What was the goal?
Nirvana brewery is a boutique brewery based out of London, and the pioneer of the no/low alcohol movement in the UK. After growing in the European market, Nirvana started to explore potential growth into emerging markets, starting with Africa.
Nirvana sought expertise from Afrorian to understand and explore opportunities, challenges about its product market entry into Africa (Particularly: Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya).
Solution:
- Business consultation: Afrorian initiated the process by conducting a comprehensive business consultation with Nirvana’s stakeholders. This involved an in-depth analysis of their current operations, business model, competitors and more. By understanding their unique offering, challenges, and goals, we arrived at a plan.
- The initial agreed market entry plan for Nirvana was to find partners in the African market who fit their ideal profile. The perfect profile was an established alcohol manufacturer, importer, or distributor in the respective markets. The role of the partner would be to reduce administration work, compliance with local regulations and to cover distribution routes.
Results:
The collaboration between Nirvana and Afrorian yielded the following results:
- Afrorian conducted several profile expert interviews who could be potential partners for Nirvana and the results provided Nirvana with an outlook of what different partnerships would offer, the requirements of each and the potential upside for the brand.
- The expert interviews conducted presented the opportunity to introduce the brand as an imported product to get the users feedback, or the option of manufacturing the brand locally. Both options presented had clear risks, opportunities, and requirements in terms of skills and capital resources for Nirvana to review and agree on the way forward.
- Nirvana leaned towards the option of partnering with a local distributor in Nigeria to distribute the imported brand, get customer feedback as opposed to starting a local production of the brand. However, after carefully examining the results and insights provided, Nirvana decided to opt out of the project after realizing that the brand profile might change from a casual non-alcoholic brand for everyday use, to a premium brand.
Summing up
Despite Nirvana not launching as earlier planned, it was the right move. Instead of Nirvana risking to change the brand profile, which will have in return required additional branding efforts in the local market, Nirvana decided not to launch. As much as the numbers looked good, the insight information from a local distributor informed Nirvana more about local segmentation of drinks in the market, which impacts the brand positioning and target customers. Most importantly Nirvana saved on unnecessary market entry costs.
