Independent Fuel Retailer Uses Skupos to Offer Promotions that Drive Double-Digit Growth
About the Retailer:
- 36 stores across Chicagoland area
- Family-owned business since 1922
- Skupos customer since 2019
Key Business Outcomes:
- Increased tobacco-related sales by up to 18%
- Reversed industry trends of lagging or declining tobacco sales
- Accessed brand-funded discounts and promotions to compete with larger regional and national chains in the area
“Skupos Engage allows us to offer attractive discounts on products from popular brands that help us be more competitive and continue to grow our business beyond selling fuel.” -Mike Bee, Director of IT at Graham Enterprise, Inc
The greater Chicago area (Chicagoland) is the economic capital of the Midwest. Home to millions of people and thousands of businesses, the area is a crossroads of America. And since 1922, Graham Enterprise has provided commuters and travelers with the fuel to keep them moving.
The family-owned business runs three dozen convenience stores in the region, representing the biggest names in fuel brands. But fuel is a notoriously low-margin commodity and as an independent retailer, the company needed to find ways of boosting revenue from other products available in their stores.
“Unlike larger chains, we don’t have a promotional platform or the ability to offer customers discounts on non-fuel products on our own,” says Mike Bee, Director of IT at Graham Enterprise, Inc. “But in order to be more competitive in the market and support a healthier bottom line, we knew we needed to find a quick, easy, and cost-effective way of tapping into programs from large, well-known brands for products like tobacco, beverages, and snack items.”
A conversation in passing with a tobacco sales rep introduced Bee to Skupos Engage, the industry’s only promotions management platform exclusively serving the independent convenience store market. “Right away Skupos Engage seemed like the perfect scenario for us, a match made in Heaven,” Bee explains.
"Skupos Engage gives us the ability to access a promotional platform and offer customers more compelling discounts without having to spend a ton of money setting it up or giving a big chunk of it back to the brands as reimbursement.”
With Skupos Engage, the company can offer customers brand-funded discounts on popular tobacco products usually only available to national chains. The fully-managed platform means Graham Enterprise serves up discounts at the point of purchase while Skupos tracks and reimburses the company each month, freeing Bee and other leaders to focus on providing an exceptional in-store customer experience instead of managing the process themselves.
Since joining Skupos, Bee says that the company has increased its tobacco sales by as much as 18%, greatly outpacing the nearly 2% drop in sales industry-wide and augmenting its substantial fuel revenues. More importantly, Skupos Engage has helped the company create a repeatable promotional model they can run in the future. And with additional brands in categories such as carbonated soft drinks, energy drinks, cigarettes, vape, and smokeless tobacco being added to the platform for 2021, businesses like Graham Enterprise will be set up for success, in both good times and bad.
