You tell us!

It is now under a week before Sweet Retailing goes live and it's keeping us pretty busy! We have a list as long as our arms and legs put together of articles we want to research and write, so rest assured it's well worth bookmarking the site.

If you want us to be an even better resource for your business, then why not tell us if there is something that you would really like us to write about? If it's important to you it's probably important to any number of retailers and that is what we are here for! Sweet Retailing is talking to all sorts of suppliers and wholesalers and so we might just find out some answers for you. Do drop us an email or pick up the phone and have a little word in our ear when you feel the need...

you can always contact us, wherever you are

Is it all about the packaging?

Like many of you I expect, I spent too much time in too many shops in the run up to Christmas, hunting down "one last present" that I needed to buy. What struck me this year was the massive diversity of shops selling nicely packaged sweets and chocolates for gifts, even if they had never sold confectionery before in their lives! Even Next piled up retro sweets alongside men's socks - the perfect stocking filler (excuse the pun!)?

Whilst some might think that this is dreadful competition for more traditional confectionery stores, I personally think that it highlights an ever growing opportunity. You see if you studied a few of these delicious packages, and did a mental calculation of the cost of the product, the margins are pretty damn good here! Simply by taking a handful of sweets and placing them into some form of attractive packaging, they become something else in the consumer's eye and something worth paying a bit more for.

John Lewis has been good at this for many years and it always amazes me some of the prices it seems to achieve on sweet treats. Its profits over Christmas I understand have been equally amazing.

My point? Well if the bigger players can do it, why not the smaller ones too? "But you need the volume!" I hear you cry. Not always true. I can think of two ways that the same objective can be achieved and indeed value can be added to your products.

1. Take a surf on Google. I did and quickly found:
www.shcweb.co.uk/ have some simple little acetate cartons
www.ebottles.co.uk/ have some lovely glass hexagon jars
And www.hastings-crystal.co.uk/ are selling packs of 50 heart shaped tins for 77p each - perfect to pop some sweets in - they even have clear tops!



That surf took me 10 minutes and I am quite sure that there are many more packaging options out there should you choose to research it further.

2. Talk to a few specialist confectionery wholesalers. Some are starting to offer different and very interesting gifting items that can help you to serve this opportunity, with little effort from yourself and yet more margin to reward your business with.

So there you are, food for thought perhaps? We would love to hear what you think!

How Sweet Retailing was born

Welcome to the blog of a brand new resource where so much can be learnt about the art of retailing sweets and chocolates. If you found the blog before the website, please go to http://www.sweetretailing.co.uk/. But why is Sweet Retailing here in the first place?

Businesses small and large are realising the potential that exists in selling confectionery. Of course, many wise souls have known for a long time. Let's face it, we all have a long standing love affair with something sweet or chocolatey. Trade magazines might talk about the confectionery market a bit, other websites might discuss particular issues a bit, yet there is no comprehensive resource developed entirely with the confectionery retailer in mind. So here we are at last - a brand new website devoted to the subject, including its very own blog!

We don't claim to be the all singing all dancing resource just yet, but we've not made a bad start and our wish list of things to discuss and develop gets longer by the day. So please do join us as we work our socks off to help all manner of businesses have the resource and information at their fingertips to do an even better job of retailing confectionery.