With the critical bloom period now past, officials at CMI have the first solid estimate for the 2016 cherry crop. The news is good.
According to Steve Castleman, Vice President of Sales at CMI, the company is gearing up for a solid cherry season. Castleman says it won’t be a record crop, but the timing is early allowing retailers to generate strong sales in June and for the fourth of July holiday.
Castleman says with warm spring temperatures, a strong bloom, and no damage from frost, CMI is predicting an encouragingly early cherry crop. “Last season was one of the earliest on record here in Washington State,” said Castleman. “The crop looks very good and timing at this point is nearly identical to last year. We’re telling our retailer partners to anticipate good availability for mid-June through mid-July promotions.”
Castleman added that the cherry crop is mirroring last year, when the best promotional opportunities of the entire season fell in a short four-week window from mid-June to mid-July.
“We anticipate that the heaviest volume and peak promotional weeks will fall into a narrow window,” said Castleman. “To maximize sales, retailers will want to move retail promotions earlier, starting in mid-June and running through mid-July.”
The earlier than normal season should be good news for retailers as strong sales early in the season are key to maximizing cherry performance. According to a CMI CatStat™ analysis of retail cherry performance, best in class retailers maximize cherry sales opportunities in June running promotions solidly through mid-July.
Steve Lutz, Vice President of Marketing for CMI reports that a company analysis reveals that the cherry sales for top performing retailers deliver an average of 7.5% contribution to total produce for the month of June compared to an industry average of only 4.9% contribution.
Lutz says the CMI analysis reveals that best in class cherry retailers consistently use a few common strategies to drive superior category performance and dominate the competition.
To complete the analysis, Lutz says that CMI studied supermarket sales results for cherry category performance across the entire spectrum of retail formats and four winning sales strategies were identified.
According to the CMI study, Lutz says the keys winning retailers utilize include emphasizing early season sales, pricing cherries competitively to entice trial, securing complete chain-wide distribution quickly and limiting product options to reduce shelf noise.
“Best in class retailers utilize a more aggressive non-promotional pricing strategy than their competitors,” said Lutz. “In June, when the rest of market has cherries priced at over $3.19 per pound, top retailers have already shifted pricing down to under $2.79. This immediately captures consumer attention by pricing cherries much more competitively with other seasonal fruits.”
Lutz says another key for top retailers is pushing full distribution quickly as the season opens in June. “Top retailers immediately position cherries in every store for nearly the full month of June compared to low performing chains that fail to complete distribution until the middle of the month or later.”
He added that a final key tactic used by top retailers is limiting product and package assortment. “When we looked at top vs. average retailers, it was apparent that the unique SKU count was actually lower at top retailers,” said Lutz. “This is not reduced assortment but a tactic used by top retailers to purchase Red and Rainier packages from fewer shippers throughout the season. Low-performing retailers appear to carry multiple random shipper packages and labels.
Lutz says that with too many duplicate but different packages on display “shelf presence is diluted and shoppers resort to sorting on the display to find the best package.”
Click Here for CMI’s 2016 Cherry CatStat
About CMI
Columbia Marketing International (CMI) is one of Washington State’s largest growers, shippers and packers of premium quality apples, pears, cherries and organics. Based in Wenatchee, WA, CMI delivers outstanding fruit across the U.S.A. and exports to over 60 countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.cmiapples.com
Source: Columbia Marketing International (CMI)
