Clique Pens Case Study

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SUMMARY
As competition intensifies and pressure from retailers to get better margins increases, Clique Pens’ margins have dropped 6% in the past 3 years. Trade deals for retailers are the main reason our margins have steadily shrunk and our customers are not getting the benefits. Market development funds (MDF) are the key to bring our margins back up, while keeping retailers happy and their margins intact, we can increase our profit margins by 3%, to 2011 levels, while giving our customers a better deal.

MARKET DEVELOPMENT FUNDS
Current trade deal promotions are destroying our margins, retailers take advantage of these promotions because is profitable for them. For example, every year during the 6 week “back to school season”, if we launch a trade promotion for two weeks, retailers will buy inventory that covers all 6 weeks of the seasons, and they will extend the discounts to the client to increase their volume but eroding our brand equity, they will get a 5% increase in their margin and we’ll get a 15% reduction (Exhibit A, trade promotion). In a “best case” scenario, the retailer and the client are benefitted, but more often than not, only they retailer gets the benefit as they don’t pass the savings to the consumer.

It’s important to understand, that trade deal promotions are an industry standard, and even if retailers don’t …show more content…

In Exhibit A scenario 3, the retailer gets the same margin, we get a 3% increase in the margin and clients get a 5% discount, a win-win-win scenario. I also believe that, since we’re controlling the message and communication, unit sales will increase more than the 7% we saw in the Staples test to at least 10% as we will have creative control and will be able to communicate with the customer directly and

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