Powerade, or private label? In a misguided lawsuit, bottlers sue Coke for updating its distribution system, fearing a private label launch by Wal-Mart.(Warren's Wanderings)

Private Label Buyer, June, 2006 by Thayer, Warren

My good friends at Wal-Mart were in the headlines again this month, with Coca-Cola Co. saying in a court filing that it faced a "serious risk" that Wal-Mart would launch a private label equivalent to Powerade. Huh?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Since when is it a crime to launch a private label? Well, this one's interesting, and it has "efficient consumer response" written all over it. The suit, you see, was filed by 55 of Coke's smaller bottlers. They're upset that Coca-Cola is changing its century-old system of having bottlers deliver drinks to individual stores in their exclusive territories, and put the product on the shelves.

And why is Coca-Cola changing its distribution system? Because Wal-Mart said it would double its purchases of...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.