Winning Brand-Retailer Parternships: Reliance Retail and B Natural

10 outstanding success stories of collaboration exemplifying how brands and retailers can create a winning playbook by leveraging each other’s capabilities and resources

By collaborating, brands and retailers can reach out to new customers and expand their reach in the market. Retailers can help brands distribute their products more effectively by leveraging their existing distribution networks. Brands can benefit from retailers’ expertise and resources, such as data analytics and omnichannel capabilities, to enhance their operations and offerings. Together, they can collaborate on marketing and promotional activities to drive sales and raise brand awareness besides helping each other to tap into new revenue streams, reduce costs, and improve overall profitability.

We bring you 10 outstanding success stories of collaboration between food and FMCG brands and retailers in building new consumption/ product categories or transforming a traditional category with innovation.

How B Natural and Reliance Retail brought life back into the sagging juices category hit hard by the pandemic

From a 17% market share of the juices category, B Natural’s share jumped to 52% at Reliance Retail stores and the brand also succeeded in acquiring 2.1 lakh new customers.

In November 2019, FMCG giant ITC chalked out a plan to add more heft to its juice brand B Natural. As part of the plan, it decided to partner with Reliance Retail.

But just when the partnership was about to hit the pedal, Covid-19 struck in March 2020. The pandemic abruptly accentuated the focus on “staples and household essentials” even as consumers moved away sharply from “juices”, which became a discretionary
category for most.

With the pandemic baring its fangs, categories like atta, staples and other household essentials were suddenly pitch-forked to the centre stage of consumer demand, while juices sank to the bottom of the grocery list. But just when the pandemic seemed like throwing a spanner in the works of this budding partnership, B Natural and Reliance Retail took up the cudgels and decided to breathe life back into a sagging category. “It’s a story where the capabilities of ITC as an FMCG brand and the retail knowledge of Reliance Retail came together to spark a category’s revival and helped to whip up a robust rebound for the category during one of the most difficult times for the juices segment,” says
Apal Kumar, snr. brand manager, ITC Ltd.

Elements of the collaboration

On its part, B Natural came up with a very sharp consumer insight and product innovation, which helped the brand to come up with a product that consumers could trust instinctively and relate to in a very positive way.

“All of us have gone through the experience of taking our kids to a doctor for a check-up and the doctor advising not to give fruit juice to the kid but a whole fruit instead. Along with Vitamin C, fruits have an essential component called fibre, which is critical to our health and well-being. But even home-made juices and all packaged juices come devoid of any fibre because it’s washed away during processing. We decided to retain the fibre in our juice and it became the new value proposition of B Natural,” says Apal.

But for B Natural, even after the product’s replenishment, the battle was only half won. The challenge lay in how to take the product forward from thereon and to establish it as a wholesome healthy product in the consumer psyche and consciousness.

That’s where the collaboration with Reliance proved invaluable and helped B Natural to jump the remaining hoops and challenges. Like a retail hero, Reliance Retail stepped up to the plate and took on the entire supply chain and retailing responsibility on behalf of B Natural at all Reliance Retail’s grocery stores.

“We came up with an annualized plan for B Natural. Nobody, until then, had even thought
that we could take away the lion’s share in the category. To begin with, we planned the
entire supply chain for the brand, including its primary and secondary display on store
shelves, with the product, kept right next to the leader brand,” says Hemant MecWan,
category business head, beverage, Reliance Retail.

Outcome

The joint moves produced a synergy where the sum of the parts is greater than the
whole. The combined efforts snowballed and created a cascading effect. From a 17% market share of the juices category, B Natural’s share jumped to 52% at Reliance Retail stores and the brand also succeeded in acquiring 2.1 lakh new customers.

At a time when everybody was looking at staples, B Natural and Reliance forged this partnership with the firm belief that they can grow together and build up this category. “Today, there are over 8 lakh regular customers for B Natural, of which 2.1 lakh new ones were added once this partnership began to play out. By virtue of this collaboration, B Natural has become the best-selling juice brand at Reliance Retail grocery stores,” says Apal.

Conclusion

It was indeed a bold bet that trumped all odds – Reliance Retail and ITC B Natural coming together at a most challenging time for the juices category – and forging one of the most brilliant brand-retailer partnerships to have taken place in recent times. “Today, B Natural is, of course, among the top juice brands in the country but it is still a small brand in the ITC stable. That way, B Natural is a David compared with ITC’s Goliath brands like Goldflake, which has a value north of Rs. 25,000 crore” says Apal, adding that B Natural’s alliance with Reliance Retail has given this David a slingshot to aim ahead and grow their market share and the category’s size up by several more notches.

 

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