ARC International, a leader in the tabletop market, was awarded the Special Prize by the Jury of the French Institute of Merchandising on 23 November 2005. The prize was awarded to ARC International f…
ARC International, a leader in the tabletop market, was awarded the Special Prize by the Jury of the French Institute of Merchandising on 23 November 2005. The prize was awarded to ARC International for its European merchandising approach to optimizing front-line tableware. Underpinned by some thirty partnerships, ARC International collaborates with large European consumer goods distributors to increase its insight into the European tableware market in hyper- and supermarkets. With its knowledge of global trends and backed by its local project experience, ARC International assists the large supermarkets to position itself on the market. “We feel very proud and honored to receive this award”, said Didier Huron, Manager of merchandising Europe. “Our main goal was to make shelves easy to understand and effective for the consumer. That resulted in the implementation of a front-line with two dimensions, the daily useful, on the one hand and the attractive occasional, on the other, broken down into three spaces: kitchen, table and home decor articles. The second goal was to attract the consumer by creating the appropriate display facilities and POS to excite the consumer thus highlighting, not only prices, but criteria such as shape and color”. ARC International has built up partnerships in more than 11 European countries. The various solutions found for brand problems have together resulted in an improved turnover for frontline tableware. ARC International is represented at hyper- and supermarket level with the brands Luminarc and Cristal d“Arques, which represent 50% of its sales. ARC International“s strategy aims at category leadership status and includes all the tableware market segments. The French Merchandising Institute is a reference body for trade and industry designed to ensure the development of the consumer goods trade. It organizes an annual competition called “les Mtres IFM” (roughly “IFM yardsticks”), to award prizes for best practices developed between industry and the distribution trade. Representatives of Trade and Industry sit on the competition jury.