As part of ESM's annual Private Label Issue, we spoke to Salling Group’s Jean Ladehoff about a major private label repositioning undertaken by the Danish retailer. This article first appeared in ESM Issue 1 2021.
For many retailers, this past year has offered an occasion to streamline parts of their operations, and that was certainly the case at Denmark’s Salling Group, which took the opportunity to merge more than 6,000 private labels into a single master brand, Salling.
Coupled with Salling ØKO, the group’s organic product offering, the new range of products, which will be sold at its Bilka and føtex outlets, help to create a “closer link to our history, owner and founder,” says Jean Ladehoff, Salling Group’s senior vice-president for grocery and beverages.
Recruiting Shoppers
“Last year, we saw a huge increase in sales of private label, especially basic articles,” says Ladehoff. “We expect some of this increase to stay, as we recruited some new customers trying our products, and hopefully they like them.”
The Salling master brand covers conventional products, organic products, and products tailored to specific shopper needs, such as gluten-free, vegan, etc. It replaces the Vores private-label range, which previously featured in Bilka and føtex.
Netto Strategy
Salling Group is also in the process of reformatting the business model for its Netto discounter arm in Germany, Denmark and Poland, to Netto 3.0, under which stores are being made more spacious, with a wider range of fresh and specialty items. Here, the company’s private-label strategy is slightly different, says Ladehoff.
“At Netto, we are working with several private-label lines,” he says. “We even simplified it to fewer private-label products when we started working on Netto 3.0. We are trying to give the private label a bold and Scandinavian touch, which fits well with the new store layout and expression.”
Going forward, Ladehoff believes that Salling Group’s private-label offering fits well with the group’s increasingly omnichannel offering – “People know the products, and that they are exclusively available in our stores: bricks and mortar, or online” – and the focus is now on ensuring that the retailer can embrace new trends as and when they emerge.
“There are a lot of opportunities,” he says. “All basic products are covered, but it is still important to find new, innovative SKUs, in order to build loyalty toward our concepts.”
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest Private Label news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
