“I still remember clearly that on a winter day in November 2008, a large semi-truck pulled up in front of our house and a pallet of AriZona Iced Tea was unloaded into our garage. Before that, we’d been on the phone with the Americans and were told, ‘Sorry, guys, but I don’t think this is going to work.’ We really wanted to distribute their iced tea, but we didn’t really have a company yet. We were just ‘Two dynamic guys who want to distribute your product in Belgium,’” Steven laughs. “They turned us down, but we found a pallet that was already in Europe and that we could buy.”
Today, AriZona Iced Tea is the number two brand in the Benelux after Lipton. “We saw a huge gap between water on the one hand and traditional soft drinks on the other,” says Steven Van Middelem. “In other countries, there’s a whole range of natural, healthy beverages in between,” he continues, “and it’s our job to find the products that will appeal to our consumers as well.”
Get Better Organized to Grow
D-Drinks started out serving the lunch-time food service sector in the capital cities, but quickly expanded across the board: from Formula 1 to gas stations to small sandwich shops. They supply these establishments either directly or through distributors, wholesalers, and beverage retailers.
“We started with simple invoicing in Excel,” says Steven, “after which we switched to a small invoicing package in combination with an external accountant. That way, we could continue to focus on sales. Two years later, we launched our Dutch subsidiary and realized we needed more than just invoicing software. We chose a small Dutch ERP system for both Belgium and the Netherlands and used it for quite some time, but the support wasn’t up to par.”
“In the meantime, we had equipped our sales team with Microsoft Dynamics CRM ”And that went well,“ Steven explains. "That's how we got involved in Alistar's expansion DrinkMaster ”released for Microsoft Dynamics NAV,“ he continues, ”We’ve been using Microsoft Dynamics & Drinkmaster since January 1, 2017. We use it for our entire financial operations, purchasing and sales, inventory management—including suspended stock—planning and dispatching of our own shipments, and so on. Dynamics helps us distribute approximately 120,000 units per day.”
“We now want to work toward further integration between CRM and ERP software. ”That will save us a lot of time,“ Steven explains his plans, ”and there’s still some work to be done when it comes to reporting and BI. Drinkmaster was equipped with very comprehensive dimensions, allowing us to analyze the figures in detail by brand and by customer. Now we need to make all that data more easily accessible.”
Guerrilla Marketing & Social Media
D-Drinks distributes approximately 35 brands, ranging from specialty mineral waters to natural juices and beverages to healthy snacks. For each brand, target audiences and potential sales channels are identified, after which the sales team gets to work.
The company has not yet outgrown the DNA from which it was born. Just as in the days of Steven’s garage, there is still a very strong hands-on mentality. Not a single euro is spent on above-the-line marketing. D-Drinks resolutely opts for a guerrilla approach, with activations that create buzz, sampling, and “feet-on-the-street” campaigns.
Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms are then used to further promote those campaigns. “We have a full-time social media manager on staff,” says Steven, “we work with a lot of brands, and almost all of them have their own social media profiles that we use to stay in touch with consumers and the community.”
“We’re the underdog, the challenger,” Van Middelem continues, “the big beverage giants are seeing their market share in the traditional soft drink sector shrink by 3 % every year. So they’re not sitting idly by in our segment either, and on top of that, they have a great deal of power and massive budgets.”
“On top of that, while the range of products is growing, shelf space in stores isn’t. The major competitors can use their clout to buy shelf space. Fortunately, the consumer is king, and consumers want to try new things. So retailers have no choice but to keep their shelves dynamic, and that certainly works to our advantage.”
“Our strength lies in identifying new products and assessing whether they are a fleeting fad or a lasting trend. We expect Microsoft Dynamics ”It handles all the administrative work, so we can focus as much as possible on the products," Steven concludes.
