Unilever

 Not too long ago, everyone’s go-to destination for groceries were the supermarkets: Local products are mostly available at local supermarkets. But we noticed that there was a demand for Unilever ’s Dutch products abroad. Let’s take the local Dutch product Calvé Pindakaas as an example.

As an open marketplace, Amazon allows anybody to resell any product anywhere in the world- this happened with Dutch Unilever brands: resellers abroad proved demand for ‘local’ Unilever products like Dutch Calvé Pindakaas. These resellers responded to the interest in these local products, but the way they presented these Unilever products on Amazon was very poor: pictures were taken with mobile devices and often of low quality, not all information on contains was given etc. The products were not presented according to Unilever’ standards.
This this got us thinking...

Maze-One realized that this ‘brand presence problem’ for Unilever, was actually a business opportunity for Unilever.
By giving Amazon resellers the right tools, the Unilever products look appealing and according to the brand standards. Unilever is back in the driving seat. Hence Unilever supports the sales of local Dutch brands in foreign markets.

This brings many advantages:

• Incremental turnover from an untapped international market, which would be almost impossible to penetrate.
• By improving Unilever ’s brand and availability on Amazon
• Thereby acquiring a new customer base, that would normally need to travel abroad for these products
• Improving Unilever ‘s own margins.

Maze-One took it to the next level:

• Incremental turnover from an untapped international market, which would be almost impossible to penetrate.
• Maze-One tackled the content by creating an European Seller Account for Unilever to own the content of Dutch brands in Europe. This ensures that online shoppers always get the right brand picture and information about Unilever ‘s products.
• Maze-One advised Unilever on online advertisement and created an advertising strategy for Dutch brands on Amazon Europe
• Maze-One was in charge of the implementation and execution of advertisements.

The content optimalisation approach was a success. It resulted in a 30% increase of sales of Dutch brands in Europe. Only three months after optimizing Unilever ‘s content, the customer base increased by an incredible +89%.

This brand improvement project potentially led to more than €500,000 in sales through Amazon in Germany, the UK and France in 2020. All markets in which Unilever never sold these specific Dutch products before.

Additionally, with such great success we were able to achieve the Amazon’s choice badge for their best-selling product further increasing brand awareness, search ranking and sales.

“Most importantly, thanks to Maze-One it was proven that by adopting a start-up mentality and pushing the right content strategy, any brand, anywhere in the world, can build awareness and sales in foreign countries through Marketplaces without all the investments that they would otherwise have to make”.