2ND-TIER BRANDS URGED TO PARTNER

JAMES TENSER

NEW YORK -- Second-tier brands need not be boxed out of trade partnering opportunities by the category leaders, said a consultant here. The important thing is to get started.

"I'd say select that first or second partner, it doesn't necessarily have to be the largest retailer," said Richard Puccio, vice president of NEO Inc., a consulting firm based in Shelton, Conn.

Beyond the 20 or so chains often cited as most advanced, he said, "there are probably another 50 trying to get there just like many of us are," he said.

Puccio spoke at Powerful Category Management Initiatives, a conference here sponsored by The Marketing Institute, a division of the Institute for International Research.

"Most manufacturers are trying to identify which retailers are leading-edge, not necessarily the largest accounts. Then they can form customer teams to focus on those retailers," he said.

"It is a two-way learning process. Begin with one or two, learn from that and then expand slowly."

He warned that the choicest partnership opportunities are being rapidly snapped up. "It suggests that you need to get started. Don't stand still. Start somewhere and learn and move forward."

Puccio said that marketers of secondary national brands and regional brands cannot expect to work with the trade in the same way that what he called "destination megabrands," such as Heinz or Nabisco, can.

"The question is what do you do as a manufacturer of some of these other types of brands?" he said. Working with one or more retailer partners who are at similar stages of learning about category management and Efficient Consumer Response is a way to gain knowledge, he suggested.

Puccio said that all brand marketers will succeed best if they understand the ways that category management and ECR are tied together. "Total category management must also link in the ECR piece as to how to eliminate costs. That requires team skills."