• Customer: Four Pillars (customer since 2021)
• Industry: Alcohol retail
• Location: Australia

🤔 The challenge

Engaging retail teams (at scale) with relevant (and sales-focused) product information has been notoriously difficult for Four Pillars.

Despite being a top-three gin by sales volume in Australia (and being Australia’s #1 craft gin), Four Pillars has struggled to engage the frontline retail teams of its most important customer, Endeavour Group.

Before launching with Small Batch Learning, Four Pillars used an ad-hoc approach to training – relying on information being relayed from Endeavour Group's merchandising team through store managers, and prayed relevant information would reach the customer-facing retail teams.

😖 Pain points

💡 The solution

Four Pillars partnered with Small Batch Learning to develop two product lessons on their focus SKUs – Rare Dry & Bloody Shiraz – which were disseminated to BWS & Dan Murphy’s stores across the country through Small Batch Learning’s proprietary training technology.

Content highlights:

1. Memorable 60-second videos from FourPillars' Co-founder Stu Gregor introducing each product
2. Focused strategies on hand-selling & ways to recommend
3. Quizzes to reinforce key selling points

Engagement incentive:

Alongside launching the lesson, Small Batch Learning facilitated an incentive to drive engagement and drum up excitement in the retail teams. Four Pillars put up 50 prize packs (gin + merch), with winners randomly drawn based on completing the lesson within a given timeframe.

🔎 The results

Driving engagement:

1. In the first three months, Four Pillars had 12x their previous year’s annual reach of retail team members through Small Batch Learning
2. In the first year, Small Batch Learning had delivered over 3,000 learner engagements to Four Pillars
3. By the end of the second year, over 6,000 team members had completed Four Pillars training on Small Batch Learning.

Key results:

Small Batch Learning and Four Pillars wanted to capture anecdotal evidence from stores teams on the impact of training. To do so, Endeavour Group learners were surveyed 60 days after completing the Four Pillars Rare Dry lesson.

• 97% of learners are more confident in selling Four Pillars Rare Dry after completing the product lesson on Small Batch Learning
• 81% of learners are selling more Four Pillars Rare Dry after completing the product lesson on Small Batch Learning

🗣️ Testimonial

Small Batch Learning has scaled our training capabilities far beyond what was previously possible. We’ve managed to not only reach retail teams with relevant product information, but actually influence them in recommending our products to their customers 

Stu Gregor, Co-founder, Four Pillars

🤗 Learner feedback

Collectively, the Four Pillars lessons on Small Batch Learning are rated 4.72 / 5 (excellent), with over 1,000 learner ratings.

• “Stu sounds like a character [editor's note: yes, he is!], love the video”  Nathan, Dan Murphy’s Narang
• “Very informative, great Aussie product” Rosslyn, Empire Hotel
• “Didn’t know that about the oranges, now easy to recommend to my customers seeking a citrusy gin” Nakita, Dan Murphy's Hawthorn East

🤓 Expansion

Following the success of Four Pillars Rare Dry and Bloody Shiraz, it was natural for Four Pillars to expand on their training footprint to coincide with NPD of their zero-alcohol Bandwagon range.

In early 2023, Four Pillars launched lessons on Small Batch Learning for Bandwagon Dry and Bloody Bandwagon, with over 2,000 team members from Dan Murphy’s trained on the unique selling points of these two great alcohol-free products in the first month.

"Before Small Batch Learning, it was near impossible to get NPD messaging to the retail associates of our channel partners,"saysJen Bailey, Head of International Trade Marketing & Engagement at Four Pillars.

"Understanding how important early adoption is in-market, it made sense to use Small Batch Learning to speak directly to the team members on the shop-floor to give them the talking points to successfully engage their customers in conversations about our Bandwagon products.” 

If you’d like to understand more about our benefit to brands, or haven’t heard about online product training with Small Batch Learning before, click the link below.

Request demo