Innovating from the traditional: an opportunity for business expansion

Delicias Criollas is a cooperative dedicated to the production and marketing of traditional food that includes a wide range of jams, fruit and vegetables in syrup, licor, bakery, chocolates and pickles. The cooperative is a productive enterprise led by women and constitutes a valuable economic tool to generate income and resources that enable us to stay living and working in the countryside.
This Plan aims to expand the business through the development of three new lines of innovative products which do not currently have a wide availability in the Uruguayan market: a line of natural products, a line of low calorie jams and a line of native fruits products.

Our marketing policy is based on the differentation with other, just profit based enterprises. We consider our social strategy as one of our strengths. Differentiation helps to reduce rivalry in the sector due to customer loyalty to brands and low price sensitivity. New trends in Corporate Social Responsibility make a lot of companies wish to contribute to this effort in different ways. Delicias Criollas has built strategic alliances with public and private actors, including agreements with the Ministry of Tourism and Sports and the National System of Protected Areas. On the other hand, we aim to highlight the products' features: handmade, high quality, locally produced, natural and healthy for our customers.

Therefore, in the domestic market we will undertake various marketing activities to launch the product into the market, such as promotion at sales points, distribution of brochures, an electronic catalog and online promotion through the website, incorporating product sales through this channel.
Regarding the regional and international markets Delicias Criollas is working on an export plan to strengthen internal capacities to capture markets abroad. Marketing is done by the Commercial Section of the Cooperative. The finished product is stockpiled in a central repository located in Montevideo, from where products are distributed to final consumers by a cooperative group.

We have identified our target groups and have distinguished the following primary consumers: middle-class women of 40 years and more, young women over 20 who buy our products as a gift, men over 45 who like to cook, businesses and institutions that buy corporate gifts and "high class" ladies of 40 years and older with high purchasing power.

The number of local competitors is relatively low and we identified two different segments. On one side there are the major industries that represent 75% of the market, and on the other hand artesanal producers who share the rest of the market. Note that in our country, we intend to develop products that do not exist or are imported, and the supply of these products means import substitution generating qualified jobs nationwide.

Besides offering a product already differentiated by quality, applied technology, presentation and taste, we stand out through our social characteristics.

Because of the characteristics of our decentralized production model, Delicias Criollas itself is an innovative experience. Even more when realizing that it is a collective project led by countryside women. We permanently aim to innovate our products, in order to fulfill the demands of our target group. The three new lines we wish to develop have not been supplied nationwide until now.

Delicias Criollas aims to reduce the idle capacity of the productive groups through the increasing supply of its products, aiming to fill market niches unsatisfied regarding artesanal production. This increase in supply will be reflected in an increase in sales of the cooperative.

The cooperative consists of 15 productive groups of 10 departments of Uruguay. Delicias Criollas has a Board who is responsible for the management of the company. The company has a multidisciplinary technical team, comprising professionals in the food processing area that have an extensive experience in small-scale artesanal production, and have graduated in International Relations and Foreign Trade, Communication Sciences and Human Resource Management.

Fernanda Zunino has entered the team in 2006, and she is a Food Engineer and Specialist in Food Security. She is responsible for the Delicias Criollas Production Section and is in charge of the technical monitoring of all productive groups. In the new product line, her function will be to coordinate activities for the development of new products and she will be responsible for the transference of knowledge to the productive groups.

Improvements will come from:
- The increase of the production capacity of the groups, reflected in an increase in working hours and therefore the salary received.
- The acquisition and ownership of new knowledge by the women
- The promotion and comercialization of native fruits encouraging de national identity.