Category Management is a process in which vendors and retailers cooperate to manage and optimize product categories as business units in order to serve the shopper in the best possible way, resulting in the best possible financial performance for both retailer and the vendor.

How can the Merchandise Academy support? We consult on:

Assortment Management: how should your ideal assortment look like? How do you select, build and plan your assortment? What is the SWOT of your assortment?

Vendor Sourcing & Management: as a retailer, which vendors serve your business in the best possible way? How do you manage them regarding contracts, deliveries and quality requirements? Are they innovative enough? What about their sustainability efforts?

Retailer Sourcing & Account Management: as a vendor, which retailers serve your business in the best possible way? What are their needs? What does a retailer expect from you?

Negotiating: do you use the right structured way for negotiating contracts and prices? Do you know your strengths and weaknesses, and how to use them in the negotiation process?

Private label development: private label assortments deliver differentiation and better margins for your retail concept. Is your percentage on private label sales already growing? Do you wish to develop new private label sku’s faster, develop more innovate sku’s and develop in a more structured way? We can  help.

Developing great products and services is not enough to succeed in business. Companies have to develop great products and services that consumers actually recognize as being great and just what they are looking for.

What emotional experience does your product or service deliver that makes it great? Is your product or service primarily useful of fun? The consumer products and services world is changing very fast. Ever more consumers have access to all kinds of information on products regarding quality, features, pricing, sustainability. Peer to peer reviews make product and service performances globally transparent. Consumers have access to all kinds of information helping them to make a well-informed purchase decision. Technological opportunities are also changing fast. Products get smarter inside The Internet of Things. Distribution channels and platforms are rapidly changing. Big smart data allow companies to learn more about their customer’s behavior. Still the major part of products that are introduced fail within their first year.

How can the Merchandise Academy support? We consult on:

Value proposition: value, not features will differentiate your product or service inside your market.How can your product deliver a better emotional value to the consumer? What job does it do? What problem does it solve? Pains versus gains. Is your product well enough positioned in the market? How does it differentiate from similar products in the market? How strong is the product’s USP? What Emotional Buying Reasons does your product give? What does a consumer experience when using your product or service? We will help your products and/or services emotionally connect with consumers.

Product pitch retail: we can help you to develop a to the point well-positioned and differentiated product pitch for your brand and product assortment, convincing retail buyers to select your products and select your brand

TV Shopping specialized brand/product pitch: The Merchandise Academy can help you connect with all major international TV Shopping channels and prepare your first pitch for most of the channels. We are well connected inside an extensive network of international tv shopping experts with many years of expertise working for global players inside the business. We know what is important to market your products to this exciting globally growing distribution channel.

In many countries society has to deal with an aging population. The older age group will become a dominant driver of consumer spending, offering many new business opportunities.

Does your product range hold enough interesting items for senior consumers? Senior consumer are mostly more affluent and have specific needs regarding the features of the products they buy. But this should not make the products look ugly, boring our old-fashioned, like so many 50+ consumer products looked in the past and still look today.

The Merchandise Academy can help you developing and improving your products and services so they can match the needs of mature consumers.