Gorillas enters own-label market in new bid to reach profitability

Rapid grocery delivery company Gorillas is launching its first private label brands this week, as the firm struggles to drive app downloads and reach profitability.

The four brands include essentials range Gorillas Daily, high-end product range Gorillas Premium, coffee brand Hot Damn, and <start-up beer>. Together these brands will offer around 50 products in 11 of the service’s most demanded categories, across Gorillas’ four “key” European markets: the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

According to the company, the four brands have been developed based on customer insights to offer high-quality products that “exceed category standards”, at a fair price.

The first products will be available in the Gorillas app from 9 June, with additional products to be released over the summer.

Founder and CEO Kağan Sümer says the new private labels are a “key component” of the business’s profitability and sustainability strategy, enabling it to develop new revenue streams across its core markets.

Indeed, analysts and retail experts expect consumers to trade down from brands to own-label products significantly this year as the cost of living crisis takes its toll on discretionary spending.

“Offering an excellent customer experience is at the core of Gorillas’ model. Since day one, we wanted to develop our own products with unique flavours and creative packaging to perfectly match the needs and tastes of our customers,” Sümer says.Meet the brands vying for dominance in the fast-growing rapid delivery market

The launch also plays into the company’s sustainability strategy, with all product and packaging manufactured by partners which are also committed to sustainability and transparency.

The news comes just weeks after Gorillas announced it was laying off nearly 300 members of its global office staff, around half of its headcount. The firm said it was making “necessary moves” to become a “stronger and more profitable business with a sharpened focus on its customers and brand”.

The company promised to improve its range, pricing, order experience and logistics across its five core markets, which also includes the US, while continuing to develop Gorillas as a “bold, authentic and value-driven brand” and “position it as the market leader”.

However, as of now the road towards market leadership looks a long one for Gorillas. According to YouGov’s brand health tracker BrandIndex, Gorillas’ index score – a measure of total brand health using an average of its impression, value, quality, reputation, satisfaction and recommend scores –  is just 0.2 for the week to 6 June.

In comparison, rivals Getir and Zapp score 0.5 and 0.3, respectively. All three rank higher than Deliveroo, however, which scores -2.5. Gorillas also trails Getir on awareness with a score of 10.2 versus 13.8, though it beats Zapp’s 4.4.

Plus, compared to the UK’s supermarkets, which currently dominate the country’s private-label market, Gorillas is a long way behind. At the lower end of the scale, The Co-op claims an index score of 19.1, while at the higher end Marks & Spencer’s score is 38.3.

Meanwhile, data from Apptopia first reported in Sifted shows in April the global number of downloads for the Gorillas app on Google Play and iOS was just over 540,000, dropping to 320,000 in May. Getir achieved more than 2.5 million global downloads in April, and just over 1.5 million in May.