DENVER, US – Marley Coffee reviews its successes in 2013 and articulates its strategy for increasing distribution of its coffees and expanding its product lines in the United Kingdom and Europe in 2014 and beyond.
The company recently expanded its sub-licensing agreement with its UK distributor, Marley Coffee UK, so it would take a more active role with countries outside of the UK and Ireland, while reinvesting in building the brand within the UK.
“Marley Coffee UK has followed the US in many ways from a strategic development standpoint,” commented Guy Wilmot, General Manager of Marley Coffee UK.
“For the last two years, we’ve tested and proved that Marley Coffee is a viable brand that consumers can identify with across several different European countries. Like Marley Coffee USA, we started out with three SKUs of 8oz (227g) bags in ground and whole bean coffee form, and successfully sold them within key retailers throughout Europe.
The objective for 2014 is to expand our product lines significantly to match those of the US in order to enter into new business verticals such as food service and OCS. The UK is the eighth-largest coffee marketplace, and coffee retail value was larger than tea in 2012, according to Euromonitor. We are extremely excited for the additional support that’s being committed to us in 2014.”
Rohan Marley, Chairman of Marley Coffee, said, “Early last year, Marley Coffee established itself in Europe with some of the most prestigious high-end European retailers, such as Selfridges, Planet Organic Grocery Chain and La Grande Epicerie. Later in 2013, we caught the attention of some of the larger European retail chains.
For example, we had a successful launch of the single-serve espresso-based capsules program with Martello, which sold the capsules in more than 700 Hofer and Aldi stores in Europe. We were also able to get 8oz bags distributed through El Corte Ingles Supermarket in Spain by the end of the year, which is our largest distributor of our 8oz bags in Europe.
As we look at our plans for 2014, we are confident that we will continue to drive our expansion into the UK and European markets. This is a very exciting time for Marley Coffee as we expect the company will potentially reach a tipping point of awareness in 2014 that will trigger a string of new distribution deals in the UK and Europe.”
“Guy and his team have done a great job of generating brand awareness and distribution for Marley Coffee throughout Europe this year,” says Brent Toevs, CEO of Marley Coffee.
“Through their media efforts, they’ve been profiled in some of the largest magazines such as Saveurs and FHM. We were even featured in GQ Magazine where the company won the ‘celebrity coffee taste-off.’ A year and a half ago we were authorized in about 500 points of distribution and today we’re authorized in over 8,000 retail stores.
We believe that the UK is right at that tipping point. They’ve shown that people are gravitating toward the brand, and so its time for us to reinvest our efforts into this market.”
The company’s main initiatives will be to:
- Enter into the hotel, restaurant and catering/foodservice business. Marley Coffee UK will add more SKUs to align itself with its US counterpart and start producing fractional packs and 1kg bags. It has also developed a full machine and coffee offering package for the UK and Ireland and is now developing a rollout to other European countries, in particular to experienced foodservice distributors. Its first clients are social enterprise cafes and it is already supplying three cafes with foodservice coffee in Birmingham and London, as well as a mobile coffee cart operating daily.
- The company will continue to focus on expanding its retail grocery footprint. The company is proud to announce that it recently obtained distribution into the Sunkost Health Food retail chain in Norway.
- Marley Coffee will be presenting at several European trade shows to broaden awareness of its brands and increase its customer base. In February 2014, at BIOFACH 2014 in Nuremberg, Germany, the world’s leading trade fair for organic food, the company plans to present its new product line for the foodservice industry and will present its RealCups and RealCup brewer. In October 2014, the company plans to exhibit at SIAL in Paris, the world’s largest food exhibition.
- Marley Coffee will introduce its single-serve RealCups into the European marketplace as it sees the trend for American-style filtered coffee increasing. The leading North American single-serve company has outlined their plans to expand internationally, which includes the European market and this backs up Marley Coffee’s rationale for doing so.
- The company is also developing a Nespresso Compatible product line to be launched in 2014 as Nespresso has become one of the fastest-growing segments of the coffee market, accounting for 20 to 40 percent of the value of ground coffee sales in the European coffee market which totals USD 17 billion.
