As we wrap up this crop year and look to the next with harvest starting in about 6 weeks, I want to reflect on all the great things that have taken place this past year. Our team has grown in both sales and marketing, and we are better positioned to serve our customers and consumers alike. We have made great strides in developing our international business with two trips overseas to visit importers, retailers, and customers. We re-launched our date roll line under the new Mini Medjools® line and have seen an overwhelmingly positive reception from consumers and press, highlighted by winning two awards. And most recently we launched our Truffles in Kroger with much excitement from the retailer to support the launch, and more retailers to come on board soon. We are very excited about this last one as it is a great product that has seen so much interest from all who have seen it.
Looking forward to another stellar year full of new customers, growing businesses, new items, and most of all fun!
Happy Dating!
David Baxter
Director of Marketing
IN TODAY'S ISSUE:
Data Review
Company Update and Wins
Market Challenges
Global View
Data
All Data is IRI Date Category Data last 52 Weeks, ending 6/12/22
Natural Delights® continues to outpace the market in growth, driven by some stellar performance with Sam's Club. There continues to be an opportunity to bolster the brand with retailers by driving more consumption and getting new users in the category
Natural Delights® Market Share is still hovering around 45%, our goal is to push that number up this year and hit a 50% market share as we continue to expand our Deglet offering. This is going to be key in gaining share around the holidays (a hot time for deglets).
Sundate and Joolies are seeing solid growth in $$ sales and volume, but their availability to consumers through retail is minimal. One of our key points of difference with consumers is that we are broadly available at retail.
WINS
These past few months the brand has seen several wins as we work to grow the business through innovation and new customers.
Onboarded New Customers
Discount Drug Mart - Our first Drug Store customer with a 78-store chain in the mid-west
Save Mart - a 200+ chain of stores in the Northern California area
Test with Dollorama in Canada - A dollar store chain of 1,400+ stores and our first dollar store customer
Truffles were launched with Kroger and further sell-in efforts are underway
Our Mini Medjools® were awarded 2 distinguished awards
We continue to see some of the same challenges as the broader market with slow lead times, material shortages, and higher costs. The operations team has done an outstanding job minimizing the impact these headwinds have on our business. However, these challenges did lead us to take a small price increase as these impacts don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
Trivia Question
Since we are heading into harvest season today’s trivia question is:
When were dates first cultivated?
Consumer Marketing - The marketing team has finalized plans for next year and will have communication in the coming weeks on all the marketing activities that will be taking place over the next crop year. As we continue to drive new consumers to the date category, we are taking our efforts to the real world with live partnerships and sampling events throughout the year that will pair with our digital efforts.
Trade Marketing - The marketing team is also finalizing trade plans and working through our retailer marketing program. We will see improvements and more communication regarding regular data updates, and the addition of consumer data. Our goal this year is to pair retailer marketing along with consumer marketing to make a larger impact with our retail partners. More to come here in the coming weeks.
Product Development - We continue to work on new products for this new crop year, we are currently in development and when we have more to share, we will. We are also excited to add a Product Manager to our team this coming August who will help us to accelerate these efforts and identify the next big thing in the date market!
World Tour
This past month our International team made their way to Australia and New Zealand on a whirlwind tour of retailers, customers, and importers. Throughout the trip, they took away a ton of learning on how we can better support these customers with marketing initiatives and product offerings that fit the market. There will be a lot of exciting opportunities coming from our international team this coming year as they onboard new employees to pursue all the opportunities that exist.
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Trivia Answer: 4,000 BC - Although their exact origin is uncertain, dates were first known to be cultivated in the Fertile Crescent between Egypt and Mesopotamia as early as 4000 B.C Source
