Pedigree Wholesale is reporting growth of over 35% from the Hikari brand in the past two years, driven by the ongoing success of the company’s Saki-Hikari dealer programme.
John Newbury, aquatics business manager at Pedigree Wholesale, told pbw news that a change in approach to how the company works with key Koi retailers and dealers has been a major factor in the sales increase.
He said: “As a business, Pedigree Wholesale is growing significantly and the aquatics side has felt the benefit of that too, but we have taken some specific actions with our Saki-Hikari dealer programme which brought us strong growth.”
The network of Koi retailers and dealers in the scheme is now vetted very carefully, explained Newbury.
“We ask that people must have a thorough understanding of fish ponds and fish before working with them.
“We felt that some people were buying and selling Hikari brand too cheaply on platforms such as Amazon, so we resolved to only work with certain operators. Approved dealers are now enjoying sales at the recommended retail price – and making more money as a result.”
Demand for the product is growing too, explains John. “Pond ownership and home aquarium ownership are at their highest-ever levels, and now that people have made that investment in their homes they want to get the best from it. We are expecting another solid year in 2022.
“By keeping the product within proper channels we have seen demand go a bit crazy. If it hadn’t been for difficulties of importing product from japan we could have seen sales grow by 50% or more.”
John also attributes a good portion of the company’s aquatic growth to the recruitment of a new colleague Alastair Blakeman, who has been out in the trade building relationships with customers and recruiting new dealers. Pedigree Wholesale also over-indexed on sales at the Aqua Telford show last autumn, up by 10% on those achieved two years ago, he adds.
Pedigree Wholesale holds an exclusive licence to supply Hikari in the UK and Ireland, along with wholesale partners J&K Aquatics in Somerset and Norwood Aquatic in Surrey.
