TradeScope knows all the ins and outs of exporting packaged food and beverages from North America to the UK.
Here are just a few of our pearls of wisdom to whet your appetite. (Contact us for the full monty.)
1. THE FIRST LINK IS A BIG CHAIN.
Engaging with at least one of the 7 large UK supermarket chains is a key part of any strategy for retail-ready packaged food and beverages. While the natural/organic and speciality/premium channels can provide routes to market, neither can deliver sufficient sales to justify the entry, sales and marketing costs.
2. DIFFERENTIATION MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE.
Your first question must always be whether your packaged product is sufficiently differentiated from its competition. If not, your product will not gain traction against competition from good quality European products which are shipping directly to supermarkets (no 30% wholesaler margin), have lower logistics costs and pay no import tariffs (at present, anyhow – let's see what transpires with Brexit!).
3. LOGISTICS, LOGISTICS, LOGISTICS.
Your next question is whether to use an importer/wholesaler. For more established and well financed companies, one route always worth exploring is exporting to a UK third party logistics company (3PL) which serves as an importer for labelling purposes and provides warehousing. In this case, it is possible to ship directly from the 3PL to a range of wholesalers and retailers on a non-exclusive basis.
We could keep going, but then we'd have no IP left! If you would like to engage with TradeScope to support you in getting your products into the UK market, please contact Ted Horton – he doesn't bite (though he'll hope you will).