It’s easier together

Take two well known brands which complement each other. Mix sales and marketing experience with a shooting star from a developing category and you get the SIÓ-ECKES-Szentkirályi recipe. Take two acknowledged market players which complement each other. Mix sales and brand building experience with a developing category and build a new brand: you get Rauch-Aquarius. Companies had refused to enter into competition with producers of complementing brands for a long time, though this would have improved efficiency of operations. This situation began to change in the late 90’s, but examples of co-operation remained few, as most companies sooner or later opted to introduce an own product in place of the complementing „foreign” product. sooner or later. Competition has become tougher since then and market concentration continued to grow. Private labels have become almost or exactly as strong as real brands in some categories like mineral water or fruit juice. SIÓ-ECKES Kft., an affiliate of ECKES-Granini is the market leader with a share of 20 per cent in fruit juice in Hungary. SIÓ is the oldest and best known brand of juice in the country, while Hohes C is leading the 100 per cent fruit content category. Szentkirályi mineral water is a real success story, which begun in 1994. RAUCH/AQUARIUS collaboration was probably encouraged by the above example. AQUARIUS Kft has given up its former role as a supplier of private labels with the introduction of the brand VERITAS, based on assistance in brand building and product development from RAUCH. Though this latter collaboration represents a different approach, the basic idea is the same: strategic partnership.