Landmark Wholesale is offering cash incentives to members of its Lifestyle Express fascia to comply with promotions and follow category advice.

Landmark is offering up to £50 cashback to retailers who stock products for a ‘Love your Lunch’ meal deal that includes Walkers crisps and Britvic drinks. If the 2,000-plus retailers follow the advice for a year, they stand to gain £1,000 to spend in a Landmark member depot.

The offer, which kicked off this month, was a new approach to the age-old problem of how to encourage indies to support new launches, comply with supplier promotions and stock best-selling lines, said business development director Chris Doyle.

The independent retail sector lacked good promotional execution, he admitted. “We’ve been using the same techniques for years, which is basically education and advice. That’s got us to around 50% execution on core range and promotions. There’s no point doing the same thing over and over,” he said.

“You have to take the bull by the horns to go faster. We feel we’ve been quite brave and innovative to offer a reward for good retailing.”

Landmark had found higher than usual levels of execution when it trialled the incentive with its own- label products last year, he added.

“We’re cherry-picking the best advice and biggest opportunities. Landmark wholesalers are saying ‘this is what you should be doing anyway, but we’ll give you cash’,” he said.

It was recommending meal deals because they drove footfall, increased basket spend and gave customers a reason to return, he added.

A poll by him! last year revealed that although 86% of indie retailers said it was important to stock key sellers, only 20% said they followed the core range advertised by their wholesaler.

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