Know-How Exchange : Strategy

here a few factors that are important...
is this your only product? if so you must face the fact that other companies will use this against you with food distributors.
But, here is the way I would go about it...
1) purchase a list of food distributors in the market you would like to compete in. Many of them are "captive" that is they work only with their own stores. Some sell to independents.
2) Branding is independant of the distributors.. but instead needs to fit into the consumer and dynamics associated with it. Do you have advertising budget? etc
3) competing with other brands? Here you need to know about your product vs the others. Lower calorie, more nutrients, etc? if there is nothing different, price and packaginig are your differentiators...

Hope this helps.
Frank Hurtte

hi

echoing others, we need more information from your end to give u better ideas/advice

you can do the following for designing a new distributuion channel although this varies from market to market. i am also assuming that this is your only product

1. if this is your only product, you can tap into the existing distributors of various localities to carry your brand.

2. based on the demand for secondary sales (into outlets) by distributors you will calculate your distributors lifiting requirement.

3. to sell the brand, tap into outlets that sell cooking oil or complimentary products like, grocery stores, super markets, kitchen market stores, spice stores etc.

4. you/ur distributor will have to create a route plan for doing the Direct Store Distribution (DSD). based on the location of your target outlets you will create various routes and based on the demand of each routes you will plan route servicing plans i.e. daily delivery, 3rice a week delivery or 1ce a week delivery etc. This also depends on what SKUs you produce and deliver in each route.

5. you can create some other channels like, hotels and restaurants, fast food shops, cafes that use cooking oil and do similar plans as per #4

For branding the product, assuming you are referring to retail branding, you can do the following

1. decorate some outlets in each area with the colors of
your brand, making them Branded Outlet
2. you can design some dispensers for placing in retail outlets which makes dispensing brand easier for retailers
3. for supermarkets, brand the shelf. in most cases, you need to pay for this branding
4. for restaurants and other channels, you can tie-up with the channel partners and do co-branding.

For strategy for competing with other brands, you have to do the SWOT analysis and based on your brand positioning you will create strategy. its not possible for us here to give you the strategy without detailed information.

hope this helps.

cheers!!