For the president of Giumarra, the key to its company’s success was the development of global partnerships since the 1990’s. “From our base in North America we moved to South Africa and South America, mainly Chile and Argentina, as well as Europe and Asia. The reason for this is that it enabled us to create a network of growers allowing for year-round supply of consistent quality produce.”
“In 2005, for example, it came to point where we needed 12 month supply of blueberries, so we looked for like-minded companies in countries like Chile, Argentina and Mexico and we created our separate organisation to partner and collaborate with them. We had such a success with our operation, that in 2007 we decided to do the same with avocados,” explains Tim.
Nowadays, Giumarra has grown into an international network of fresh produce growers, distributors and marketers, allowing its customers to source virtually any type of fresh produce item from or to almost anywhere in the world.
For his part, Kevin Fiori, of Sunkist, described how about ten years ago his company was suffering of lack of international demand for lemons in existing key markets, such as North America and Japan, and of the near-absence of demand in countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong or China. “We looked at pricing and this really had no impact, so we needed to conduct research to make sure we took the appropriate actions to change what was going on,” said Kevin.
He explains that “elasticity was the key factor. Almost nobody was purchasing lemons for anything other than to use them as garnish, for seafood, for lemonade or cocktails, so they were at a secondary demand level. We therefore wanted to target the primary drivers of demand.”
“We redesigned our marketing plans taking into consideration that price was not the key factor and we spent a lot of time introducing secondary displays in primary demand departments (seafood, alcohol, etc.) and we registered a 30% increase in our raw demand; a huge impact.”
According to Kevin, “it is also essential to take into account that what you do in the United States or South Africa doesn’t necessarily translate into other cultures, but we felt a huge impact on overall demand by making sure that the money was spent in the right promotions. This case is about lemons, but it really applies to all products. It all comes down to conducting the right marketing.”