ACT appointed Lexmark Retail Expert

Advanced Channel Technologies (ACT) has announced its appointment as a Lexmark Retail Expert in the South African market. This move significantly endorses the distributor`s prowess in the local consumables market and gears it to provide an expanded range of value-added services to its growing retail channel.

According to ACT`s retail manager, Janine de Wolf, the most significant of the new services ACT will offer through the Retail Expert status is the ability to provide its retail customers with category management services that stretch across the entire portfolio of brands and products that the company currently represents.

In a nutshell, category management entails accurately aligning the retailer`s stockholding to the market`s demands, as well as assisting them with the layout of the stock on the shelf, ultimately ensuring trouble-free location of products by consumers.

According to De Wolf, category management can be a challenging area to achieve success in, since it requires a deep analysis of local market trends and how the market share is split between the different consumables brands. All of this must be placed in the context of the areas in which the retailer operates, as well as the product mix that the retailer has had success with.

"It`s quite simply an art, of which there`s a dearth of skills for in the South African market," she says. "That`s the reason we believe our partnership with Lexmark will be so valuable to the local retail channel."

De Wolf says the true measure of successful category management hinges on the retailer`s ability to achieve a 100% sell through of all the products it stocks, while at the same time ensuring it does not run out of stock on items their customers require.

Bev du Plessis, product manager at Lexmark South Africa, explains Lexmark`s motivation behind this move: "For category management to work effectively it has to address the needs of all parties, as it is counter-productive to manage a single item, as opposed to the retailer`s entire business.

"We noticed that retailers were finding it difficult to market the various brands effectively in cases where, for example, ink cartridges were locked away in cabinets. Consumers were frustrated by not knowing where to find these products; the incorrect product mix was being carried and sales for the retailer were being lost.

"Our primary aim is to help retailers maintain an efficient inventory, while optimising logistics costs. For Lexmark, it`s a case of optimising our product distribution channel, maximising our partners` business potential and the potential of our brand by fair representation within the market.

"To date, we have seen excellent results in areas in Europe where the system has already been implemented, with some retailers growing their business well into double digits," Du Plessis says.

"With this service in our arsenal, we truly believe that ACT will become the primary choice for consumables procurement within the South African retail market. And with the successes this model has achieved in Europe, there`s no doubt retailers will benefit from good sell through rates and better stock management," De Wolf concludes.