By James Atkinson
Liquor Legends is continuing to drive its loyalty program and data capability to achieve strong sales growth through its 270 outlets, managing director John Carmody said this week.
Carmody told TheShout that the banner group achieved like-for-like sales growth in the “mid single digits” for the last 12 months.
“I think that’s an excellent result,” he said, shortly after addressing members at the Liquor Legends National Conference in Surfers Paradise.
“Certainly in the last six months our customer counts have been up on previous years,” Carmody added.
“We’ve got a strong average sale and we’re doing so much with our loyalty and rewards program to increase basket value, plus customer counts are going up as well, so we’re really achieving some good sales growth.”
Liquor Legends managing director John Carmody addresses members
By using shopper insights and data gleaned from its centralised point-of-sale and ‘Rewards’ loyalty program, Carmody said Liquor Legends has differentiated its offer substantially from other independent banners.
“Knowing what we know about the ILGs, the IBAs and the LMGs of the world, what we’re offering our members is a very powerful and unique opportunity,” he said.
“We’ve put in place systems and processes for our members to have access to critical data. They’re getting a desktop now that gives them a read across their whole business and they can benchmark that across the group instantly as well – no-one else can do that.”
Delegates enjoy the Legendary Dinner on Wednesday night
At the conference, Carmody presented delegates with an out of stock report detailing missed retail value on the occasions they had run out of key product lines.
“I don’t know of anybody else that can do that. For our members, we can look at the effectiveness of our buying, our ranging and our execution and the retail managers and buyers will react to that.”
“If you’ve got that one report that tells you everything you need to know, it makes it easier to make decisions.”
Carmody said the Rewards program could become even more important in the future if the laws around alcohol advertising are changed.
“Who knows if there will be any restrictions on press, radio, TV or electronic advertising in the future? You’re going to need to be able to talk to your customer,” he said.