Kiwifruit marketer Zespri has been rolling out the launch of its SunGold variety across a range of export markets this year, and Thailand has witnessed an energetic campaign.
The introduction of the new variety has been supported by a robust programme of promotional activities to educate trade and consumers about SunGold’s attributes, and to drive demand.
Zespri’s programme has included market roadshows, retail sampling activities and eye-catching point-of-sale materials, but one of its key importers Vachamon has gone the extra mile to drive the campaign.
“What we could do to make Zespri’s marketing campaign more successful is involve ourselves in their activities,” the company’s managing director Wipavee Watcharakorn told Asiafruit. “For example, with the market roadshow, we joined in on the sampling activities. As well as the sampling company conducting tastings, we actively sold the fruit, particularly at markets where there were no existing fruit vendors.”
Sampling activities have been conducted across numerous open-air markets around Bangkok. “These are retail markets that are close to office buildings where people go to buy lunch or other things. The markets sell a range of items such as clothes, ready-to-eat meals, gifts and so on,” Watcharakorn explained.
For each market that was selected as a venue for the sampling activities, Vachamon targeted the owners of the existing fruit shops to demonstrate to them the value of promoting SunGold.
“We tried to show them that SunGold has tremendous potential, and that with the right attention and effort to display and merchandise it, they could go beyond their usual sales volumes,” said Watcharakorn.
“Usually with these fruit shops, the owner handles all the sales by him or herself and displays many products. They tend to give more importance and display space to the items that generate good sales and margins so we wanted to show them that SunGold can be the ‘hero’ product for them.”
Watcharakorn said that after 40 days of conducting the roadshow, the uplift in wholesale demand has been remarkable during July.
In addition to the roadshow activities, Vachamon has been supporting major retailers such as Big C, Tesco Lotus and The Mall Group with their SunGold promotions.
“We participated and helped to ensure the retailers ordered enough fruit each week, whether they were conducting samplings or not. Sometimes retailers are very reluctant to order a lot of a new item as they want to avoid issues with shrinkage,” she said.
“We talked to the retailers a lot and coordinated supplies with their sampling teams to ensure they had enough good-quality stock for each store to make the activities worthwhile. We made direct-to-store deliveries and followed up on the purchase orders later on.”
Vachamon has also participated in a number of ‘below the line’ marketing events for SunGold, exhibiting at shows such as Health and Beauty and ThaiFex.
Watcharakorn said Vachamon’s aim is to sell 120,000 trays of SunGold this season. “We are likely to hit this target, which is probably double the volume sold last year,” she concluded.
