TWC Group has once again committed to focus exclusively on the wholesale channel by upgrading its technology, releasing new insights, and pivoting to become a full-service data and research agency.
TWC held their inaugural ‘trade briefing’ last Wednesday (April 30) which was attended by over fifty of its clients, partners and associates including senior executives from Booker, Parfetts, Unitas, The Wholesale Group, Caterforce, Creed, Country Range Group, Rowan International and James Hall & Co (Spar).
Presentations were delivered by Tom Fender (Development Director), Tanya Pepin (MD & Founder), Richard Barr (Head of Commercial), Sarah Coleman (Product Director) and Jayne Webb (Insight Director).
Tom Fender, Development Director, pointed out, “No other agency has this single channel focus on wholesale and associated routes to market.
"For us, wholesale is not a small department within a larger organisation. We live and breathe wholesale, recognising it is a £34bn per annum turnover industry.
"That said, we believe there are more opportunities for growth in wholesale and associated routes-to-market than exist in the retail multiples. We are repeatedly told this by suppliers”.
Fender highlighted how the wholesale channel has made great strides in data usage in recent years, with the covid pandemic being attributed as a particular turning point for the industry.
Although he also warned against complacency as the retail multiples have been using data for decades and competition in other forms (foodservice aggregators, Amazon, discounters) are turning to data to fuel their sales growth.
Fender also shared latest results from TWC’s household finances tracker – a new bimonthly consumer tracker which is now available to TWC clients, which highlighted a softening in consumer sentiment – no surprise after the recent increases in household bills (which 90 per cent of UK consumers had seen).
Tanya Pepin gave delegates a history of TWC which underlined the Group’s commitment to wholesale and addressed many industry issues such as minimum order quantities (MOQs) and building internal data lakes.
Pepin went on to address the topical issue of AI in the channel and reminded delegates that AI will only work on decent quality base data. She also explained how TWC is using AI to create single product codes as part of the company’s commitment to data quality, which will benefit all clients.
Finally, Sarah Coleman (Product Director) and Jayne Webb (Insight Director) took delegates through a dazzling array of new insights.
SmartView Convenience, TWC Group’s market read for independent convenience stores, in partnership with In Touch Group, was a key source of intelligence for the Trade Briefing presentation. \
Coleman was able to share average basket size, transaction count (per store per day) and spend per item across the whole sector (£30bn pa sector) as well as identifying the top 30 NPD brands which together had driven almost 100m unit sales growth in the last year – 45 per cent of total channel volume growth came from these 30 brands.
28 per cent of all volume sales came from NPD last year, shows the data.
TWC group also announced a new strategic partnership with consumer credit / debit card spend data firm, HDI.
Other key findings related to retail revealed during the event:
- One-third of supermarket sales are £10 or less transactions (i.e. £10 or less)
- 78 per cent of the UK population live within walking distance /5 mins drive from a c store.
- On one day alone (16th April) 35 per cent of the UK population ate out/bought food/drinks/snacks/meals out of home.
New research products by TWC are going to be released soon with a specific focus on convenience channel, giving both wholesalers and suppliers access to the data they need to thrive, rather than relying on generic or mults-focussed research.
