Sleepy Owl ups its game with retail expansion & in-store marketing

Post raising Rs 35 million (US$500,000) in seed funding from DSG Consumer Partners (DSGCP), Sleepy Owl Coffee is executing their expansion plan via MT route, consumer mapping via online and offline channels and product line development for GT. Retail4Growth speaks to Ajai Thandi, Co-founder, Sleepy Owl to know more.

Tell us about your market positioning and plan to expand via MT route.

From beginning, as a beverage brand, we were sure that we want to be strictly into in-home beverage category. Initially, we retailed through online channels before starting obtaining shelf space in major MT chain with national presence along with regional premium chains. Today, we are present through 30 stores in Delhi-NCR, with retailers like Le Marche, Modern Bazaar, Foodhall and more.

How many stores are you targeting and what would be your preferred retail channel?

By end of the year, we plan to be present through 100 outlets. Our preferred channel for the time being would be MT. We are also developing/packaging and developing product line. Since we had limitations with our current product range, we introduced our ready-to-drink product Brew Box and we would like to take it to national level. This product will be available in MT and GT both. After Delhi-NCR, we are targeting cities like Bangalore and Mumbai.

What will be your key shopper marketing exercises and in-store engagements? What percentage of your newly-achieved funding will go into that?

Sampling will be our key shopper marketing exercise. We are currently developing our new collaterals and branding for Brew Pack. Lot of our prime focus is going to packaging design to grab the shelf attention.

One third of our funding will go into in-store marketing while another one third will be spent in product development and the remaining part will go into hiring the right talent.