Continuity of a successful strategy in the channel is key to Ashish Gandham, who has been appointed Managing Director of Beam Suntory’s Global Travel Retail (GTR) division, effective 1 April.
The former Emerging Markets and Commercial Excellence Director takes the reins for a channel long identified as a key priority by the company.
“I truly believe in our existing strategy built by the team over the last 18 months. It’s now about execution and implementation,” Gandham tells The Moodie Davitt Report. “My job is about ensuring we remain focused on embedding our excellent strategy that we built with Phil [Restall – former MD GTR at Beam Suntory]”.
“We must also continue to engage with our market and be agile through the most volatile period in its history. We never took our foot off the pedal in GTR over the last few years. We continued to invest and support customers throughout the pandemic and that won’t change.”
Talking of longer-term priorities, Gandham described GTR as “a market unlike any other – I see it as the shop window for our brands globally.” The channel leads Beam Suntory’s premiumisation efforts globally as the company builds its brand presence through exceptional brand story telling or ‘monogatari’ (a literary, highly evocative form in traditional Japanese literature) with some “incredible” innovations and exclusives in the pipeline, he promises.
Talking of longer-term priorities, Gandham described GTR as “a market unlike any other – I see it as the shop window for our brands globally. The channel leads Beam Suntory’s premiumisation efforts globally as the company builds its brand presence through exceptional brand storytelling – what Beam Suntory dubs ‘monogatari’, a highly evocative form in traditional Japanese literature – with some incredible innovations and exclusives in the pipeline, he promises.
The next five years and beyond, Gandham says, is about focusing on premiumisation and using such quality storytelling to drive joint value with retail customers to deliver growth.
Digital drive
Digital will be key to achieving those goals, Gandham says. “Our big focus is digital. As the blurring of lines between digital and physical continues, we want to strive towards a seamless offline to online experience,” he comments.
Commenting on the sector’s historically low penetration rates, he adds: “If roughly only five in 100 people through an airport actually buy anything, we must embrace digital fully as it affords us the chance to talk to consumers along their entire travel journey.”
Gandham is taking the GTR reins at a key moment for the channel, one that shows considerable variations between regions in terms of both the pace and extent of recovery. “I’m not phased by this role and challenge, I actively relish it,” he comments. Gandham has the history to back up the confidence, having held senior roles for Diageo in the channel for two and a half years from 2015 before assuming other responsibilities there prior to joining Beam Suntory in July 2019.
Europe and US are leading the revival, he says, with the US and UK recovering faster than anticipated. However, that acceleration in turn creates its own challenges for many sectors and companies to keep up with the pace, Gandham notes, in a reference to supply chain issues facing the whole industry.
The Middle East & India are the next-strongest recovering markets with Oceania and Singapore now “ramping up”. Of the two latter markets, Gandham says, “We’ll see a stronger return to traffic and sales in the next two quarters.”
The key north Asian markets of South Korea, China (outside Hainan) and Taiwan are still largely shuttered, however, and recovering slowly.
The company reckons that 2021 sales by value in the travel retail drinks channel were roughly half of pre-pandemic 2019’s, though Beam-Suntory was performed ahead of that curve with a recovery of circa 57%. For this year, Beam-Suntory believes it will grow again to reach around 70% of 2019 in GTR, outperforming a market that it sees hitting 60-65% of 2019 levels.
Building sustainability credentials
Beam Suntory already “weaves sustainability” through everything the company does, so there is a tangible opportunity to increase those credentials within GTR, Gandham says. “Packaging is perhaps the obvious and most immediate focus,” he comments. “With gifting, we’re offering consumers the choice to reduce or remove packaging – to actively decide to do their bit. We make these choices with our customers.”
Innovation pipeline
And there will be plenty of gifting opportunities, many of them exclusive. “Innovation is the lifeblood of the GTR market,” notes Gandham. “We can tell the most evocative stories and we secure vintages and exclusives ahead of domestic markets to offer our customers something exciting. Our Bowmore 2021 travel range and the partnership with Aston Martin is a great example.
“2022 sees the next phase of that partnership – watch this space,” he adds. “We also have some really exciting Courvoisier, House of Suntory and Maker’s Mark news coming up, which I’m excited to reveal soon.”
Any sneak previews? “I can say that Courvoisier will be offering a fresh, contemporary take on Cognac; and House of Suntory will continue to excel with our Monozukuri quality commitment,” Gandham responds. “Maker’s Mark has some city editions showcasing great partnership with some real tastemakers, which we’ll be rolling out in some key markets.”
Exciting times then. A market now in what appears to be sustained albeit not linear recovery mode; the likelihood of an Asian revival; and a pipeline overflowing with innovation. The seas might still be a little stormy, but it’s not a bad time to take the helm.
[Look out for an extended interview with Ashish Gandham in coming weeks]
