THE team behind sparkling wine brand Freixenet has unveiled a new category blueprint that it reckons could help retailers unlock more than £100m worth of extra sparkling wine sales within three years.
The launch of the Freixenet, ‘Sparkling Wine Category Vision for the Future’ follows research by the company that it says has helped identify three category drivers that will help deliver incremental sales for convenience retailers.
The firm says sparkling wine sales are worth over £500m and that sparkling wine is the fastest growing beers, wines and spirits sub-category in both the on and off-trades. It sees the convenience channel as experiencing the strongest growth for sparkling wine (sales are said to be up by 31%) and says the channel now accounts for more than 25% share of sparkling wine.
However, it reports that penetration (the proportion of shoppers who actually buy the products) is still low at less than one in three shoppers. And just 20% of that group actually accounted for 65% of sales.
That demonstrates, the firm argues, that there’s opportunity for growth.
It calls the three drivers it
says it has identified: Create a Fizz In-store (activity it figures could be worth extra sales of £37m); Uncork the Future (£34m); and Make Everyday Sparkle (£33m).
With Create a Fizz In-store it aims to retain current sparkling wine shoppers and encourage them to buy more.
With Make Everyday Sparkle it aims to encourage less frequent shoppers for sparkling wine to purchase outwith formal occasions.
With Uncork the Future it advises retailers to target once-a-year purchasers and non-purchasers by encouraging wine shoppers to switch from still wine to sparkling.
