Richard Siddle, comment Feb 25; Champagne needs to be better managed

Appalling and horrendous. Those were the two stand out words I took from last week's Champagne Summit. Thankfully they were not directed at the quality of the event but more the way Champagne, and to an extent the wine category as a whole is presented, merchandised and arranged in UK supermarkets.

Even more worryingly for the trade was the criticism came from a guest speaker well placed to judge. As former marketing director for Pepsi and Britvic, Andrew Marsden has been responsible for devising and developing category management plans for not just the soft drinks sector, but countless other FMCG categories and is therefore totally in tune with the standards of the grocery multiples.

His assessment of how Champagne is sold in supermarkets was damning. He could depict little or no strategy around ranging, facings or pricing. An analysis of four supermarket Champagne fixtures revealed four different plans. Unthinkable, said Marsden, in an equally big brand dominated world of soft drinks.

As for discounting a product category with limited supply, at a time when everyone wants to buy it? Don't get him started.

Marsden's insights were telling and went to show how far even a mature market like Champagne could do with fresh thinking. But his key point is something we can all learn from.

How much and how often do we use category wide sales data to determine what we stock? What is literally bread and butter in the rest of grocery is still not widely used in the wine trade.

If Champagne rosé sales account for 25% of the market then why are we not giving a quarter of shelf space to it and instead stocking multiple lines of red sparkling that have hardly no sales at all.

The wine trade may not have many companies with the clout to set industry wide category standards as Britvic, but Nielsen and category data is widely available. It is too easy to dismiss such thinking as the world of FMCG and big brands. These are retail fundamentals and hats off to Mr Marsden for opening our eyes to another and potentially better world.

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