Become a rising star with Ocado

What prompted me to do this actually is about a year ago, almost to the— yeah, I think it was March last year, I did a presentation about Ocado and it was really successful and I was probably in a slightly different headspace with Ocado to what I am now. And then they invited us, as you may well be aware because, you know, I talk about Dee a lot, we got a listing with Ocado about gosh, 18 months ago, and we were nominated for a Rising Star Award. So I got to go to the day, which is where a lot of these slides have come from. So I can give you a little bit more of an inside track on what they're trying to do. It was targeted at both existing Ocado suppliers and also new suppliers. I ended up on the new supplier channel, as it were, so some of the things that They also taught like Crunch, for example, which is their database. I didn't learn about, but I'm guessing since none of you are, I know we've got one who's gonna watch the webinar has got a listing, but we'll cover off what you can do to grow the business as well. So don't worry, we will get into it. So what are we gonna do today? As I say, I've got an hour and 15. So I'm gonna go through this. If you've got burning questions, there's not too many of you, I'm quite happy happy to answer. If it gets into too much depth, I'm going to have to park it and come back to you just so that we stay on track. So, but if you do suddenly go, I really want to know this, just unmute yourself and shout, or I can see the chat now, so stick something in the chat if you've got any questions. So first of all, why Ocado? So we're going to talk about that and I'll give you some of the reasons Ocado think you should be working with Ocado. Then we'll go through the checklist. So I know one of you has already said, you know, you're not SALSA accredited yet. really critical, but I'm also going to tell you some interesting life experience I've had recently from a BRC point of view. And then starting to think about, well, what's your USP? What's your reason to get into OCADO? What do you bring to them? How do you get in? So I've got 2 or 3 different ways of doing it. And then a very brief overview. A couple of you will have seen this kind of what I call my perfect presentation of 6 slides, how to build that proposal. And then we can some questions. So if we get stuck in, this is a bit of a busy slide, but basically ACARO is not surprisingly in growth. The chart on the right-hand side is actually from Kantar. You can go and generate Kantar data if you want it. It's quite useful if you're a bit of a stats boffin like I am. What this is actually showing is Oops, sorry, let's just go back. Is the 12 weeks ending sales from now versus the pre-COVID, sorry, during COVID And what that's showing, some interesting little pieces. If you've never seen this data before and you didn't know, Tesco's has got about 27% market share. They've lost a little bit. They were over 30% at one stage, but they got kind of nibbled away at by the Aldi and Lidl discounters. And it's quite interesting because during COVID lockdown, Aldi and Lidl lost market share for the first time. Now they are starting to get on an ascendancy again, and I think we'll carry on seeing that because they're investing a lot of money into new sites. And also they are doing a little bit of online as well. And then the other things that I think are interesting, just for info more than anything, is this little growth down here, symbols and independence. So symbols, obviously Nisa, budgens, etc., and other outlets, things like farm shops, delis, have traditionally been in decline because obviously But people have moved away and gone to other the supermarkets basically. Sorry, I'm trying to move the chart up so I can read anything. Ocado, on the other hand, is showing a bit of growth, but it's not as much as you would think actually. And I went back and did all the 12-week endings through COVID, and at one point they did hit 2% market share, and then it's dropped back slightly. So I was doing a presentation yesterday. I'm quite happy to share it if you want to just let me know. you'd be interested called Beyond Now, which was for the food and drink guys in the Northeast. And we were looking at future trends and it was just quite interesting to see how people are now starting to go back to the grocery stores. And yeah, online's okay, but it's not as good as it was. Anyway, back to this. So 800,000 active customers and they've now got a reach of 75% of the population. So they added Bristol last year, which has given them the South. West. The downside of Bristol for Dee with the chilled products is they are asking for one case minimum order, which is— it's a long way. She produces up in— well, up in Harrogate actually, Manchester, and then coming down to Bristol to deliver a case just doesn't make sense. So we're going to talk about that later, but I just— What are the challenges of Ocado? They claim to have 14% of online sales, which, you know, is an awful lot more than 1.8% of the market. Sales of £2.1 billion, so they've gone up 35%, and now any grocery store that's over a billion is regulated by the Grocery Suppliers Code of Practice. Haven't got time to talk about that today. Again, if you want information on that, I'm quite happy to ping you an email and I can send you links to understand what that means, but it just means they have to basically behave themselves, which is— and not ask for things that are unrealistic and unreasonable, like delivering one case to Bristol. Anyway, there's 58,000 items in their itinerary. They actually, on the call, I think on the day, had quoted 30,000-40,000, so I'm not sure. 58,000 is definitely— I did go back and check it, but anyway. The point is, if you compare it with Aldi and Lidl, and even especially now Sainsbury's and Tesco's are taking out volume, they're much more open to challenger brands. They're much more open to the smaller guys. They're not gonna have to take someone else off the shelf to— I mean, obviously they do have these picking pods, and if you go onto YouTube, you can watch and I actually do some work for the guys that supply the picking pods as well, bizarrely. But it is fascinating, I find it fascinating to see how it works. But so they do have to have pods, but they can have a lot more pods than obviously on the shelf. The downside of that, of course, is people don't walk down the aisles and have a look at products, but we'll talk about that in more detail later on. As I say, 3 depots at the moment, and they've also got Zoom, which is relatively new, and they're very, again, very proud of this because You can get up to 10,000— sorry, 10,000 items for a £15 minimum charge in 60 minutes. I put in a couple of postcodes yesterday just to see where they were, and I couldn't get a delivery. Obviously not— well, because I— in case you don't know, I live in South France, but I couldn't get them to come here, but I couldn't get them to go into— I think they're probably London-based. They are planning to bring on, I think, another 15 15 hubs. So it's of interest. I don't think any of us challenger brands are really going to be on there. I did have a look at who's in and they do tend to be the much bigger brands. So yeah, it's just for interest because that's the way they're going. They're trying to pivot some of their offer. And as I say, they are dedicated to challenger brands. They do want to work with you, but there are some challenges that we have to overcome to do that. Now I'm just going to try and move this chat up, there we go. Okay, is Erith Depot open again? Yes, I think it is now, and if it's not, it's about to be. Okay, so increased— this is a slide from them, so there'll be a few slides that I've screenshotted from their presentation. So what they're saying is They will have 170,000 more audits available for 2021, so they've got more capacity coming on with Bristol, Andover, and Purfleet. There's the geographic reach, so, you know, the bits on the edge they can't do, and they don't seem to go very far into Wales, and they certainly don't go very far into Scotland or Suffolk or Norfolk, but obviously ultimately that's what they want to do. And what will probably happen is that they will put what they call the smaller fulfillment centers over in these other areas, which is great for them because it'll increase their coverage, but as a supplier it's going to be a pain because if you're delivering short-life stock, you could end up having to deliver, as I say, one case A week, or sorry, one case per life. However, they do offer some consolidation and some backhauling, etc. And yeah, I was going to say most of you on here are ambient except for Frozen, which I think could be quite interesting. Okay, so this, this is probably of all the slides they showed the one that I found the most interesting and useful. because I've not actually seen their customers defined before. Tesco's have a great slide like this. Again, if you are interested in going into Tesco's, I do have that lying around somewhere as well. So they've got 6 different customer groups: young families, fresh-focused, convenience— hang on, the chat box is covering it, but I'm sure you can read it— traditional cooks, alternative eaters, alternative eaters, and cupboard stockers. So they are marketing to each of these groups, and to put it into context, the 3 that, that they're focused in on are young families, fresh-focused, and convenience cooks. So young families, obviously time poor, they are buying I don't want to be too stereotypical, but they're buying nappies, they're buying toilet rolls, they're buying chicken nuggets, they're making their life easier by ordering online. Convenience cooks are the people who are more budget conscious, but they might be looking for— so the chilli pastes that we've got here, the frozen foods, they could well be the convenience cooks. And then for the majority of my clients, and you guys, it's going to be the Fresh Focus. So these are people who are passionate about paying a premium for quality. They are going to be looking for newness, exciting things, and as you can see, they are the 3rd biggest category. So Convenience Cooks are the biggest, and then Young Families in Fresh Focus, and then the others come along. So The importance of that slide is key because when you're putting together a selling proposition for Ocado or anybody really, you need to speak their language. And now you've got that piece of information, you can take your customer avatar and overlay it onto that and say, well, actually we are targeting, you know, with the Rootles, are we targeting young families? Because, you know, they want some snacks, they want healthy snacks. Or are you then focusing on the young folk— sorry, the fresh focus? So think it through. Kevin's asking, are soft drinks a big category for Ocado? I honestly don't know. One of the questions, one of the things that I haven't seen is a split by category, and you might get it if you go on the grocer reports. I know they've just produced a soft drinks one. If you subscribe to the grocer, great. Again, Please email me because I'm probably going to lose all these chats. So if you if you want slide packs, you want more information, just email me. Kevin, if you are a Grocer subscriber, go and have a look at their category reports. They might pick up Ocado. The problem is that as you go down into some of the smaller categories, not that soft drinks is a small category, Ocado doesn't show so well. The only thing other thing I would say about soft drinks is that it's dominated by people with lots of money. So the likes of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Pepsi have got lots of cash to spend. And they did highlight, and I'm not sure if it was on this presentation, but I'm sure it was, one of the speakers said, if you're in a category, and ice cream was one that they cited, where you've got the Unilevers and the Nestlé and the big boys who've got lots of cash to spend, it's very, very difficult. And there's 385 ice cream SKUs. That's a lot. I was building something for someone the other day. It's quite hard to stand out. And one of the things that we're gonna talk a lot about today is how do you stand out, because that's gonna be the key. So yes, I suspect soft drinks are a reasonable size category for them, probably for the young families and people who want to just have a lot of stuff delivered, but it's gonna be a tough one. Okay. So as I say, there are problems, challenges with Ocado. I think I— if you're on my newsletter, I probably said to you that I've got 3 clients who deal with Ocado at the moment that I kind of would highlight. One's doing £6,000 a year, one's doing about £50,000, and another's doing £170,000. And each of them have got their different challenges and reasons for that, but it's just an interesting point that for some people it works and they fly, and for some it doesn't. And I think I said at the beginning I had some issues around Ocado last year, and I did— I was watching a lot of businesses putting a lot of cash in and not getting a lot out of it. But having said that, I am now seeing businesses that are doing well, so I think it's understanding that marketing through Ocado is a very, very different animal. And I've kind of put 3 things on there. I've gone on enough about the minimum case per depot. I'm not bitter about it, but yes, we've spent a lot of time trying to negotiate that for a client. Cash flow, settlement terms, 60 days. Obviously with Ocado you can factor that. However, you know, it's still a long time to wait for your cash and you do need deep pockets because as I was saying, if you want to stand out, you need to be seen. And we're going to talk about how you get to be seen and the way that you get to the top of the search engine in a minute, but I've just sort of screenshotted this. This is the front page, okay, when I went into Ocado a couple of days ago when I put this together. And what I thought was interesting is who's there. So Jude's Lollies are there, you've got the M&S product, and they're— I think they're both M&S products. Jude's turns up again. I reckon Jude's has put some cash in here because Jude's turn up on pretty much every single slide, and they were also shortlisted in Rising Stars as well. I don't— can't remember whether they won, I don't think they did. So yeah, it's not all plain sailing, and the other thing I would say in Ocado's favour, having done, as I say, quite a lot of work with frozen food and ice cream brands and other things. They give you the opportunity to distribute frozen food a lot more easily than if you're doing it for yourself. And, you know, they give you 75% geographic reach, which is good and useful. So there's pros and cons, but you know, I'm assuming you guys want to go into Ocado because otherwise you wouldn't be here, but I just, you know, be warned. So how do you get to the top of the list? So again, you'll notice these are Ocado's slides. So the holy grail on Ocado is to get in somebody's favourites, because once you're in the favourites, The system automatically reminds you that those are the products that you want to buy and you will buy. And I honestly, I can't remember the statistics, but it's a huge percentage of people once it's in the basket or you've been in the basket before and you're in a favorite, you are going to order again and your customers are going to afford to buy again and again and again, which is why the client who's doing £170,000, he didn't start at £170,000. I've been working with him for 3 years on and off, and it's grown. So, and as, as you know, Ocado grew and obviously lockdown last year, more and more people put it into his basket. So you almost get this kind of snowball effect. But basically Ocado decides, I mean, what is a favourite. So it's determined by how often, how often you purchase and whether you have just purchased. And there are different gifts and coupon sales that can be added to customer favourites as well, so you can tailor what people do by offering them things. So if— I don't know, I'm assuming most of you have ordered an Ocado delivery. If you haven't and you don't live in the outer sides of the UK, I really would recommend you do it because then you'll have a good experience of how it works. But at the end, they spend quite a lot of time trying to get you to buy some more stuff. And coupons are a really great way actually of getting people to put you in the basket. And those are not stupidly expensive. We can come on to that. So how do you encourage trial? So people are more likely to test new products. So when you're launched, Ocado will put you up at the top of the list and give you a chance, and they'll do a flash with new on it. So that's, that's a good thing to start with. They are being very much more targeted now, so if you are an early adopter, then you're more likely to see new products than if you're somebody who buys the same thing every week. These are lots of different things that you can get involved with. So coupons is one, as I've talked about. Recipes can be really great if that's relevant to your category, and you'd be amazed at what people have recipes. So don't think, oh well, you know, I make a— I don't know, chili. I mean, the chili paste is a really good example of working, but Rootles, are you going to do recipes Yeah, you could do, you could do sundaes and things, so there's always an opportunity. Back of pack is really key, people like to see what's on the back of pack, they do read the information. Aisles and events, so the one that I showed you before, the summer one, that's an event. Yeah, everyone loves a cocktail, absolutely Ashley, you would be a prime candidate for doing recipes and they do work as well and they do bring people because all the time what you're trying to do is bring people people to the brand to buy it and get it into the favorites. That's your kind of focus. And then other things are offer pages, favorites pages, as I say, the checkout walk, which can go on for a long time. And then there is actually organic searching as well. Let us not— so Stephen's asking, does Does recipes cover serving suggestions? Yes, you could do that. So long as it creates interest for your brand and brings people to the brand, absolutely. Organic searches, one of the things that you do need to think about is how do you, how are you tagged? So some of you will be really obvious. And some of you might not be, and I'm trying to think of the one, the guys that I've seen on the list. Stephen, you might be a good example actually of where do you sit. I know you've got your pies, but you also got your free-from potato-based vegetarian-based products. Where would they sit? Do they sit in a side dish section? Do they sit in ready meals? Do they sit in— Potato products, I don't know, and that's something that you'd probably want to work on. Chili paste's probably more obvious. Rum, Stephen, you're not sure either, we can talk about it separately, but it is an interesting one. Rose has got a recipe book already, so that— or she's working on it, well, that's really great because you'll have lots of really good photography to put into it. So this is the the sequence of events. So as I say, your marketing objective is to be found, and this is basically showing that paid media is at the front. So you can be paid to be featured and it costs money, and there is an Ocado rate card. I have to be honest, I ignore it because if you actually read it, you'll actually probably not apply to Ocado because it's ridiculously large amounts of money, which is why I say for people who are maybe in chocolate or ice cream or soft drinks. Those guys have got a lot of money, so they're going to buy up all these spaces. Having said that, I was having a look at Peanut Butter today. Man Alive have got a really nice banner in there, so they've, you know, they've probably put a bit of a contribution in there. But for most of the guys that are on here that I know, of you that I know, you probably aren't going to be buying banners at this stage because you're going to be needing to put in probably £10,000-£15,000. Having said that, don't feel downheartened because yes, the next thing that comes along after paid media obviously is the customers' favourites, and if you're new you're not going to be in the customers' favourites. But after that it gets more interesting. So they put offers in at the top and they put newness. So we'll come on and look at a plan, a kind of my proposed marketing plan in a minute, which will give you an idea of how you can get up to the top for a while, but it does take time. Okay, so let's move off a little bit for a second away from marketing and think, are you technically ready for Ocado? So has everybody got salsa here, just out of interest? Yes, okay, so we've got some Got some yeses coming through. This is what you have to answer to get into Ocado from a technical point of view. So they will ask, they will send you a safety and legal questionnaire, they will want to see accreditation. David, what grade of BRC have you got, just out of interest? I'm going to come on to that in a second. A. A, that's fine. Have you got a supplier recall procedure? What's the storage and segregation? And I can't actually read the one underneath it, but I didn't understand it anyway. I think it's ignitables and something else. So anyway, those are the policies that they are interested in that you're going to have to look at before they will list you. And when you go online, if you decide— and we'll talk about that in a minute— to apply online to Ocado, they will not allow you to apply without a Salsa or a BRC accreditation certificate, and they're really strict about it because I tried to do it yesterday without and it wouldn't let me. So this is the slide that they showed. The new news for me is around BRC because— so if we start over on the left-hand side, they want to see support small businesses, so they are prepared to accept BRC Start, which is actually new to me. I've not come across BRC Start before, but it's there as an opportunity, and obviously they accept SALSA. They will also accept BRC, however they will not accept a BRC Grade B. And I've just been through a situation with them where we have changed the range. So we've been in there for a while, we changed the range, we proposed a new product, they love it, we've put all the promotional proposals in, it's all agreed. And then they went, oh, we've not got your BRC certificate, can you just send us the updated version? And the contract manufacturer had dropped to a B, and they went, nah, we not— that That's not acceptable. We are not— now they haven't delisted us, and we're now in negotiation for a holding pattern. What's the difference between a Grade A and a Grade B? Yeah, they go— so it's A, it's AA, B, C. I think you can get a D before you fail, actually. But I wasn't aware of it, and I actually had to ring up a friend of mine who deals with them quite a lot, and I said, is this true? And he went, Yeah, it's tripped me up a couple of times as well. So Helen, have you got BRC? I can't remember, you must have. Well, we've got SALSA in the bakery, but it's being made by a manufacturer now and they've got BRC, but it's international, so I don't know if they accept international. They will accept international if you go on to the— oh God, what's it— the GFSI website. Right. It will tell you what the equivalent international accreditations are. I think it's still BRC, but it's, um, the certificates I've got say BRC, but it just looks like a different logo, that's all. Right, but as I say, B, um, yeah, I, I was really shocked, I have to be honest, um, but there we go, it is what it is. But, but for me, being a bit of a gambling girl, if I was going to put an accreditation on my factory, I'd go for for SALSA rather than BRC because it's a lot easier. The only people who are really going to insist on BRC I think are things like British Airways and the travel industry and they're not really doing anything anyway. So anyway, right, so where do you start? How are you actually going to approach them? The first thing I really think you need to think about, and I was talking about obviously peanut butter, is what is your USP? The thing is when you go onto the Ocado website you will go, oh my goodness, There's all these products that are like mine. And I think that the critical point is to draw out, look at all these products and start to note down. And you may already know this, and I'm not being disrespectful, but most of my clients, when we do this, and even I struggle to do this because you've got, I'm doing some work with Heart and Soul at the moment, peanut butter, and I'm looking at it and we're going, right, well, what's the point of difference? How do you stand out to Man alive? Well, we've got this and we've got that. I'm like, right, okay, how can we put that into a gap analysis that shows that there is a real gap in the marketplace and it's a decent size gap? So thinking about what's your point of difference and also what's the why that's a big enough why as well, because, you know, you might have something that's perfect for vegans, that's organic, but it's actually £15 and the market price is £1. It's certainly got a point of difference, and I know with most of your products that's not the case, but you have to have something that's marketable as well as logical, because although I'm not aware that Ocado have a one-in-one-out policy, they've never talked about it, you still need to recognise that they've got lots of people banging on their door, so you need to stand out. And, you know, this is an example. I've built a lot of these, and anyone who's listened to me talk previously will probably have seen one of these gap analysis slides. So the whole point of this is to say, okay, what's the retailer got at the moment? And this happens— I did build this one for Ocado. Over here we've got your standards, you've got Tesco's, Skippy, and Sumpat. They've all got palm oil in and sugar, and quite nice actually. Black Cat's full of sugar. And then down here you've got more savory products, no palm oil, but fairly mass market. And then over here you've got the more premium peanut butters. And then this product that we're putting forward and we're saying, look, you know, it's not sweetened with sugar. it's got yacon syrup, which is a superfood, it's got a GI of 1, so it's, you know, it's a really interesting product. And obviously I'd put more information on that, this is just to sort of start us off. And what we've, as I say, we kicked around a lot of different questions around peanut butter. What are the key reasons why someone wants to buy peanut butter? You know, do you have an axis about price? Do you have an axis about sweet savour, and that's what we've actually come up with. But it's— this is, for me, this is the critical piece of the jigsaw, because once you know what your USP and your why in relation to Ocado, not in relation to the whole world, but in relation to Ocado, you can start to build the rest of your sales presentation, and it kind of tends to fall into place to some extent. Okay, so we've talked about a USP. What else are you going to bring to Ocado? So all of the retailers are really risk-averse at the moment, so they want to know what you're going to bring for them. So for example, why is your category of interest? And I can write you a story for any of these. It's in growth, okay, so if you take for example plant-based meat substitutes, it's in massive growth, therefore there is a need for them to have more products within that category, so it's in growth, that's great, happy days. It's a new category, this is a really tough one, I know a lot of people who I talk to go, I've got this, you know, this product and just doesn't exist in any format, that's one of the hardest categories to break Because the store, the buyer doesn't know necessarily where it falls, or you don't, you know, if— and the example I use actually, which is old now, but breakfast biscuits. When breakfast biscuits like Belvita was first launched, people didn't know where to put them. The retailer was like, well, are they a breakfast cereal bar thing, or are they a biscuit? And they even used to put it on their advertising. It's, you know, merchandise in the breakfast aisle, but it took quite a lot of education. So new is a difficult one. Stagnant or declining categories are interesting. So 2 of the most successful challenger brands, Fever Tree and Pip Nut, both came into stagnant areas that were dominated by a brand. So some part obviously in peanut butter and Schweppes for Fever Tree. And it was a declining category and it needed stimulation, it needed a kick up the backside. So you can use any of those 3 to actually build a category story. But what you want to be able to do is to say, look, at the end of the day, I'm going to bring you more cash, More profit, more customers. That's what they're interested in. So those customers will then buy more stuff. So the next part of it is, so you know, you start your umbrella. Why is your area, your market in growth, stagnant? You know, why is your category an opportunity? Then how are you going to create the category growth and significant category growth because of your innovative USP? So, you know, if we go back to the heart and soul example, nobody really knows what— I didn't know, actually, please forgive me if you all right now, well, you all knew what yacon syrup was. I don't know what yacon syrup is. I think it's a really interesting opportunity for them to promote. But, you know, they might go, well, we don't really know what yacon syrup is, but actually we really like the taste and taste is really key. And, you know, so how are we gonna create a significant piece of category growth with your USP? So that's, that's the next one. Then who are you going to bring to the site? So have you got a tribe? And I, I get really frustrated with, with customers, sorry, clients who come and talk to me. And I was talking to one the other day and he's, he's got an amazing brand and, you know, it's, it's about to launch probably in the next 3, 3 months. And I'm like, right, you need to start building your tribe. You've got to get on Instagram. Let's get some Facebook interests. Let's, you know, And he's like, well, I haven't got a point, there's no point because I haven't got any sales yet. And I'm like, but you need to build a tribe, you need to think about it's not just selling your product, it's selling the essence of what you're trying to achieve. So if you've only got 5 followers on all of the social media, if I was a buyer, I'd be like, well, are you really serious about this? I'm sure there's always going to be an exception to the rule, but for the majority of people, I think you need to be bringing a tribe. What's the range? So I remember somebody who had, was it 12 months of the year? I think it was like a 12 months of the year tea or something. And I was like, oh no, it was star signs. That's right. Product for star signs. Well, there's 12, I think there's 12, forgive me, correct me if I'm wrong, 12 star signs, so the retailer would have to launch 12 products. That's not going to be very feasible unless you've got loads and loads of money and you can prove that it's going to work. So what is the range of products that you've got, what are the best sellers and what do you think is best going to work for Ocado? And that sort of quite swiftly followed up to what's the commercial deal. Now, you know, again, if you know me, I am obsessed with getting you guys to make money, so that should have been probably point number 1, but it's point number 5 because that's the order of which you would probably present it. But thinking around what's the commercial deal, and we'll come on to this in a couple of slides' time, but what's your cost price? What's your promo promotion? What's your implement— marketing implementation plan. How are you going to get into those favourites? And then, you know, what are you bringing to Ocado? The hygiene factors. So this is more, more about qualifying you to be part of Ocado. So as we've talked about accreditation, can you get it there? I've been in situations in the past where we've agreed to deliver it— sorry, we've agreed a deal and then we've discovered it's just way too expensive because we can't actually get it to there and that can be an issue. What are your minimum order quantities? Have you got funding behind you? So have you got enough money to do what it's going to take to kickstart the brand into Ocado and get into those favourites on a decent level? Just one other point to make, although I haven't— I didn't hear it at all on the day last week, They used to say that to keep your space you need to turn over £50,000. As I say, this time last year they were saying that and I was really dubious and I didn't know many people who'd achieved it. Now I do, so you know, it is doable but you have to work at it. So again, some of you who've worked with me in the past will have seen this. I do have a spreadsheet. This is a very simplified version, but I have a more sophisticated one that I'm quite happy to send over to you if you want it, which basically helps you to work out what your margins are going to be. On average, they ask for 40%— Freudian slip trying to say 50% there. Who's just asked me for 55%? Vegan Kind, actually supermarket, just asked for 55% from a client. That's where I'm Getting a little bit concerned, so it will work out. So you put your cost price in, you put the retail price in, and what it work, and you work out what margin you want to give. So if it's 40%, it will calculate it, and then you stick in your volumes, and it'll work out your cash profit. And then the second piece is to say, okay, what am I going to do if I do a promotion? So this is a £3 product, and we're going to offer save a pound. The moment you do that, it's going to go at the top of your favorites. Happy days. And I've put a 50% sales uplift, whether that's realistic or not. We've tended to see about 20%, but if it's a new product, you probably would. So the key thing to say is the retailer Ocado is going to want to maintain their margin, which means they keep the same margin, they don't care about yours. And in this particular example where previously the margins were pretty healthy, 33%, 38%, and 28%, different probably costed products, look what happens here. And so you can then see what's the implication for your cash profit. And the updated one I have now combines the 2, so you can work out if you're on promotion, say, for a quarter of the year or a third of the year, it will then work out your average margin, your average profit, which is quite useful. So that's up to take up. Yes. Yes, you can have an updated version, Helen. Please email me so I don't forget. I might just send it all to you all actually. Okay, so busy slide again, so forgive me. Let's start on the left-hand side. Promotional plan. This is a sort of basic one that I tend to use, and this is based on a £3 product. Sorry, is it based on a £3 product? I think it might be based on £2 products actually. So first one, money off. So what you want to do to start with is you want to get people to trial. So you offer money off and coupons. Then you do a multi-buy, which gets the people who have put it in their favorites to buy some more, because now they know they like it, they can buy some more. Then you have base. So that's actually a breathing month where you don't promote. However, you probably wouldn't want to be idle at this stage because you're still in the growth phase. So then you can start doing things like star reviews. So basically, if you're not aware of what this means, you pay them £500 per product and they send it to 50 people and they do reviews. Again, bit cynical, I know people who don't want to do that. The person I mentioned to you who's turning over £6,000 a year, has 2 reviews, and I think that's quite significant. I have pointed that out. Then you go back to stimulate trial again, so 50p off. Then we might do a multi-buy, or you might do a multi-buy with someone else in collaboration, and Ocado encourage that as well. So if you've got a product like a ready meal, and I've done it with ready meals, and you want to promote an ice cream alongside it, you can do that. You have to talk to the the supplier of the ice cream, then you go to your buyer at Ocado and they will do that for you, which I think is really quite a good idea. And then, as I say, you then go back to base. So that's kind of a 6-month plan. As I say, reviews maketh the man. People like to follow other people, so therefore if you've got no reviews or there's some really rubbish ones, you're not gonna do very well. And then this spreadsheet also works out, again, I've got it covered by my chat so I can watch you, but you can put in, okay, I'm gonna spend £5,000 on a banner and I'm gonna do these recipes and I'm gonna do these samples, so my total investment is this, and it then works out actually how many weeks of the year are you gonna have to work for that, which I think is quite valuable. No, they don't have 2 reviews off Spending £500, they refused to pay the £500. Having said that, if you've got lots of mates on Ocado, you just go, would you mind buying that and doing a review? It's perfectly simple. And, you know, hopefully your friends aren't going to ask you for £50, but, you know, you could probably offer them £30 or something. Okay, so how are we going to get— how are we doing for time? Yeah, I'm running out of time because I'm talking too much. How are we going to get the buyer meeting? I don't think this is in the slightest bit helpful to get a buyer meeting, but I'm going to put it up there anyway just for the sheer fun of it. They shared this with us. I can't imagine— so we've got a drinks guy here today, haven't we— that Sarah Dawson is going to respond if you email her. Having said that, she might do. The purpose of showing you this is actually to show you what the buying groups are so you can work out where you sit. There are some oddities though because I know that I've been talking to frozen about a dessert product and that seems to straddle both frozen and chilled, so I think it's just sort of there's some oddities in there. Desserts I think sits in the frozen gig, but that gives you An idea of who to target. Will I sit in the food cupboard or home cook and dine? I would say, Rose, with chilli, you'd probably sit in the food cupboard. I'm pretty sure that is where pastes sit. Okay, so this is my old-fashioned way of doing it. Direct mail to the buyer. I have to be honest, I've tried it a couple of times recently and it's not working. I have done it a couple of times previously and it did, so it's worth a go. There's 2 ways you can do it to find the buyer: Google, and I would recommend you do Google first rather than LinkedIn because Google just seems to be a better search engine than LinkedIn's own search engine, And I did these yesterday, day before yesterday, for Confectionery Buyer, and this is what I got back from both of them. Kerry Barker definitely is the buying manager for frozen and desserts. I know that's to be true because I've dealt with her. The other guys I don't know, but it is interesting to see both sides of the coin. Again, I'm trying to remember. If you email me, I'll send you the composition for Ocado. I think it's full name, so keith.clydesdale@ocado.com, but I'll just look that up for you. So that's one way of doing it, you can drop an email into them and, you know, I'll share with you these slides so you can have a look at it. But if— Would Laura Henderson or Kerry Barker do frozen ready meals? Jess, I will let you know Because I do, I do know, or I can certainly find out for you. Bear with. So yes, the other thing, if you're on the mailing list, which I think most of you are, sent out a mailing list, an email this morning talking about Crystal Knows. Crystal Knows basically profiles LinkedIn people and will tell you what personality they have. I love it. I'm so addicted to it. I actually do pay for it, but you can have 10 free goes. And then if you do pay for it, it's about £29 a month, which you probably don't want to pay. But so don't profile all your friends and your work colleagues first, just save it for profiling buyers. And basically what it will tell you is what kind of personality do they have. So are they someone like me who wants to get straight to the point, send me 3 sentences and that's quite enough, or are they actually a blue And they want loads and loads of detail and numbers, etc. So that's a really top tip to tailor it. Think about what the why is. Write, you know, a brief message. So brief intro, show-stopping facts, why you, and then remember to request an action. And the point of the email is to get a meeting or to send them some samples, whichever one you want to do. And then Look at what you've written and think about a snappy headline because, and I can't stress enough actually, HubSpot, I use HubSpot so much for a lot of my material. If you Google into HubSpot at the moment, I think they've got something on email titles which is really good, so have a look at that. So that's method 1. Method 2 is apply online. This is the method that they are us to do. So in theory, this is the one that works, and I was talking to someone a couple of days ago who was on the Rising Stars gig last week, and she got in this way. So it does work sometimes. So I've been through it, and I've just picked out what I think are the key pieces for you to, to know what you're going to have to prepare. It's relatively straightforward. The 2 pieces which for me are the critical bits and all the stuff we've talked about of USP and fit, etc., will go here. There's 2 questions: please give us a brief description of your company, and you can upload a relevant brochure and presentation. So, you know, this is your 30-second elevator pitch. This is where you're going to go in and you're going to go bang, this is why you need my product. Because frankly, they probably get 100 of these and they're going to run their eye down them and go, oh no, no, oh, that looks interesting, I'll have a look at the presentation. Don't rely on your presentation because it's not going to be sufficient, I don't think. And then give us a brief description of your product or your range. That's straightforward. I wouldn't do anything particularly fancy there. The next one is what I call your basics, so company details, the website, etc. Make sure that your website is relatively decent. You don't have to spend millions of pounds on a website, but at least make sure it's professional and all the links work, especially to Insta and Facebook, because I know some guys I've been on recently and they've not, they haven't linked up, and that's a bit interesting. And also, I don't, by the way, I'm not being paid by LinkedIn to promote LinkedIn, but it's easy to be in my bonnet. I did this talk yesterday and there must have been 20, 30 people on the gig, and I went through all their websites, not one of them had a link through to LinkedIn. They had Facebook and Insta and maybe Twitter. My point is LinkedIn is another way to promote both you as an individual and also your company page. So enough said. Section 3, you cannot get past this unless you upload your certificate, and I don't think you can get past it if you don't agree to delivering one case per depot. You're going to have to agree to it, and then if it a problem, negotiate your way out of it. And then they ask you to read the supplier manual and agree to the supply requirements. Submit and wait. And they are saying they're taking 6 weeks— sorry, 8 weeks to process. I have applied about 6 weeks ago, not heard anything. So that's the next way of doing it. And then pitching events, and I have to be honest, this is how I have got results. So there's a couple here. Bread and Jam, which I think most of you know about, I'm sure. Very good. That's how we got Foddy. We've got both Costco and Ocado out of Bread and Jam. Having said that, we presented both Costco and Ocado in 2018. And we got the Ocado listing, finally went live December 19th, and Costco went live last month. That's how long it took us. There is a food exchange, so Enterprise Nation, for those of you aware, there is another gig on the 28th of May. They are doing a pitch, but it certainly isn't to Ocado, but I'm just going to promote it. I am actually going to speak. At the end of it as well. I'm not telling you for that reason, but I think it's £24. They're really good events. I've done them now for several years and they are worth going along to. Virgin, we did last year doing business with big business and we had a lot of retailers in. Again, we did have Ocado actually. Have a look at that. And then the other one is Product Guru. I don't know if any of you have tried that either. I did do it this week for a client and it wasn't very good. But then I know someone else who's had some really good leads. So, you know, pays your money, takes your choice. You pay more money to Product Guru. Stephen, you're doing Product Guru. Yeah. The board game. And let me send you, I've got the book. Okay, we've got quite a few Product Guru pitches. I might do a session on how to do a lightning pitch actually, because I think it's quite interesting if people are interested. I do have the mini ebook which I've put together, which again, if you're— I know you guys are subscribers, you can download. There's a link at the bottom of my newsletter to download the ebook, which gives you a guide to how to do a 10-minute pitch. What is they don't reply? That's some good English. What if they don't reply? What did we do with Costco, actually. They they didn't reply. They didn't reply. Basically, we just kept on going. So once we had the buyer, we just kept following up. Not are you going to taste my product? Do you want something? Da da da da da. What they we actually did was just keep giving them new new news. So Stephen, for example, has won an award. Congratulations, by the way. I would, if I'd already approached the buyer, I'd be sending that saying, look, we've just won an award, and you just keep that relationship. And we did this with Costco, drip feeding once every month, 6 weeks, and then this January I think I sent him an email saying, oh, we're launching this new product. He wrote back and the rest unfortunately is history. But yeah, A couple of years. Do ring. I rang, who did I ring the other day? Planet Organic. She sounded really surprised to hear from me, which made me think, hmm, that's interesting, she doesn't get many calls. So that's a top tip. She was absolutely lovely and she took— I didn't get a listing, by the way, but she was absolutely lovely and she did give me some useful information. Don't become a stalker and do just keep following it up. Don't chase, just try and engage. And then just finally, I've used this slide before but it is one of my favourite slides about types of retail buyers. They're not all horrible honestly. And then as I say, this pulls everything I said together really in terms of how do you pull together the perfect presentation, and I will share this with you if you haven't already got it. Some of you I know will have it. So first slide, what's the category? Why is your category so great? And what's the future? Why is it growing or stagnating or doing whatever it is? Information around reinforcing that. Where's the gap? So where is Accordo's gap, which is This is the slide you've already seen. Why is your brand— so what's your USP that is relevant? What's the benefits? Where's the proof? I think that's one thing we haven't really spoken a lot about, but what's your social proof? So have you got direct-to-consumer sales? Do you sell shedloads out of your local delis? Have you got 10,000 followers on Facebook? Have you done some research which shows that Ocado and Viper is something that I've used in the past where you can ask people whether they would buy the product and you can cut it down to Ocado? And then what's the size of the prize in terms of what are the potential sales? I wouldn't tell Ocado how to suck eggs, but I would certainly say, you know, this is the potential that we've got, what are we bringing, and what's the deal? I'm not a great fan, as a lot of you will know, of putting commercials in presentations because I think it depends on the retailer and what they're asking for. But I would certainly put some idea of price and a rough idea of margin and put a caveat that it's based on volumes and obviously the promotional strategy. Put something in about what you're going to do to bring people to the party, and then the final slide is what I call the basics, the hygiene factor. And this is one that I've done recently for unrefined bars to give you an idea. So, you know, these are the key category trends that are important. So growth of plant-based, well-being, and the move away from sugar. What she makes actually are flapjacks and tiffin bars. This is showing that, you know, We love cake and biscuits, so can you have your cake and eat it too? This is the product. This is the gap. Look at all these products over here. There's nothing over here, and this is what we would do for a launch. And I've taken out the commercial slide because I don't think it should be shared. And then this is another slide from Ocado. This is the listing process. I don't think it's that exciting actually, but yes. Make sure that you can supply them commercially, make— do a commercial negotiation on trading terms. You then sort out, you set up the line, they look at all the technical side, they approve it, and then they will set up the orders. So that's relatively straightforward. So what do you do next? Do your research, write your presentation and your email, Contact them, follow up. If you're doing Product Guru and you get Ocado on there, happy days. You will at least get the buyer's name so you know who to talk to. Have that meeting, negotiate. There's always a deal to be done on marketing, which is why I don't ever share the rate card, because otherwise it's going to blow your mind. Get the listing and then work out how you're going to grow that business by getting into the favorites. If I can help you in any way, that would be great. I do offer a power hour. I know, I think a couple of you have done power hours with me in the past. This is an Ocado-specific one, but it's the same principles. I charge £200 and we get stuck into actually working out what the USP is, putting the presentation together and thinking through how you can market the products as well. Okay, I am aware that I've gone 2 minutes over time, but I have a little bit of time Time for questions if anyone else would like to ask some. And I'm going to stop sharing. I will share the presentation with you. Everybody's gone deathly quiet. Helen, are you talking or are you just in the middle of my screen? Okay. What was the partner promotion with other brands? Okay, so what we've done in the past is, for example, what do we do? Yi Kuan Ice Cream, so she makes quite oriental East meets West fusion flavours, and we tied up with a sushi company. We also tied up with a ready meals business with another ice cream, with a lolly bar, lolly So basically you can do it one of two ways. So with Case World Sausages, I've actually asked the buyer if we can tie up, and I've identified some South African brands that we'd like to work with, and we've spoken to the buyer, and that's not been very good, useful actually. So the ones that I've actually got off the ground is where I've probably probably know the person who runs the business and spoken to them and said, look, you know, we've got ice cream, would you— you've got ready meals, would you like to do a deal? And then between you, you work out what the deal will be. Obviously you've got to work out a deal that's appealing to the customer and also something that's going to appeal to Ocado on a money basis, but that's the basis of how you do a partner promotion and then Ocado on their promotional plan planner will help you set that up, so that's the implementation. What would your recommendations and advice be for scaling strategies? I think it goes back to getting things into the basket to start with and establishing that decent rate of sale and also getting as much access. I have to be honest, I don't know how much they're charging for data, but if you can buy one-off data to see how it's doing. And if we've— so for Dee, for example, with Kay's Woofs, we've got one dog product. So what we're now doing, which is why it all came about with Grade A and Grade B, we're taking— we're going to take the dog out and we're going to put something else in which we think will sell a lot better. And use your buyers because they are actually really helpful. They're nice people. Cardo buyers. So use them to try and work out. So if you've got 3 products and 2 are flying and one's not, think about what else could you bring in. And then, so for example, Ice Kitchen, who make ice lollies, have actually just launched a range of frozen Thai cooking products, which is an amazing— I mean, just an amazing pivot, but also amazing product. and they've got those listed, so that's growing their business because then of course they will promote Ice Kitchen as an overall piece. So those would be my recommendations: get into favourites first, take out any dogs, and as it's getting more successful, I would give it probably 3 to 6 months to bed in, then go back and say you'd like to do more and You've got to speculate to accumulate, I'm afraid. So, you know, Eynes Kitchen are putting in quite a lot of cash now to get up the search engine, but it does seem to be working. My production unit is home-based. Can I get a SALSA accreditation? I don't know. It's not my area of expertise. I would definitely get yourself onto Melanie Loader's site, Frog Hop. Because I'm pretty sure she's got that information on there, or get in touch with the Salsa Boys, actually on their website, and that will give you an idea. Is there a recommended length for a pitch deck? Yeah, for me about 2 slides because I get bored really easily, for a blue personality 25 and some appendices. I think in these days I'm being a bit facetious, but probably no more than 6, 7 slides. And certainly for Product Guru, they don't allow you to— well, they do allow you to use slides, but they recommend you don't use slides. So yeah, Product Guru is lightning pitches, 7 minutes, and the recommended length of that presentation is 3 to 5. So I think you can get your key points across in that. You don't need it that long. Yasmeen, how do you book a power hour with me and is it inclusive of VAT? Yes, it is inclusive of VAT and you can book on that link and I will send a link to everyone with all the other bits and bobs that I keep mentioning and if I forget something, which I'm bound to do, please let me know and I will send it to you but I will send you the link. What is a reasonable marketing budget? £5,000 is a figure that Ocado like to talk about, depending on how many products you have. You start doing the maths, 3 SKUs, £500 a pop for product reviews, a couple of recipes, and it's gonna be pretty easy to get up to £500— sorry, £5,000. Having said that, they won't ask you necessarily for that, but I think that's what you need to get your head around. Launching mayo, do we launch it at the same time? Possibly, depends if you've got an established customer base and if it's not going to confuse the buyer because it may well be 2 different buyers, condiments and cooking pastes. Any guidance on rate of sale? Oh my goodness, How long is a piece of string? Bricks and mortar, 6 to 8 products per store per week. It depends on the category. Frozen, yeah, you're probably right. That's probably accurate for frozen. I don't know is the honest answer. As I say, £50,000 a year is what they target. That's a successful SKU, and if you drop below that, they start getting angsty. So that will give you an idea of rate of sale, but it does vary tremendously whether you're on promotion, whether you've been promoted, etc., etc. But I guess that's an idea. David, presentation deck size, less is definitely more. Yeah, absolutely. I do believe that. They see so many presentations, for goodness sake. I mean, it's piquing their interest, and one of the things that, I mean, I'm sure you guys if you're going to do Product Guru, I watched their video earlier this week and what they're saying is go in with a headline and I think you do need when you're doing a presentation to go in with something that really catches the eye. You know, the example what we used which obviously didn't work because we've not actually been asked for samples but I think we had the wrong buyers was We're currently shipping literally pallet loads to Costco of Beauvau, and our average rate of sale is 100 per store per week. Now I think that's pretty exceptional, but obviously they weren't that impressed with that. But that's the kind of thing that I would potentially lead in with if I was going to do one of these very sharp 3 to 4, 5 minute pitches. If I'm doing a classic, I've got a meeting with the buyer, I'd probably do something a little bit more standard. So nowadays you're— I mean, when I was doing face-to-face meetings, you'd allow an hour. Now you're lucky if you get half an hour. So, you know, 10 to 15 minutes presentation, 6 to 8 slides is quite enough. So yes. Karen, could I ask something? Sorry, verbally, just because No, of course you can. It'll be easier than trying to write it all down. No bother. Yeah, um, so just really quickly in a nutshell, basically I'm talking to a couple of manufacturers who, um, both seem quite keen, but the difficulty I'm finding is to line both retailers and manufacturer up at the same time. And so for example, with Ocado, like, the manufacturer wants you to have a commitment from a major retailer like Ocado before they'll commit, but Ocado will want a commitment from the manufacturer before they'll commit. How do you kind of navigate that? How do you line them up so they kind of work at the same time? It's easier to— yeah, it's hard with Ocado actually because you've got to cough up the certificate before you— Exactly, that's That's the thing, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, it used to be— what I used to say is it doesn't really matter, just bullshit your way through it, okay? Because you just get— and then you sign the deal. Um, I think you have to sort of sell. I actually have found selling to manufacturers is harder than selling to retailers. So I think everything I've told you today, you probably need to do for the manufacturer in terms of, say, this is the of the prize. These are the— these are what I'm gonna do. This is what I think we'll sell through Ocado. This is what I'm gonna do to promote it. This is how much funding I've got. This is how serious we are. And go in with that and say, look, you know, nobody's gonna be obliged to do anything at this stage because obviously we haven't had the conversation, but give me your certificate. Yeah, or just give me some kind of written sort of, I don't know, something in writing that you can then take to— It's the certificate you need. So I actually have to have the physical certificate? Okay. Yeah, you do. Although to be fair, the system doesn't know you've just uploaded last week's shopping list, but because it's just a PDF, but— I could just upload a Word document saying these people make really nice products, I clean there. Exactly, they said they'll make it for me. Just on that point though, the certificate, does your manufacturer have a website? Because if they do, often they'll have the certificate just on the website somewhere anyway. That's an interesting point. Is it, can you get it through the BRC website at all? I've never tried. Yeah, you might be able to, as I think through CELSA as well actually, if it was CELSA. Yeah, that's another way of doing it. Good top tip, but you do need to upload something if you're going to do it, do the online application. Does that help? Yes. A bit. Kevin, last question. I'm gonna have to go because I've got to go and sort out a slight Tesco problem. How do you answer what are the potential sales? So that's really That's kind of doing the size of the prize piece. So thinking about and knowing the fact that they're looking for £50,000. So think about, you know, if I've got— how would I work it out for a card? If it's £50,000, I'm going to do simple maths here. So if it's £50,000 is their target for the year and your product costs £5, then you've got to sell 10,000. So divide it by 12, which is slightly less than 1,000 a month. I've got to sell 1,000 a month. Do you know what? I've actually got 12,000 followers on Insta and I've got 12,000 on my list, so I think I can definitely get you 1,000 sales a month. Did you follow that? That was very quick. That's my thought. That's how I would probably think it through, but quite happy to— everybody's going to be different, but And then what would I say is the best use of the £5,000? Reviews, reviews and promotions, and if recipes are relevant to you, recipes, and ask them what other lifestyle stuff you can do. So if you're doing soft drinks, what else can we do that's going to raise the profile? And actually ask, because to be honest, every buyer might have a different opinion. So yeah, ask. Don't be afraid to ask buyers questions. We all like to, especially me, pontificate on what we think we know, and buyers are no different. I haven't mentioned awards. Do they impress the buyers? I think you should put awards in if you've got great taste or Scottish, whatever your award was, Scottish Food and drink brand. Sorry, I wasn't belittling it, I just couldn't remember what it is. Yes, absolutely, put awards in, does no harm, and it's just part of the compelling story. What you're, as I say, you're building a compelling story that your product is really fantastic, and don't be afraid to think about the fact, this is going to be my last point I think, that buyers are human and if they, you know, The rule is you need to touch someone 10 to 12 times. If you are— if you think about the buyer as just a normal human being rather than a buyer, if you can touch them 10 times before you approach them, happy days. So for example, and as I say, I keep banging on about the newsletter, but I wrote it all about LinkedIn this morning. If you can tag— if you can write a piece or posts about how great your marketplace is or what you've done or your award, etc., and then you tag the buyer. Don't turn into a stalker, but tag the buyer occasionally. It's going to raise profile. That's my boss. I am going to have to go because my quarter to 2 person is actually ringing me. Please get in touch. I will send you the link to the recording, the slides, the spreadsheet, the link to the Power Hour, and if there's anything else, I promise to send you and I haven't sent it, please would you just message me and I will send that to you as well. And thank you so much for coming along, and just let me know if there's anything else you want to learn about. We can do some other webinars as well, and I think I probably will do a how to do a lightning pitch because I think that's going to be quite key coming up. All right, thanks very much. I will see you all soon. Bye-bye. Bye.