Major UK Food and Drink retailer Fruit Passion - a business case for fair trade

Client challenge

Fair trade products represent a route for people in developing countries to access previously inaccessible markets. The opportunity in fair trade for this company lay in mirroring the hot beverage experience, Café Direct (now over 5% value of the premium coffee market) with a cold beverage, fruit juice.

What did we do?

The company wanted to demonstrate a responsible but innovative approach that brought it to life rather than a paper based report. Approaching Article 13 the brief from the company was to take the concept of fair-trade and deliver a ‘business case’ to ensure the product would go on contributing to the lives of growers. If that ‘business case’ could be proven then Article 13 would be asked to build the marketing plan and deliver the product on shelf.

The key to success for this project was to bring a wide range of stakeholders along with the company and to create a shared vision. Article 13 first created a strategic alliance with the leading non governmental organisation (NGO) in fair trade to ensure that any subsequent work with growers would make a real difference. We then ran a workshop with that NGO and the company’s buyers, technologists and design agencies to build shared understanding and vision. This group subsequently became the ‘brand steering group’ providing governance and input to the brand’s development. 

The brand steering group’s vision identified the need to make the new product a ‘mainstream brand’ rather than a niche fair trade product. The primary target audience for this new product was identified through a mainstream segmentation analysis by identifying a potential and very desirable audience of 18 million plus. Research with these groups showed that the development of the product as a mainstream “brand” (quality and taste) with a double win (the “trade not aid” story) would have on shelf stand out and that consumers were prepared to pay a premium for this product.

How did we break the cycle?

The product is now on shelf alongside the brand leaders in the sector. The programme has delivered a new realisation of the wider needs of other stakeholders in a supply chain to both organisations as well as a sustainable business for growers, NGOs, suppliers and the company.

© Article 13 2005