Beer Business Daily Predictions — The Impact on POS Marketing

In a recent edition of Beer Business Daily, Harry Schuhmacher discusses “What’s in Store for 2012?” While primarily focused on the beer industry, Schuhmacher’s predictions for 2012 have relevance to a much broader audience. So whether you’re a beer, wine or spirits distributor or a supplier, there’s much here to learn.

Schuhmacher predicts:

• The economy will improve in 2012.
• Unemployment will fall below 8%, and when that milestone is reached there will be an increase in demand for domestic premium beer.
• Prices will increase 2.5%, but as unemployment decreases, there should be an increase in demand for virtually all beverages and consumer packaged goods. 
• An “unprecedented” increase in both the number of new packages and brands from the big brewers. 2012 will usher in a myriad of new packages and products and there will be more choices than ever. 
• A-B and MC will be “actively courting craft brewers while also coming out with extensions of their craft brands.” Also “2012 will be the year of cider.”  
• Additionally — and this is the one that really caught our attention  — “A-B will accelerate efforts to source cash from wholesalers through pushing costs down to them (like truck decals, printing POS, and freight).”

Our Customer’s Perspective

In 2011, the president of one of our customers, a mid-sized A-B distributor, told us that A-B was “pushing more and more cost items down to them — like printed POS.” Schuhmacher’s prediction was coming true before he actually made it!

According to our customer, “OnTrak’s product, SignTrak, started out as a software application that helped us manage our sign shop work flow; but today SignTrak has become a tool to manage cash flow.”

So Schuhmacher’s predictions confirm our customer’s reality: More SKU’s, more and more pressure both from the suppliers and from the wholesalers’ themselves, to add brands.

OnTrak’s Perspective

From where we stand, all this predicted growth is music to our ears. As we all know, POS Marketing works. It’s the best way to take primary promotional initiatives directly to the shopper, especially in a tight but improving economy. POS turns shoppers into buyers.

To us this means there will be an even greater requirement for a POS tracking and management system.  Such a POS software tool allows a company not only to automate print shop operations but also achieve consistent cost management.  

With detailed analysis and reporting tools a company can obtain accurate business information, make better decisions and improve sales results. Armed with all this data distributors can demonstrate to suppliers the support that was provided for their brands and products, and accurately claim available marketing support dollars. 

Oh, Schuhmacher also predicts that “roughly 50%” of his predictions will be wrong.

But even if that’s the case, 2012 appears to be a year full of brand and product proliferation not only in the beverage industry but across the whole consumer goods industry.

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