How will 2003 be to 7up?

[SURGE]

As well all know Pepsi has dumped this classic brand for that soleless crap Mist. The question I ask you fellow bevboarders is how will 7up fair this year? I think that due to the transition from Pepsi to 3rd-tiers that it will be on paper atleast a devistating year in sales for 7up. Not to say that that the bottlers picking it up arnt great. Atleast around here I am quite sure they will do a great job. But it is a fact that 7up is gonna lose ALOT of fountain placement. Infact in my area Coke and Pepsi are the only ones with fountains anywhere. I have never had RC or any other non- Coke/Pepsi brands in fountain. Also 7up may lose some shelf space to Sierra Mist. Although I believe that the new distributors will truly care about the brand in a way that Pepsi could not I do wonder if this brand which has seen numbers dwindling will be able to maintain dignity in its sales from this point on. Another major point is it losing vending space in machines. This is quite obvious at my school where 7up has jsut been romoved. Around here ABC has a few vending machines but I would say they are outgunned 15-1 by Coke and Pepsi. Although I really hope that this transition goes well for 7up I also realize that the truth of it is that this brand has lost alot of shelf, fountain, and vending space and that will strongly impact sales. Also some areas are experiencing a blackout of 7up as it is transitioned between Pepsi and the new bottler. This only further damages 7up and gives Pepsi a chance to convert. I hope that 7up gets a Superbowl ad out to counteract Seirra Mist. I would hate to see a crappy wannabe un-inovative brand like Mist replace or even take a dent out of a proven quality brand like 7up. I also hope Coke moves on the offesive with Sprite to keep Sierra Mist from gaining any ground.

[Terry K]

We at the salute have gotten a lot of reports that the new bottlers of 7up are racing Cherry 7up to market as well as dnL in order to capture shelf space as quick as they can. I tend to think tha DPSU is having bottlers roll out stuff as quick as they can just to grab that all precious shelf space.

I tend to think too that the new bottlers *do* care because in a lot of situations, 7up is the best thing they have going for them. (ABC has Dr Pepper in some areas, but mostly, ABC has 7up as their flagship brand in a lot of places, and with the 7up/Pepsi fiasco), this may FINALLY give ABC (and DPSUBG) the motive that they need to really push the products they way they need to.

[SURGE]

Your right about that Cherry 7up, it was impossible to find here until ABC got 7up. And like I said before I know that ABC and others are gonna work alot harder than Pepsi ever did so the question is more of how will they overcome the fountain/vending machine issue? Can the new dists. pull 7up out of its current slump or will it fall further?

[FIZZMAN]

There's no way that 7-up will keep the numbers that it had a year ago. ABC will try to keep them up the best expect like Surge said about the fountain, and vending machines. As for the privated distrubator like us, I already know that the number are going to be awful for 2 reasons. 1. Being that 7-up has lost alot of shelf space especially from the conveince store end. Example, take the Holiday sets this year, I just got them in today and all the space we get for 7-up is a measely 4 facings. Last year Pepsi got a whole shelf, now they get that whole shelf for Seirra Piss. 2. Since we don't pay for the franchise, DPSUBG are not giving us any support for this year as a way to make us pay for the addition of 7-up. To me this is the stupidest time to do something like that. All we can do is go into stores full price and sell as is. We can't even do any promotions ( good anyway )cause we won't make enough money to do it. Oh well, give it time and let our customers be told by there customers on what products they want. Just look at AW and Sunkist it took a few years, but they lead there catagories not, by a little, but they crush the competition!

[drpep]

Where I work the new 7-UP dist has several cases of 20oz singles sitting in the back room but no cooler space unless they can squeeze the 7-UP into the Snapple case. Around Bradford, PA 7-UP was hard to find. 7-UP should do well in other towns in NY around me as the distributor for Cro-pac products (Sunkist, A&W, 7-Up) have managed to snag large amounts of shelf space and endcap displays last year. Still no dnL though.
Tommorrow is my first day off this year and I will be taking a non work related road trip and plan to check on the Sierra Mist/7-UP situation.

[fusion]

The numbers will obviously be hurting, especially in areas with weak 3rd/4th tier distributors. They just don't have the muscle to demand the shelf space, the displays, coolers, racks, and so on.

Areas with already strong/well developed 3rd tier, like the Mid-Atlantic, will probably be able to prevent too much hemmoraging of the numbers. Since Pepsi is practically giving away Mist, they will probably get a good market share, but with no profits to show for it.

7-Up is already part of ads in the area I work in, due to the DPSU bottlers' 7-Up franchises in adjoining areas. The 7-Up brands should be included in any future sales programs they put out there.

I don't see 7-Up in too many fountains, so I don't see them losing that business. Where I do see them getting trounced is in the vending/cooler venues, especially in areas where there are no current DPSU bottler coolers or vendors. They've done a good job of securing facings in the chain convenience stores, so they should just transition right over to the DPSU bottler from the Pepsi bottler.

And like Fizzman said, just look at Sunkist/A&W. DPSU transitioned them from Pepsi and Coke bottlers after Slice/Mug/Barq's/Minute Maid came along, and the brands can hold their own now.

DPSU really needs to step up to the plate and spend give of their money to market 7-Up brands -- especially to the smaller bottlers, so they can get the shelf space, coolers, vendors, and so on to grow brand 7-Up into something that is a core brand.

I'm also curious if DSPU will ever get an exclusive contract with a major chain... like Coke in McD's, and so on.

They have a cola and diet cola.. RC/Diet Rite. They've got an orange.. Sunkist. A root beer - A&W. They've got Hawaiian Punch, Canada Dry/Schweppes. All they really need is an iced tea. They used to sell Tetley in cans (I thought it was the best damn canned iced tea out there), but that's gone.

[SURGE]

Although the next year will be an interesting one for this brand I have no doubt that 2004 will really show us how this transition went. I mean everybody is gonna be forgiving when 7up takes a big hit this year. But by 2004 investors and people liek us are gonna demand that 7up hold up. It seems unfortunate for this brand that this transition had to happen at a time when quite honostly 7up is having trouble competing. I mean in 2001 7up droped 7% in unit sales, that is a big drop. This is a good solid brand that is quite deserving of its position. Still I'm skepticle of if this brand will maintain a top 10 position in the future. One problem with them giving Sierra Piss away is that sometimes people get converted simply beocuse they get used to the low prices and never switch back. This could obviously hurt 7up and Sprite in the future. Still that doesn't always happen as we have seen with introductions like SURGE, and somewhat with Powerade. The thing that is working against Sierra Piss is its lack of innovation. It seems to me that people will buy it when its cheap but then switch back. Still the longer Pepsi can manage to give this crap away the more it will be ingrained in the minds of todays mostly fad-following soda buying public. It seems to me that the battleground will once again be in the 12-30 year old range. Teens like cheap pop and they don't usually come onto the scene with much brand loyalty. Pepsi it seems has used this to their benefit alot in recent years. Brands like Dew have sold not on flavor or quality but instead on an image. Dew or Sprite or Pepsi are all trying to sell us a personality not a soda. 7up to me has not defined itself enough as an image. The superbowl ad will most definatly give Piss a boost. But Pepsi is gonna have to work hard to keep momentum with the brand. As for the flavor extensions of 7up such as Cherry and dnL. It remains to be seen to me atleast if these will bring in new customers to the 7up brand or if they will simply feed off of existing 7up buyers further damaging the core asset , 7up itself. Dispite fair slae of Code Red I think that that very exactt phenominon happend. Code Red didn't convert many it just stole from regular due, which explains it fairly large drop. Sure brand extensions bring in a few new faces but do they truly justify the added costs? As I said earlier it will be very interesting to watch this category this year and I can't wait untill 2005 or so when the dust clears.

[drpep]

I took a look around the Waverly,NY/Sayre,Pa area today. On the PA side of the border most convienence stores have a non Pepsi/Coke door. One chain had 7-UP and dnL (bottled by Pepsi Cola Bottling Pennsauken,NJ). The other chain still had 7-UP in the Pepsi door with the Sierra Mist. K-mart had a Pepsi section with SM, a Faygo section then the Coke section. Nothing else except Red Fusion,canned by Pepsi, stocked with Coke and a 2 liter shell with Cherry 7-UP sitting in the Faygo section. No Dr Pepper or any other non Coke/Pepsi brands. The grocery store next to K-mart had 2 liter bottles of 7-UP product in the second tier beverage section and all sizes of SM including a portable ice chest shaped like an SM can filled with 10oz glass screw top SM.
On the NY side Sierra Mist was in the Pepsi section and 7-UP was in the Jones cooler.

[Gators fan]

7-up in the Detroit area is distributed by the American Bottling company and has been that way for along time. There marketshare will not be hurt in this area because they only have a tiny portion. 7-up is pretty much a joke around here and the people that work for them are not very reliable at all. They never get any display space unless they run a super hot ad which is very rare.

[SamC]

Overnight in my area this week, 7-UP disappeared from the shelves, replaced by SM. SM, BTW, offered at a discount below the going Pepsi rate.

Since two nearby counties have always had 7-UP in the hands of a non-Pepsi/Coke bottler, and that bottler operates here with other products, it should be an easy transition for them to ramp-up 7-UP production.

Has anybody been to one of the old Pepsi-owned restaurants (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) lately? Pepsi retained about a 10% interest in them when they spun them off a few years back, and they often are ahead of the curve on what Pepsi is doing at the fountain. In my area they now have SM replacing 7-UP and Cherry Pepsi (which is truly vile) replacing Dr. Pepper.