An anonymous retailer got in touch to have a serious moan about Nisa’s Dumpbin Deals.
They wrote: “I have found Nisa are still doing compulsory allocation/dumpbin allocation to members, who (if they wish to receive full possible rebates need to take on) using very slow if not unheard-of items. Mostly every three weeks, when they change their promotions.”
They sent me a scan of the current promotion. “As you can see from the image this time all stores have to take ‘The Spice Tailor’ classic sauce? Please can you do some research from the manufacturer, I am sure Nisa are getting some sort of financial kickback for taking on these promotions, and force feeding them down to stores.”
And they added: “Please do try and find out how much Nisa gets financially from these companies and do best to get a reaction from other Nisa members and invite new CEO for his views on these Nisa member reactions.
“And also please do ask specifically on what future rolling promotions are coming out so you can get a gist of how insane this has all become.”
I checked this out with another Nisa retailer I know who happens to be very successful and who has more than one store.
He commented: “Yes we have national allocations and pre-sell allocations every promotion period. Along with most retailers we do not always agree with some of the odd ball products allocated which can be very slow moving sometimes taking months to sell through. Considering that this is the case with my xxxxxxxx store with a weekly turnover over £115k, taking months to sell just one case shows the smaller Nisa retailers, apart from taking up valuable retail space, have no chance of selling even one case and most likely end up binning the product. Whilst I do not know if Nisa/Co-op get a big financial kick back from suppliers to dump these products on Nisa retailers, I highly suspect they do.
“My honest opinion is that Co-op simply just use Nisa retailers as very profitable cash cows.”
So – pretty serious allegations from both retailers.
As I explained to my original contact, even if I knew the CEO my difficulty here is that I have to approach Nisa via their press office. And no manufacturer who has persuaded Nisa/Co-op to promote their products is going to own up to getting a kickback let alone say it publicly. The best I can do, I said, is air your views along with the other retailer’s and see what emerges in the form of feedback.
And here is Nisa’s official response: “We do have strict guardrails in place on the products which we allocate to Dumpbin Display units, to ensure that those selected provide the opportunity to generate significant sales and profit, and are competitive within the grocery market. A variety of categories can be displayed in a Dumpbin but we are going to do a process review to ensure we are selecting only relevant products.”
A review sounds promising.
1 Readers' comment