The brand had its values written down. Good intentions, well communicated.
But nowhere did it say the retailers had to be protected. That part I brought myself when I took on the relaunch and took care of the channel.
Not long after, a report landed on my desk. A mystery shopper had walked into one of the shops and found the product selling below the line. Not because that retailer had a worse deal. His cost was identical to everyone else’s. His sale price was identical too. He had chosen, on his own, to discount.
That single decision, left alone, would have pulled the whole network into a price war.
That is the gap I work in. A brand is not what it writes. A brand is what it does when the arithmetic gets uncomfortable.
I have spent a long career building brands. I left one when it lost its soul. So when a premium brand asked me to help with a relaunch across Spain, I knew the work was not the launch. The work was holding the line the values promised.
Three decisions came out of that relaunch. They are not values. They are the operations that make values visible.
First. Respect territories
Every market wants to feel served, not divided. When two retailers fight for the same small plaza, both lose.
We drew a clear map and kept it simple. One retailer per plaza. In a small town where one good shop can serve the demand, we added no second.
Saying no was part of the job. Every time we refused, we explained the reason out loud. A rule that is explained feels like something everyone agreed to.
Within a couple of seasons the fights stopped. Not because the retailers became friends. Because they stopped defending their territory and started selling.
Second. Set one price and defend it
Every retailer had the same cost and the same sale price. That is the whole design. One price protects the value of the product for everyone who sells it. It also removes the excuse to compete on anything except service.
The risk was never the price list. It was a decision made in one shop on a slow afternoon.
That is why we used mystery shoppers. Not to catch people. To see the market as the customer sees it. When we found a deviation, we sent no warning. We called the retailer and listened to the reason. Sometimes the reason was fear of losing a customer. Then we brought the conversation back to the line.
A customer who learns that the same item costs different amounts in two shops stops trusting the price. Once the price cannot be trusted, the premium position is gone, and the brand becomes a commodity with good packaging.
Third. Protect the retailer
The retailer is the last person who touches your customer. If that person is not protected, they will not protect your brand.
Protection is not a contract. It is presence. My job was the visits, and the motivation when the month was slow. Support arrived before it was requested. Samples, training, and material. And the brand answered. Not in a ticket queue. In a conversation.
That is where the WhatsApp channel came from. One group for the retailers across Spain. No marketing. A place where a retailer could ask a question and get an answer from a person.
The result was not efficiency. It was something better. Retailers who had seen each other as competition began comparing notes on what worked in their cities. Then they went further. When one ran short of a product a customer wanted, another sent stock over. They started lending each other products. Shops that had spent years guarding their territory were helping each other close a sale. Camaraderie instead of rivalry. Nobody designed that. We only removed the reason to stay silent.
This is the quiet work THE LATIN FLASH METHOD is built around. THE CONVERSATION is listening to the people who sell before anything is proposed to the people who buy. THE ONGOING is measurement, correction and a report. Values survive in ordinary decisions, not in the annual speech.
What I would tell a founder
Look at the price list, the territory map and the visit calendar. If the values are not there, they are nowhere.
Ethics is not the cost of doing business. It is the slowest and most durable form of strategy. It compounds in trust. Trust takes years to build and one broken price to lose.
A written value costs an afternoon. An operation costs attention every day. Only one of them builds a brand people recognize.
So here is my question for you. Which decision in your business would prove your values tomorrow, and what is stopping you from making it?
Christian Montoya Donoso is the founder of LATIN FLASH LDA