Central to the success of Savage & Whiten has been the focus on sales and the new symbol offering for retailers under the Today’s brand. As the fastest growing wholesale distributor of grocery, confectionary and soft drinks in Ireland, Savage & Whitten believes that flexibility is key to helping retailers thrive and develop a strong brand. With almost 1,000 customers and delivering within 100-mile radius of Newry, Savage & Whitten is successfully supplying retailers across Northern Ireland, up to Donegal and in the south. A board member for Nisa Today’s Holdings, Mark Windebank’s position gave him an insight into how the Today’s symbol offering - with the backing of the £5.5 billion Today’s Group - would benefit his customers in Northern Ireland. “The Today’s symbol is something I’ve driven and in the last six months we now have 35 stores with our symbol above the door and I believe we can get the number up to 100 in Northern Ireland,” said Mark. The Today’s symbol isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach, the idea is that the Savage & Whitten team will work with retailers to grow their business – working for truly independent retailers. There are no long contracts, no fees, no hidden surcharges, no onerous sales targets, no minimum orders or demands – just good business. Mark explained: “Our deal is different as we are not tying people into five-year contracts, we’re not telling people there are minimum drops, we’re not telling them how to run their stores. “We don’t want to be store keepers; we don’t want the store keepers working for us. We want the store keepers to be independent business people working for themselves. We want to be a very good wholesaler who can deliver a good offer to them – whatever their size - and allow them to run their business successfully and profitably.”

Savage & Whitten can supply everything to its customers but can also draw on the central Nisa warehouse in Scunthorpe which gives the company access to chilled and frozen products. This massive buying power means that retailers are guaranteed to save on all of the most popular product ranges. And with around £2m worth of stock (10,000 lines) in the warehouse at any one time, Savage & Whitten is ideally placed to deliver across all categories “Initially we were very much a secondary supplier to a lot of retail customers – such as larger stores like JC Savage in the south, to Centras Spars, Costcutters – but more recently with the Today’s symbol development we are now very much a primary supplier and we have also developed a whole central billing option.

“As Savage & Whitten works with strong retail partners such as M3, Unilever and Cuisine de France our customers can take one account with us and have access to leading and economy products from trusted suppliers.” Savage & Whitten’s location and the fact that it can draw on its catering arm ICS gives further strength to the Today’s symbol offering. “There’s a synergy between Savage & Whitten and ICS as some retailers have deli counters and some have quite large catering requirements,” said Mark. “We would encourage these retailers to also have separate catering account with us, but we do have 150 catering lines on the retail side too.”Mark added: “In terms of location, Newry is perfect. There’s always been a cross-border trade for us and with the sterling collapsing last year we certainly saw an immediate influx of people buying more from us. “However, we were still cautious about our growth in the south and I was conscious we couldn’t build a business around a currency fluctuation.

There are companies in our industry – particularly on the catering side – that had rapid expansion in the south but to me it’s a short-term opportunity. “It’s certainly been a benefit to have that market on our doorstep but we’ve been chasing business in Northern Ireland,” said Mark. “We’ve expanded our representation in the north as opposed to the south and it’s worked very, very well. “Our strength is really about Northern Ireland and that is where we have concentrated our sales approach in both retail and catering.” As a private and independent wholesale distributor, Savage & Whitten understands the pressure on the independent retailer and constantly endeavours to improve service and value. And from the feedback Mark and the team have received, it’s a winning formula. “I always ask the retailers who come on board with us if they are making more money with us than they were previously. If the answer’s not ‘yes’ then we are doing something wrong. In all cases so far, they’re delighted with a new strong symbol,” said Mark. “Feedback has been very good. To look at it another way; there are 120 Costcutter stores in Northern Ireland and this symbol is seen as a reasonably-sized operation. So if Savage & Whitten were operating 100 Today’s stores we become a sizeable player. “If we get the number of stores up to 100 in Northern Ireland and around 50 wholesalers do the same on the mainland – that’s 5,000 stores and that makes us a very powerful group.”