THE BRIEF

Our national FMCG client sells a comprehensive selection of products for all markets, though has been struggling to grow sales volumes through its existing footprint of formal retailers in South Africa. The informal spaza shop channel has traditionally been costly and difficult to penetrate, given a lack of data and last-mile infrastructure.

M4Jam was tasked with bridging the last mile for the FMCG company in a pilot project taking 10 SKUs into a representative sample of Soweto’s 1000 spaza shops as the first phase of a three-phase strategy for building, sustaining and growing sales volumes.

PROBLEM OVERVIEW

The Problem Statement

With traditional sales channels showing little to no growth prospects, the FMCG company desired access to new and unpenetrated markets – the most notable being South Africa’s informal market. However, the informal spaza shop channel has been notoriously difficult to access and performance is not guaranteed without significant costs in promotion, distribution and sales performance tracking.

What was needed was a scalable and cost-effective framework to create, build and sustain market share and on-shelf presence within selected informal retailers as a proof of concept.

M4Jam's Proposition

M4Jam has successfully rolled out numerous projects and launched successful companies in emerging markets. They built and deployed a proprietary technology platform specifically designed with rural Africa in mind which addresses the unique challenges that come with opening new markets in the African and South African contexts, helping clients establish a brand presence and build market share within informal retail. 

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