MARKETING PEOPLE
NIALL McGrath, marketing director and co-founder of the Irish nutrition bar manufacturer Fulfil talks to John McGee about the brand’s success.
What is the back-story to the Fulfil brand?
We launched the company in January 2016. We hoped to sell a million bars in our first year but ended up selling 15 million. Our plan for 2017 is to sell close to 40 million. The majority of the 2016 sales were on the island of Ireland with a small percentage from market trials in the UK and Benelux. By the end of 2017 we will be on sale in 20 markets globally, working with a range of distribution partners. When we started there was just four of us in the company. This has grown rapidly and we now employ 12 people.
How did the idea come about?
About three years ago myself and my business partner Tom Gannon were working together on the management team of a leading sales and marketing company Richmond Marketing. Tom was undergoing a fitness ‘journey’ and part of that involved working out and eating the right food.
One Monday morning at a management meeting he was chewing on a protein bar and I asked for a taste. To say I was underwhelmed is an understatement — it was almost impossible to chew and the taste was poor.
A few days later I was watching Nickelodeon with my kids early on a Saturday morning and I saw an ad for a chocolate bar-making kit for kids. I thought, why can’t I make a chocolate bar and add protein powder to it to make a tasty protein bar with a great texture.
Pretty soon after that Tom and I began experimenting and two years later, in January 2016, we launched.
The current range of products is manufactured at a number of locations throughout Europe. We are working with a leading Irish manufacturer on a new project that we hope will allow us to manufacture in Ireland very soon.
What size is the potential Irish market?
As a lot of the trade goes through channels such as sports nutrition and nontraditional outlets, outside the channels measured by the likes of Nielsen, it is genuinely difficult to get a full market read. That being said, within the measured channels, the protein category as measured by Nielsen is tracking at €14m in turnover. Fulfil accounts for 56pc of the sales value and growth is coming in at 120pc year-on-year growth.
We believe that we can increase sales of Fulfil in the Irish market to over 15 million bars each year.
As a marketer, what are the day-today challenges you face?
Within the Irish market we have three simple challenges. The first is to grow awareness of the brand and, secondly, to grow trialing of the product. Then, it’s to stay at the cutting edge of the market with the latest and best-tasting new product development. In export markets we have the same challenges but in many markets we also need to educate the market. The education piece is communicating why consumers not only need a product with our key benefits, but why they gain from consuming a betterfor-you snack rather than a sugary snack.