FROM FACTORY TO CUSTOMERS:
RETHINKING SALES CHANNELS
Manufacturers need to make goods that sell, or they won’t stay in business. At my own end of the manufacturing sector, in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), that means getting our goods right to where our customers are, so that they are easy to find, and easy to buy.
This necessity of business success has seen manufacturing in Kenya stimulated, and even driven, by the blossoming of the country’s retail sector.
Our leading retail chains have, over the last decade, moved supermarkets into the mainstream, seeing them become a way of life, and reach consumers up and down the country.
Indeed, our top supermarket chains have been so influential in defining our retail - and by extension to our manufacturing sector that Kenya has moved ahead of its peers in its shift to supermarket buying in the range, breath and depth of its retail consumption.
However, the very scale of that success has meant that the difficulties now being faced by the
By Chintan Thacker
INDUSTRY OPINION PIECE
Country’s largest supermarket chains - as their stores have emptied of goods and customers, leading to multiple store closures - has been
hard for FMCG manufacturers. This has ushered in a race for manufacturers in finding new ‘channels’ through which to reach consumers.
The consumers are still there. They still want washing liquids, fabric softeners and air fresheners. But the manufacturing industry has had to develop new outlets at speed, in order to keep enjoying the benefits of consumption growth through a period of rupture in the country’s retail market infrastructure.
For many of us, conventional distribution methods such as sales through the wholesale sector have always been a significant component of our business.
Wholesalers play an instrumental role in almost every market place in gaining price discounts on large volumes, and then parceling out sometimes, tiny consignments to individual retailers.
Indeed, where ‘middle men’ are sometimes criticized for making money without producing, the
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