A Bespoke Commerce Approach for Jacobs Douwe Egberts in Italy and Across the World

As the world’s leading pure-play coffee and tea company, Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) was looking for a partner that could manage their retail presence across countries, brands, products, retailers, websites, and social media channels. With global expertise and a deep understanding of the eCommerce ecosystem, Havas Market was ideally suited to optimize JDE’s entire path to purchase and find creative methods of increasing sales and delivering growth. Havas Market planned and activated an end-to-end commerce strategy for JDE that incorporated retail media, sponsored ad strategy, content optimization, membership and event campaigns, and more. The results have been staggering, including a 21% YoY increase in conversion rate in France, a 54% increase in New to Brand Sales in the UK, a 3.15 %click-through-rate in Germany, a 4X return-on-ad-spend in Thailand, and a 20% increase in average sales on Amazon in Italy.

In Italy, JDE had a 3-year objective of achieving the same value quota for their Nespresso Compatible Capsule brands in online and offline channels and increasing sales by 200% overall across Italian marketplaces. To achieve these lofty goals, Havas Market identified opportunities to expand the brand’s Amazon presence. 

Prior to Havas Market coming onboard, JDE had been selling its product on Amazon under a vendor model, which gave Amazon complete control of the eCommerce process. However, in recent years, Amazon started to accept only select brands and products with the highest profitability, leaving aside some of JDE’s brands. 

Enter The House of Coffee. Under this name, Havas Market launched a seller account on Amazon to directly sell all JDE products and brands, regardless of their sales volume or margins. In the seller model, Amazon acts as a marketplace, allowing JDE to expand their Amazon business from purely B2B as a vendor to additionally taking on B2C sales as a seller.  

While the seller model allowed JDE to harness the full potential of Amazon by controlling the brands and products sold through the platform, it also required JDE to take control of the entire commerce process. As full-service commerce experts, Havas Market was up to the challenge. Havas Market managed all day-to-day activities on Amazon of JDE’s Amazon Seller account, including:  

• Managing inbound goods from JDE’s warehouse to Havas Market’s warehouse 

• Reviewing the state of goods 

• Labelling products with Amazon Standard Identification Numbers 

• Creating product bundles 

• Managing shipments to Amazon’s logistic centers 

• Managing Fiscal VAT and B2C invoicing 

In addition to increasing the brands and products retailed by JDE on Amazon, the seller account unlocked new revenue, capturing sales that had previously gone to resellers when the vendor profile was out of stock. Havas Market also managed JDE’s Amazon Vendor and Ads accounts, creating a 360-eCommerce strategy that included full funnel campaigns spanning awareness, reach, and conversion; SEO content creation; AB testing and optimization; and more.   

Amazon is a fiercely competitive marketplace, and profit margins can quickly evaporate as resellers attempt to gain a competitive edge through price cutting. With experience working for some of the world’s leading brands across verticals, Havas Market was ideally suited to create co-branded packages that provided a unique differentiator while creating a win-win scenario with the brands the agency champions.  

Bundles included a special “Italian Breakfast Package” that combines coffee capsules from JDE’s L’OR brand with butter cookies from legendary Italian pastry brand Forno Bonomi. For Christmas and Valentines Day, Havas Market packaged a selection of JDE coffees with a free piece of jewelry from a brand that agency works with.  

At Havas Market, there are no one-size-fits-all commerce strategies. Taking into account JDE’s goals in Italy and the specific opportunities to grow their amazon presence, Havas Market created a customized 360 commerce strategy that has helped them progress their long-term objective of increasing sales across all Italian marketplaces.  

In addition to the 20% increase in Amazon sales JDE has achieved, Havas Market has managed 5,000 orders from the seller channel and achieved 4X return-on-ad-spend.