Sweeties for our eyes

Storck Hungária Kft. is one of the major companies in the sweetie category with the Merci and Toffifee brands. We wanted to find out what special merchandising tools they use For the Christmas season. They build several hundred secondary placements of three-four types for their brands. They also use shelf stoppers on the shelves. Another method is the use of brand decorations on the doors of the store. Special Christmas packaging is also used for many products. They believe that seasonal displays should have a strong emotional impact. These should attract attention with their size and design. Displays should be strong and durable and resistant to repeated washing up under them. Some displays are fitted with specially designed price plates, others are fitted with price rails. Their displays are not re-usable theoretically, but the ones which remain in a good condition at the and of the season are saved for the next season in reserve. The German mother company has the merchandising tools designed and manufactured and these are uniform for all 58 countries where Storck is present. The local subsidiaries in various countries have only very limited means to have merchandising tools manufactured, because the HQ is very conscious of quality. Most of the retail chains co-operate actively with Storck in seasonal placements, which are subject to annual agreements. There are other chains, where a general agreement with the HQ is not sufficient to get automatic co-operation at the local level, which means a lot of effort has to be spent on getting things right. In a few cases, we have had to resort to legal action to settle our dispute with a chain. The management of some chains and stores is flexible and allows them to use standard shelves for seasonal placements as well. This, however is not the case in general. Christmas products are usually delivered from mid-October to the days immediately before Christmas. Customers, however only begin buying the seasonal products in mid-November. Storck would be happy to play the role of category captain in the sweetie market if the retail chains showed any interest in a category management project.