or Fiona Horan on info@openroom-events.com