Water Treatment Equipment — Branding and Growth Strategy

Our client, a component manufacturer, was developing a strategy to grow business. They were far removed from the marketplace and relied on channels that were not aggressive marketers and often marketing their own private label products using our client’s components. QDI’s assignment was to learn how the market works and identify the leverage points that would grow market share.

We conducted research with each layer of a multi-channel market, including branded and private label OEMs, distributors, dealers (both franchised and independent), retailers, and big box retailers. From our research, we were able to build a market flow model which identified and sized the flow of products from the component manufacturers to the OEMs. We learned how our client’s channels marketed their products and the nature of our client’s market strength and how to leverage this to grow market share.

QDI’s market model showed that there were three major channels with similar market shares reaching the end-users:

  • Mass marketers / big box retailers
  • Integrated OEM dealers
  • Independent dealers

The market was changing and the mass marketers were putting market pressure on both the integrated and independent dealers.   Our client was locked out of the integrated OEM dealers unless they could become a supplier to the integrated OEMS.  While this was potentially possible, the fact that they were competitors reduced the odds of this strategy’s success.

The better potential strategy was to work with the independent dealers to increase their market competitiveness.  One specific leverage point was brand, as our dealer channels were not aggressive marketers. They used word of mouth, trade fairs and yellow page advertising to reach new customers.  Customer research showed that customers usually picked a brand they knew when searching the yellow pages, thus the independents generally were not picked because of having weak, private label brands.

Providing these dealers with a national brand, and national brand advertising and marketing support, that they could have exclusively in their territories would create marketing pull that did not exist today.

QDI’s brand strategy along with the overall strategy recommendations provided our client with a road map to more than double revenue.

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