Sales through the swedish monopoly

To the private consumer market all sale has to go through the monopoly, Systembolaget, who operates about 440 shops in Sweden. Systembolaget´s sale amonts close to 500 million litres per year at a total retail value of EUR 3600 millions.

The later years show a small growth rate of about 0.5 % per year. Sales patterns seldom change rapidly, but in later years there is a change in customer´s preferance for organic products. Today, more than 10% of the sales volume is organic, bio or ecological products.

Wine accounts for over half the net sales, but also completely dominates media coverage. Furthermore, wine is the category group that is massively driven by new products and the number of launches will therefore normally be greatest in the wine category.

Follow up and new launches

The assortment is evaluated once every quarter, i.e. new products are launched 4 times a year.

Importers are invited to quote for very precise descriptions of the wines Systembolaget has in their enquiries. Not only origin, type, style, tasting profile, year etc, is specified but also the price level.

The number of quotations per item can be over one hundred. The most competitive offers are selected for blind tasting and normally only one wine is then selected for the launch.

Every third month the wine is evaluated for market response, i.e. sales figures. If not successful, it will be exchanged after 6 months, or 9 months if it is of organic type. The importer has to take back the stock from each shop and no compensation is given.

Other options

There are other channels into the Systembolaget. One is, directly translated,  "ordering assortment" which is wines that are listed by Systembolaget and sold to people if ordered, but the importer have the products on stock. These wines are not blind tested and Systembolaget takes no responsibility for the quality of the product.

Another option is the "temporary assortment" where wines that are considered exclusive, hard to find, getting attention in media or somehow out of the ordinary, can be purchased by Systembolget in a smaller quantity. It can be anything from a box up to about 2000 bottles, depending on price level. This is a single delivery only to a limited number of shops.