The Darrel Lea Easter egg range is drawing attention. The photo below shows around half the range we have in store. We have it on the dance floor, right at the front of the shop – nest to our range of Easter cards.
We made a decision a couple of years ago to promote aggressively at Easter and it has paid off ever since. While we’re competing with the major, we are competing and our customers are responding.
Easter is close and we have our Darrell Lea range out including this Thomas The Tank package. It includes an activity as well as the egg which is good. I’m curious about the management of brands such as Thomas since we access the eggs from one place, cards and bags from another, books another and toys another. While it’s impractical to have them all come through one supplier, it would be good if there was a more co-ordinated approach.
A dark cloud hung over Valentine’s Day for some German candy makers, the German Federal Cartel Office raided the offices of seven of them. The International Herald Tribune has the details. This follows similar activity in Canada three months ago. Very interesting.
In the meantime, back here, newsagencies I have spoken with tell me it’s been fantastic Valentine’s Day sales wise.
Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to shine around the Darrell Lea brand. These boxes of chocolates work very well next to the card display. I especially like that the folks at Darrell Lea have provided the range with a slim stand – to enable it to fit with greeting card and other Valentine’s day displays.
While those in young love will go more for plush or similar, dare I say, soppy, gifts, the more mature in love will go for an exquisite box of chocolates – to release those endorphins. Hmmm, endorphins reduce the eaters sensitivity to pain. Now I understand why chocolate works on Valentine’s Day!
We dohave balance in our Valentine’s Day offer: cards, choloolate, mugs, plush and books. All categories are performing well for us.
Darrell Lea sent out another fax about its liquorice promotion today, this time apologising for poor communication with its non-company stores. It is disappointing that it has taken three days to respond but worse that they do not see how disrespectful their action in only promoting corporate stores is. Non corporate outlets like mine seem to be of little interest to Darrell Lea.
I love the Darrell Lea product and have been happy to have it at my Forest Hill store for years. This year, however, they have botched their licensee relationship and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some quit as a result.
Yesterday we received a fax from Darrell Lea dated November 16 advising the planned promotion about which I blogged earlier. The fax says the promotion of 80 cent 300g liquorice will run from November 19 through 26. A couple of things surprise me – their front of newspaper promotion was on the last day and they let us know about the promotion the day after they ran the stuck on ad on the newspaper.
The photo shows a closer look at the ad stuck over the masthead of today’s Age newspaper. It offers a 300g bag of Darrell Lea liquorice for 80 cents.
It’s a good deal, but there is a catch. You have to go to the website to find the participating stores – as if people with the coupon in their hand have time for that. No, they will think of their closest Darrell Lea location.
My newsagency at Forest Hill is not listed as a participating store. In fact, I can’t see any newsagency listed as a participating store. From what I can tell the list is corporate stores only.
Maybe the marketing people at Darrell Lea are smarter than me because I would have thought that tying in this promotion with a newspaper and through outlets which sell newspapers and the Darrell Lea product would have been smart.,
I know we will get customers asking about the deal. Should I tell them to go to a Darrell Lea store? Of course not! Given the floorspace, labour and stock investment I have made in Darrell Lea for the last five years or so, I am not about to tell my customers to go elsewhere. Now, we’ll come up with a response which hopefully does not direct them elsewhere.
This is a disappointing offer from Darrell Lea which, on the surface, appears to disrespect its non corporate stores.
I love Cadbury singles … on many fronts. Yes, I love the chocolate, that is a given. I also love the way they are pitching the product – 99 calories. I also love that it is priced so that I can sell this to soak up change from a newspaper purchase. This is the perfect up-sell for a newsagency.
Would you prefer a chocolate in your hand to some silver? Chocolate of course! Good retailers will make these Cadbury Singles work beautifully for them. We hope to.
Basic as it is, here how we promote selected Darrell Lea lines at our busiest lottery counter. We refresh this small display daily and change the products on offer several times a week.
Everyone likes to treat themselves once in a while and why not when they have bought a winning lottery ticket?
Tiny actions like this, using product placement to drive the up-sell, works better than what they do at Coles and Safeway petrol outlets – I am so over being harangued about buying their candy deals.
I love Darrell Lea product. Top sellers like liquorice allsorts, plain liquorice and rocky road sell well. Where they miss sales is in not letting selected stores carry just the top sellers. By having to carry a minimum range some good potential outlets pass on the opportunity. I understand Darrel Lea will say they need the minimum range to pitch their brand appropriately. I suspect a trial in a group of stores would prove that with as few as, say, ten products the brand could be well represented and strong sales achieved.
A B-grade shopping centre newsagency needs to achieve sales of at least $8,000 per square metre of floorspace annually to cover costs. The more expensive the centre the higher this benchmark. Brands which want retailers to take a broader range drive down the per square meter return.
This is why I’d like to cherry pick by Darrell Lea product – so I can maximise my return rather than just serve the Darrell Lea needs.
We moved one of our Darrell Lea stands to the front counter and sales jumped significantly. While this is not the preferred location, so we are told, the sales speak for themselves.
We figured we would leave the stand here for a month and then move it on – we like the idea of constant movement around the counter and front of the shop to show a business on the move.
Too many newsagents operate a set and forget model – leaving too many products and categories in the same place for too long and therefore encouraging customers to become store blind. We are surprised how many have said – oh, you have Darrell Lea. We have had Darrell Lea for five years.
Sales over the last two weeks show that Darrell Lea products can work in an impulse situation.
FOOTNOTE: See the Herald Sun stand next to the Darrell Lea unit? It continues to help drive newspaper sales at the the front high traffic lottery counter.
Darrell Lea liquorice and liquorice allsorts are their top sellers and that we are the only outlet in the centre brings us some traffic we would otherwise not get.
It is frustrating therefore that liquorice allsorts have been out of production for months.
One customer commented that if we can’t tell her when they will get back in she will stop checking. That’s some amazing brand loyalty – well deserved, if only I could get the product.
