The challenge
The buyer wanted a private-label range that felt genuinely Greek rather than assembled from generic components. They had already reviewed two large multi-category suppliers and found the story thin: the same industrial olive oil, the same non-PDO feta, the same unremarkable Kalamata olives.
They asked for something narrower and more credible. One PDO extra virgin olive oil from a specific region, one PDO feta from an established dairy, Kalamata PDO olives from a producer they could point to, and a small set of Mediterranean spreads. The commercial constraint was that all of it needed to arrive in one shipment, on one set of documents, with one point of contact.
Our approach
We started with a written brief that pinned down the retail positioning, target price architecture and packaging language. That shaped which producers made sense. A boutique mill was the right olive oil partner but not the right olive partner; the olive producer we chose already met the retailer's audit expectations and could handle the required jar formats.
Samples were sent in two rounds. The first round covered a wider shortlist so the buyer's team could taste blind. The second round narrowed to final candidates in the exact packaging that would ship to store. That discipline avoided the classic mistake of approving a sample that never reappears in the same form on shelf.
For documentation we standardised specifications, allergen statements, nutritional panels and country-of-origin declarations across all four producers so the retailer's compliance team dealt with one coherent dossier rather than four different formats. Artwork was managed centrally and each producer received a locked print-ready file per SKU.
Logistics were consolidated into a single groupage load from Piraeus. One export documentation set, one arrival, one invoice per delivery.
The outcome
The range launched on time in fourteen SKUs across the retailer's premium own-label tier. Because the specifications were harmonised from the start, listing and compliance approvals moved through in a single review cycle rather than the more common back-and-forth.
The bigger business value was ongoing. The retailer works with one partner instead of four, receives one shipment per production cycle instead of four, and can extend the range without re-negotiating basic terms each time. Two additional categories were added in the second year on the same commercial framework.
