Lientjie Lodder grew up on a farm just outside Worcester. She obtained her winemaking degree from Elsenburg in 2007, followed by a B.Com in Marketing and Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch in 2010. She spent most of her career working in domestic sales, exports and marketing for Distell and other wine companies, and in 2021 moved on to wine-buying at OneDayOnly.co.za. Last year, she started at Shoprite Checkers as a Wine and Liquor buyer.*
Lientjie Lodder, wine buyer for Shoprite Checkers.
How do you evaluate the potential of a new wine product in your catalogue?Â
With any listing, first and foremost, the buyer needs to be convinced that there is a large enough customer demand for the product and that it will contribute positively to the sales figures and margins of the business. That being said, we also need to keep the offering interesting and with the selection aim to draw customers to our stores.
We will continuously look at what products and brands are trending in the market. With the listing of a new product there is always the risk that it may not be successful, but our job as buyers is to try and minimise that risk through doing the research upfront and getting to know our customers and their needs, and sometimes by trying and predict their future needs.
Can you share any insights on some of these trends?
Currently there are some products in the market that are very dominant and it will look like an entire category is moving in a certain direction, but it is actually just because of the success of those specific brands. This makes it very difficult to answer the question, but it it also shows that success can come from different cultivars, different styles and price points.
How can brands improve their performance?
Strong brands who really put in the effort to market themselves well, manage their brand and stay relevant to consumers, are the brands that perform well at any given price point.
What marketing and promotional strategies have been the most effective in your opinion?
Price promotions is still retail’s most efficient strategy, but I am a strong supporter of ‘liquid on lips’ – any way to get new customers to taste the brand and also to remind customers again of a product they might have forgotten about. In the retail business, our options for promotions are very limited, but for the brand owner, there are a lot more options available to do brand-building activities, and those will also indirectly drive the brand’s sales in retail.
I also believe the old story that liquor brands are being built in the on-consumption market, to eventually drive sales through off-consumption.
How do you foresee the wine and spirits category evolving in the next few years?Â
Over the past few years there have been a few success stories in the market of innovative sweeter wines that are essentially migrating customers from other alcohol categories to the wine category. I believe these products are critical to introduce consumers to wine and to ensure the longevity and profitability of the industry, since consumers are consuming these instead of beers, ciders and coolers, or spirits with mixers. Spirits are also becoming increasingly more expensive, creating a gap in the market for other products, including this style of wine.
With regards to premium wines, I do believe that there is also a huge opportunity in South Africa. A sizable part of the South African market is buying premium alcohol products, but not yet premium wines. I think here we can learn a lot from the whisky industry, where there is also a lot of heritage, intrinsics, regions and technicalities, but they have often chosen not to lead their marketing communication with these details. I believe these details very often intimidate consumers instead of recruiting them to the category. So I hope to see premium wines becoming more ‘accessible’ to consumers and that consumers of premium alcoholic products will more often enjoy premium wines as well.
(*The opinions expressed here belong solely to Lientjie and do not reflect the views of her employer, Shoprite Checkers.)
