We built the channels first
We became good at opening new ways for customers to buy. We spent far less time asking whether the same products belonged in all of them.
Over the period of time we became quite good at opening new ways for customers to buy and to be served. We spent far less time asking whether the same products belonged in all of them.
Our distribution and service channels moved from wholesale and non branded retail into owned stores, digital, banks and wallets, and partnerships. Each one opened, each one carrying more or less the same catalogue.
This was a recurring debate between the channel and product teams. Product managers wanted greater availability and quick adoption. Channel teams were looking at different customers, different costs and different reasons for buying.
Someone buying through a banking or digital channel was not behaving like someone walking into a retail outlet. Payment was easier, the money was already there, and convenience was the reason they came. That raised a question. Do you put your lowest priced offers in front of them, or build something with more value around that moment?
I see a similar pattern in other industries. Fashion. FMCG.
Brands in Pakistan invest heavily in their physical stores. Location, interiors, staff. Then some stock the same lower priced pieces you could find at any non branded shop.
Perhaps that is the right decision.
But it should be a decision, not just what happens when everything is available everywhere.
The harder conversation was always about the role of each channel or touch point.
Were we trying to grow it, give it a different purpose, or move customers off it? Would a new digital channel complement the older one, or quietly take its business while both carry the same products?
I do not think we always answered those questions before expanding distribution.
We built the channels first. Then worked out what each one was for.
The pointer
V. Kasturi Rangan and Marie Bell, Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy: The Three Disciplines of Channel Management (Harvard Business School Press, 2006). The second of the three is the one this piece is about, and the word that matters in it is edit: build and edit your channel continuously, rather than only ever adding to it. Publisher listing.