Aftertaste from exhibitions and factories - what remains in the bottom line?

— Of course, it is important to study and understand the market, both of your product and, if possible, all its related categories - their development paths very often intersect and sometimes provide an external understanding of the trends of your own products. Ice cream includes drinks, snacks and quite a lot of impulse milk. Yes, it is a very good practice to have a broad outlook, but... marketing often does not have enough energy for its products, besides there is a lot of ongoing work, and evil competitors are again up to no good in the market and something urgently needs to be done in response.

- Of course, you need to attend all industry exhibitions, there are many of them, they are becoming larger and more diverse, but... how can you dig out a diamond in this huge pile of dropouts? There are more than a thousand stands at exhibitions and many of them don’t have time to stop even for a minute. We have an Uzbek colleague who follows us to all exhibitions, but for some reason his product portfolio has not changed for years... As he said one evening: “After 30 stands, my eyes began to ripple from the monotony of the products presented.” Perhaps this is the point - to see diversity, which at first glance is not at all obvious and ambiguous.

— Undoubtedly, it is very useful to participate in conferences, but whose thoughts and calculations are worth listening to, and who to skip as unnecessary, and the latter will be at least 80%?

— It’s good to study presentations about trends, but many of them will be useless for you - our national markets have slightly different trends and traditions, you can look at them as an example, but then, based on your local understanding of the market, go your own way.

— You need to travel to different markets and study new products, but which of the New Products there are successful and which are not is not indicated on the product label, and the local NielsenIQ is not available to you.

— It is useful to talk with European R&D companies in ice cream, but all visitors ask them such questions, and they are not frank with everyone. It is productive to conduct in-depth interviews, focus group research and testing of various products yourself, but few people bother with this. And a simple question: “Which of the 183 ice cream producers in the Russian Federation does at least the simplest job of analyzing the market?”

— It’s interesting to visit the factories of the world leaders in the ice cream industry, but... who will let you in from the street? I recently wrote about visiting 4 major factories in the world - I don’t think anyone else there was from Russia. In a word, it takes years of work to get the hang of it, so that after many years the world's Gurus speak to you, if not on an equal footing, then at least not openly - from top to bottom.

Exhibition colors of the world

During the calendar year, there are many ice cream exhibitions in different countries and continents, and in many ways they are all very similar, but each has its own characteristics. Those who are interested in the production of private brands go to Anuga (Cologne) - the most efficient food producers gather there; people go to Sial (Paris) more specifically to Paris, because the exhibition itself is no different from others; The Ice Show in Chicago has lost its power, which attracted the whole world 10 years ago, and has become a local gathering of some enthusiasts; It’s almost impossible to get into the Ice cream Festival in Yokohama (Japan) from the outside, but finally, once inside, you understand that no one is going to share with you - you’re a stranger at this festival of cold delicacies: Japanese traditionalists carefully keep all the secrets of the magic of ice cream; The Gulfood exhibition in Dubai is of most interest to fans of the modern East, and any Chinese exhibition is more trouble and hope than real results in developing the Chinese market.

Sigep exhibition in Rimini

Against the backdrop of all that has been said, Sigep in Rimini stands apart. On the one hand, this is not the best part of Italy compared to Tuscany, Amalfia, Sardinia and other gastronomic and tourist meccas - the airport resembles a noisy crossroads of all unimaginable charters with all the turmoil and unrest - in short, for the first time we spent a very long time getting there and trying ourselves set a positive mood: what can you see in this village, and even in January? But... emotions and mood begin to change dramatically immediately after entering the exhibition. Such large multi-storey stands with terraces and mezzanines, with large interactive screens, beautiful equipment, such an incredible combination of ice cream from the hands of many smiling models - are not found anywhere in the world! In Italy, even in January, everything breathes with summer, holidays and the aroma of fun - from morning to evening they tell you about new ice cream and ingredients, technologies and equipment, and you sometimes take breaks between ice cream tastings to go to other pavilions, but there you are again “overwhelming” with the aromas of coffee, the spicy tastes of chocolate and other desserts, pizza straight from the wood-burning oven, the splendor of cheeses and glasses of wine from Italian friends at the stands, which move from the exhibition in the evenings to coastal restaurants, tirelessly talking again and again about the product , new season and summer mood.

Italian luminaries Gelato

The “hanger” of this exhibition begins with the luminaries of Italian Gelato, as well as all traditional ice cream in the world - with companies producing “ice cream bases” or in professional language “Pastes”, which give ice cream the depth of taste, the necessary structure and an indescribable natural aroma. There are dozens of such companies here, their stand area occupies from 300 to 1500 m2, and each tirelessly praises their product. We start with “PreGel” (year of creation 1967), we are met by the head of the company, a gray-haired man of 85 years old, Luciano Rabboni, a long-term friend of Andrei Shin, our president of “Shin-Line”. Despite the fact that a young manager was with us, only Luciano spoke for about 10 minutes, emotionally talking about the new products, and in response to my question: “Why do you need the new Chicco product “Non-alcoholic wine with small pieces of ice?” , he replied with genuine surprise on his face: “You can’t stop and mark time - every day you have to think about new products!” . From them we moved on to “MEC 3”, a company that partly left PreGel several years ago, but already has the largest stand, a bunch of fans and a fashionable slogan: “We create the ice cream of tomorrow” , there were more than 10 pistachio pastes there types, but calculating the price of one scoop of scooping ice cream should cost the consumer 200 rubles. We continued to talk about pastes at this stand with Anton from Renna - it is not without reason that he considers his “pistachio” mixture to be the best in the Russian Federation: “Everyone uses aromatics, and we use pasta,” but the gap to the Italian “pistachio” is still very large and, probably, the whole question is in the difference between the pastes themselves - Italian and others. And when we met with Dmitry from Kolibri at the LeoGel stand, he also complained that such products and prices are so far only for Moscow, and only in some of its tourist spots.

Cookies for tea and ice cream are different products!

Back in 2003, the owner of the Italian FoodInvest explained to us the difference between cookies for tea and for ice cream: “Don’t look at how similar they are in appearance - for ice cream, cookies must come into contact with the milk mixture and not get soggy, they must be frozen and not become “ wooden" - and we spent many years of research to find the right recipe. Now it is suitable for sugar, for American, for brownies and other cookies - that’s why we sell all over the world: to Switzerland, Norway and the USA.” After 20 years, the Italian “FoodInvest” no longer exists, but other Italians from “Salpa” supply our Baltic colleagues from “Food Union”, everyone is happy, but it is 2.5 times more expensive than the domestic one - so for now this remains the lot of European ice cream makers, and domestic confectioners still need to comprehend Italian secrets.

Stabilization systems are the heart of ice cream

To prevent ice cream from melting so quickly, various stabilization systems are used. In Soviet times, they used potato starch - but it squeaks a little on the teeth, there are citrus fibers and egg yolk - but only super-premium ice cream can afford it. Modern stabilization systems are more complex and include “Locust bean gum”, “Guar gum”, “Carboxy methyl cellulose”, etc. The first is more natural, but in recent years the price has increased significantly due to problems with transportation, sometimes fell due to a drop in demand at a high price. Now everyone decides what is more important to them – naturalness, quality or price. We were not lazy and went from the exhibition to the Swiss and Slovenian offices of specialized companies to resolve this issue for ourselves.

Meetings with colleagues

Any large exhibition is not complete without seminars and mini-meetings. In advance, we asked our German colleagues to prepare information on the European and world markets on the dynamics of development of private labels in ice cream - in the Russian Federation, private labels are growing catastrophically and cause concern among everyone, in addition, the growth of the family segment, which is a good growth driver for the entire ice cream category, has slowed down. German colleagues reassured us a little: in Eastern and Western Europe there is no growth in private labels, but there is even a slight decline; At the same time, the family segment is growing in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as all over the world... In addition, we had an interesting conversation in Milan with Oleg Beriev, the former head of the creative agency Mildberry, who back in 2011 developed the Sarafanovo brand for Food Union and then it became a joint brand of X5 and FU - after all, the brand is not an outright private label and this must be taken into account. We will provide all the details and infographics of the global dynamics of private labels in comparison with the Russian one at the next annual presentation of the “Ratings” of the ice cream industry.

The discussion on a long-standing issue turned out to be quite interesting: “Froneri” has a fairly successful collaboration with the brands of the confectionery king “Mondelez” (Oreo, Milka, Alpen Gold and others), how big is the risk that “Mondelez” itself will go into ice cream, after all, several years ago was he already getting ready? Or will Mondelez find another ice cream maker and sign a contract with him? Every year there are a bunch of arguments “For” and “Cons” - this year I heard something new from a Polish analyst: “Froneri” pays for the Mondelez license for each piece of ice cream it sells. Fronteri is the number two player in the world and sells billions of these things. No one, neither Mondelez on its own nor any other ice cream player in the world, will be able to sell even 3 times less - the volumes will differ by an order of magnitude! Fronteri can continue to develop this contract with confidence.

Many copies have been broken in Ferrero ice cream - they, having started only in 2019, are already the 6th player in the world, have factories in Spain, Italy and the USA and retain great ambitions for leadership. There are two types of arguments that cannot be silenced here: “They couldn’t replicate the confectionery taste in ice cream, bury it!” vs. “Who in the world is better than Ferrero in matters of marketing and R&D?”

Market visit

While in Slovenia, we arranged a Market visit for a day to observe today’s struggle between two leaders Leon (Slovenia) and Ledo (Croatia and Serbia) - both are very technologically advanced and modern; one is cool in its protein line, the other in a variety of flavors; both have long mastered multi-packs and liquid nitrogen technology; they fight in local markets and make private labels to other European countries. We have been following them for several years now and we can learn something from each of the players from the former Yugoslavia

Before departure

On the way to the airport, we spent the day visiting all the important equipment manufacturers in Italy - they seemed to line up from the exhibition to Milan: Gatta 27, Laif, Teknoice. Each completes lines for customers before the season, boasts of their technical innovations and is ready to supply equipment. They are all good, but only two Danish equipment manufacturers are still cool - Gram and Tetra-Pak.

After Rimini, you return changed - with new thoughts and ideas, as well as with a summer mood, so we can say that people go there for emotions and a positive charge before the new upcoming ice cream season.