PVM sees a highly successful future in the Americas

This year’s Summit of the Americas show in Orlando sees Perfetti Van Melle bring new displays to support its ‘must have’ products, plus onstand activations to reinforce the launch of new lines to the Americas market (Cypress Ballroom 1223).

PVM’s travel retail team has developed a new display with 360 degrees of visibility to guarantee prominence to customers approaching the store from every angle. All of its best performing ‘must have’ items and new products will fit into this new Mentos and Chupa Chups branded Suitcase Display. Measuring at 80cm x 80cm, the Suitcase display perfectly caters to the limited space that retailers may struggle with -  a prototype will be present in Orlando for all to see, where PVM will take the input of its customers to create and perfect the final display.

“Mentos and Chupa Chups products are fun and eye-catching, and therefore deserve to be displayed in exciting and high visibility locations. This is something that we as a company always try to improve – we always make sure that we have something that suits not only our products, but our business partners too,” says Femke Van Veen, PVM’s GTR Marketing Manager.

“Besides the Suitcase display, we also have the possibility to develop bespoke displays that will meet all the specifications given to us by our business partners, examples of two past projects that we have had include a Dhow Boat display for the new airport in Muscat– a very fun and attractive looking display that is a real eye-catcher. Another request we received was for several stores  at Charles de Gaulle airport. The request was for a display that could be used in multiple locations: against the wall, in corners, but also as a round free-standing unit. We came up with the Carousel Display which could be split up and used for all three placement occasions. The wheels underneath the display make it very portable so it can easily be moved throughout the store.”

New products being shown in Orlando include the Mentos Connecting Tin, a travel retail exclusive containing 275 grams of fruit flavoured dragees. The packaging and dragees themselves are adorned with multilingual greeting and landmarks creating a fun and educational tool for younger consumers interested in learning foreign languages.

The launch of the Mentos Connecting Tin is supported with a Mentos themed selfie wall at the stand – featuring a map of the world with detachable speech bubbles. Visitors are invited to stand in front of the map holding one of the speech bubbles and take away a memborable polaroid photograph or leave one behind on the wall of fame.

Also new is the Chupa Chups ‘Do You Love Me?” concept, that uses popular emoticons on Chupa Chups packaging and lollipops to create a higher brand awareness amongst teens.

The range includes a hand-held resealable bag filled with 25 fruit flavour Chupa Chups lollipops. Every single 3-Dimensional lollipop will answer the question ‘Do You Love Me?’ with the use of various emoticons that are printed on the lollipops

A new character joins the ‘Chupa Chups Cool Friends Back Pack’ family, the new Elephant family member now features alongside the Monkey, Frog, and Dinosaur. The soft toy contains a variety of 16 fruit flavour Chupa Chups lollipops and can be re-used as a fun backpack, making it a perfect gift item for kids.

Perfetti Van Melle has also been working closely with M1nd-set to highlight the importance of sugar confectionery to the confectionery category as a whole, their research shows that:

·      60% of the sugar confectionery purchases are because of the exclusivity of the product.

·      47% of confectionery purchases are bought as a snack.

·      Young adults mostly buy confectionery for themselves to snack on, while seniors buy more confectionery for gifting purposes.

Speaking on Perfetti Van Melle’s business in the Americas, Van Veen comments: “The Americas is a very important region for our brands, and we have high expectations for the region in 2018 after a slight slow down in 2016. We are now back on track and showing promising results ahead of market growth. Border business in Latin America is  showing positive signals, the Brazilians are visiting the borderstores again and this immediately reflects into great figures for this region as well. We attribute this growth to our increased focus on our ‘must have’ assortment for 2017, both for distribution and for promotions. Promotions for our iconic Mega Chups and Mentos Jumbo Rolls were very successful and hugely appreciated by the travelling consumer.

“In 2016 we began working in partnership with Otis as our new distributor for North America and this has so far proved to be a very successful venture. 2017 was the first full year working together and is so far showing the potential for the near and distant future.

“Overall in the regions our partners are succesfull in getting new customers and listings. For 2018 we have identied several growth opportunities in airports, borderstores and cruiselines for the Americas and will focus on these together with our partners to achieve further growth.”