ECRM – a missed chance to score

This year’s food retail meeting of ECRM was held in the second week of March in Budapest. Only three Hungarian companies attended the meeting where retailers have the time to listen to potential new suppliers. ECRM is an American company established by. Charlie Bowlus in 1994. Its objective is to develop an effective relationship between suppliers and retailers. 27 retail chains attended the Budapest meeting from Wal Mart to COOP. A room was reserved for suppliers where they could meet a new retailer every 20 minutes. The 20 minute time limit was observed strictly, which still allowed up to 20 meetings to be held in a day. High ranking purchasers were present at the Budapest meeting from the English Wal-Mart subsidiary (Asda), from the Swiss Agenor, the French Intermarché and the German Edeka chains. Visitors from neighbouring countries and Hungarian Tesco, Rewe and Coop also attended. Only Hungarian suppliers were absent. It was interesting to see how little the English or Polish purchasers knew about Hungarian food products, which tells us something about the quality of work done by our commercial attaches. It was also fascinating to hear that Hungarian suppliers usually turn down offers for supplying private labels for the regional market, whereas Slovak and Czech companies are enthusiastic about such deals. Bohdan Spicka, sales director of Ahold from Slovakia: He was looking for trendy products. This was his first ECRM meeting. He knows Hungarian products well. He pointed out that Hungarian wines are often too expensive. At the moment, 80-100 out of their 1,000 wines are Hungarian. Apart form traditional products, he mentioned Vénusz cooking oil, which is very popular in Slovakia. They would be happy to find suppliers of fresh fruit, spices and sauces. At present, deliveries need to be made to each of their 25 stores separately. They purchase private labels with their Czech counterparts and they are open to Hungarian offers in all categories. Jurica Pedic, private label manager of Plodine from Croatia: They have 39 supermarkets on the Adriatic coast. Croatia is not an EU member, which means that duties are imposed on imports from Hungary. They are the exclusive distributors of Sió. He was looking for food products from Hungary. He had paprika, salami, spices and fruits in mind. He seemed to be very open to Hungarian suppliers. Plodine regularly holds “Hungarian weeks” to get customers familiar with Hungarian products. At the moment, they need canned maize, refrigerated vegetables and bottled cherry. They would welcome Hungarian suppliers to produce private labels for them.