At the Global Food Forum last week, Bundaberg Brewed Drinks CEO John McLean, Darrell Lea GM Commercial Richard Glenn, and founder/CEO Little Oak Company Elke Pascoe shared their experiences and insights about accessing new export markets.
When Elke Pascoe established Little Oak in 2016, she entered one of the most hotly contested and highly regulated food products, infant and toddler milk formulas, in the world.
Faced with fierce competition and the challenge of standing out in a crowded and largely monopolised-by-multinationals market, Pascoe said passion for her product and the philosophical belief that there were many more children around the world that needed natural nutrition have driven Little Oak’s success.
“From the very beginning we said we wouldn’t aim for China, because every other formula company was doing so, we decided to go elsewhere and quietly get on with what we have to do.
“Every market is considered, and then when we decide, we go hell for leather. Saudi Arabia and the Middle East are our next export goal,” Pascoe said.
Pascoe shared her story on stage at The Australian’s Global Food Forum in Melbourne last week. She was joined by Bundaberg Brewed Drinks CEO John McLean and Darrell Lea general manager Commercial Richard Glenn to discuss diversifying exports into fast-growing markets.
“When you’re starting out, you have to have passion that drives enough it gets you out of bed during the tough times. Without it, why are you doing it?” she said.
McLean is at the helm of a soft drink company not interested in competing with PepsiCo or Coca-Cola, mainly because Bundaberg Brewed Drinks (BBD) is already a multinational in its own right, exporting to 60 countries.
“It starts with having the world’s best product. We run our own race, we don’t try to be everything to everyone, we get out there and work with fantastic farmers, we use the best ingredients, we work with our local community, and then we sell an awful lot of product internationally.
“We compete against the big guys, but we don’t worry about the big guys. We talk to them, have some great partnerships around the world – PepsiCo is our distributor in the US – and never go into a market with the ‘I’m going to take them out’ attitude. We go in, say we have this fantastic product, they try it and every single one of them says ‘wow’. We distribute bottles of wow,” McLean explained.
He spoke about entering the South Korean market and the importance of having a strong partnership with your in-market representative.
BBD’s Pink Grapefruit is extremely popular in South Korea, at one stage selling 10,000 cases in one week through 17 stores.
But you also need to do your homework, McLean warned, sharing an anecdote about the importance of understanding all the regulations and requirements, but also the cultural ticks. BBD’s Pink Grapefruit uses a particular ingredient that is only grown in Japan and South Korea. Depending on which country you use as a supplier determines which country you can sell your product in. When BBD was starting to export to South Korea, “well, I’ll let you guess which country we had bought the ingredient from”, McLean recounted dryly.
“From a marketing perspective, our experience is what works in Australia doesn’t work internationally. You have built this great brand, you’ve put a lot of your own blood, sweat, and tears into it, and there’s a lot of your personality in it, but you may need to consider a complete reformulation to succeed in an overseas market,” he said.
Darrell Lea’s Richard Glenn, a favourite of the day for the many varieties of Darrell Lea products on all the tables in the room, reiterated McLean’s view on tailoring products carefully to the market you are in.
Fun fact, Americans love Darrell Lea black liquorice. In fact, the US is Darrell Lea’s largest export market and accounts for between 15-20 per cent of its total revenue. The company is focused on the US and growing its market share.
“You really wish you could take a successful product here and transfer it to another country as is, but sometimes it doesn’t work like that. We met with retailers and told them about another of our liquorice products – a bite size piece covered in chocolate. They were keen and asked to see a sample, so we put a couple of bags of Bullets on the table. You could feel the mood in the room change instantly.
“There will always be something that catches you out, you need to be as prepared as you possibly can, in this case it was just something we hadn’t accounted for. So, we’re launching Darrell Lea Bites in the US,” Glenn said.
McLean rounded out the conversation with some advice on entering the US market.
“It is very easy to sink a lot of money into the US in terms of marketing and have no impact. It’s about being very, very targeted to make sure we cut through in the retailers stocking our products.”
Pascoe said, “For us it is about picking a small number of retailers that get noticed by other retailers and using that as a blueprint to roll out from there.”
