IGA FINDS STORE, NATIONAL BRANDS GO TOGETHER

Lucia Moses

CHICAGO -- IGA here plans to develop more private-label/national-brand promotions, encouraged by the results of its first Soup and Sandwich Spectacular last spring, said Jim Collins, national accounts manager in charge of private label.

IGA combines private and national products in its promotions, but this one had an especially strong private-label presence, he said. The Spectacular, which ran for three weeks total in March and April, combined Campbell's Soup with IGA-brand sliced bread, mayonnaise, peanut butter, jam and jelly.

IGA retailers, who participate voluntarily in these promotions, built large displays that were bookended by huge model soup cans.

Campbell's Soup recorded a base sales lift of 48%, Collins said, citing data from ACNielsen, which tracks sales in a sampling of IGA stores. But the big winners were IGA-brand peanut butter, which had a sales lift of 158%, and jam and jelly, which increased 112%.

Jeff Barnes, grocery manager at one-store Porter's IGA in Garrettsville, Ohio, erected a large display at the front of the store and a small one in the rear, to which he added non-sale items such as cheese, ketchup and crackers. All the items sold well, especially the store-brand ones, he said.

The results of the Spectacular convinced Collins that national- and store-brand manufacturers will happily share display space.

"You're getting competitors to line up and work together," he said.

Meanwhile, the IGA will drop its annual Cookie Bonanza promotion, which was hurt by a lack of merchandising tie-in opportunities. Besides milk, retailers had little else to cross promote with the cookies, Collins said.

"I realized, I got to get promotions where you walk the store more," he said.

The Spectacular did that, by encouraging shoppers to pick up other sandwich fixings throughout the store. Vendors, he said, "love the incremental sales that come with this promotion."