Cacolac prioritizes its growth and strengthens its visibility in the Drive circuit with Databrand, a Wiser solution. 

Background

Cacolac is a French family-owned and independent SME celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. It is recognized for its famous chocolate milk drink. In 2025, Christian Maviel, the founder’s great-nephew, took over the company with the goal of revitalizing the brand and strengthening its presence.

Recognizing the growing importance of e-commerce, particularly the Drive circuit in France, Cacolac identified this distribution mode as a key strategic focus starting in 2019. This point is particularly important for a company whose customer base, primarily families with children, values convenience and efficiency for family shopping. Mathieu Hauguel, Sales Director for GMS, explains how Cacolac “selected Databrand as the essential tool to accelerate its growth on the Drive network” by improving product visibility, expanding distribution, and increasing sales.

Challenges

Cacolac faced several challenges in its quest to expand into the Drive circuit:

• Limited visibility: Cacolac did not have the necessary tools to monitor the availability of its products in the Drive, making it difficult to secure and maintain listings in this growing channel. With a relatively small product range, Cacolac had to prioritize its best-performing items, such as the glass bottle, which alone generates 50% of its revenue. Ensuring that its flagship products were available in different Drives required rigorous monitoring.
• Time-consuming manual tracking: Tracking products in the Drive was tedious and time-consuming, requiring manual checks. This significant loss of time resulted in missed sales opportunities.

Solution

Cacolac turned to Wiser: Databrand, the brand management solution for Drive, proved to be the ideal tool to address these challenges.

• Product availability data:
  Databrand provides Cacolac with precise data on the availability of its products in Drive, allowing the company to quickly identify discrepancies between planned listings and actual availability. Mathieu Hauguel shares a particular example where, following a technical error, a key product (6x25cl cans) was removed from 280 Drive locations of a key retail partner. Databrand’s data allowed Cacolac to quickly identify and correct this issue, avoiding significant revenue losses. “Databrand allowed us to act quickly and correct the delisting of our key product.”
  
  
• Pricing data:
  Wiser also provides essential data on prices and promotions. This allows Cacolac to ensure that promotional operations are correctly applied and to observe discrepancies from the target marketing price, as distributors are free to set their own prices. Furthermore, this information helps explain product performance.

• A valuable time-saver:The automation of data collection and monitoring streamlined the process, significantly reducing the time spent on product tracking. The team now uses a “snapshot” to analyze Drives and identify priority listings to develop. Cacolac has thus gained in efficiency and responsiveness, freeing up resources to focus on other priorities such as expanding the product range and improving promotional efforts.

“Wiser is the essential partner to accelerate our growth in the Drive circuit”

Mathieu Hauguel

Sales Director for GMS

Results

In seven years, Cacolac recorded more than 70% revenue growth, confirming the effectiveness of its commercial strategy. The Drive circui now accounts for more than 9% of Cacolac’s total revenue, and sales continue to grow, contributing significantly to the company’s overall performance.

• Increased visibility of availability data:With Databrand, Cacolac can closely monitor stockouts, a major issue in Drive, with daily updated data. This automated tracking allows Cacolac to quickly target and prioritize revenue losses related to stockouts, react quickly to listing errors, and maintain a continuous presence in Drive.
• Optimized pricing and promotions to maximize sales:Thanks to price and promotion analyses through Databrand, Cacolac ensures its products are well-positioned to optimize sales during key periods.
• Increased revenue and market share:
  Cacolac regularly shares this data through physical meetings or personalized customer newsletters with Databrand-based listing recommendations, accompanied by revenue potential analyses. By using this data to prioritize top-performing products, two of which represent 70% of their revenue, Cacolac has strengthened its presence in strategic retailers.
  

Conclusion

Integrating the Wiser tool has been a turning point in Cacolac’s strategy, allowing them to gain efficiency, visibility, and responsiveness. Through automated management and strategic use of availability, pricing, and promotion data, the brand has not only strengthened its presence in Drive but also made essential strategic decisions to ensure future growth in an increasingly competitive market.