eCommerce Success Story: Manilife.

One of the types of content that perform best on our blog are eCommerce success stories. Maybe because they inspire us or because, thanks to them, we can identify opportunities that, immersed in the daily work routine, we are unable to see.

The one we bring you in this post is special. It is peculiar because of the type of product, the niche it operates in, its way of communicating and, in addition, because it is atypical in the broadest sense of the word.

Get ready to “dip the spoon” into the story and strategy of Manilife, a peanut butter manufacturer that has managed to become very strong in eCommerce (and retail).

This is one of those stories based on people that motivate me the most, because they represent entrepreneurship better than any other.

It all started with a young English accountant whose routine job did not offer him enough motivation. So much so that, despite having just accepted a job at one of the largest consulting firms in the world, he decided that first he needed to take a trip that would enrich him personally.

This is how Stuart McDonald ended up in Argentina. There he began to collaborate with a local social organization. This NGO produced peanut butter, and it was right here that he discovered a product full of nutritional advantages (in addition to being especially good).

Stuart’s entrepreneurial nature and curiosity led him to investigate why that peanut butter was so good. It turned out that, by chance, he had ended up in the province of Córdoba (Argentina), where the climatic and soil conditions produce a type of peanut unique in the world, a protected designation of origin that stands out for its nutritional and organoleptic properties.

In short, he stumbled upon the caviar of peanuts by chance.

Thanks to this trip and good fortune, Stuart had learned the process of making peanut butter and, most importantly, had contacted the right suppliers and the perfect raw material.

He was clear that he could export this to his country, where this type of spread is commonly consumed. On the other hand, it is also recently used in cooking recipes with Asian touches, by vegan people and by anyone who takes care of their diet and wants to incorporate plant-based protein into it.

So he bought 1,000 kilos of peanuts and sent them to “his warehouse” in England. That warehouse was actually his bedroom, where he kept all those 25-kilo sacks until it was time to start preparing his final product.

With the help of 40 people, including family and friends, he prepared that first batch of 4,000 jars in a kitchen lent by a rugby club.

At that time, the peanut butter he sold was not yet called Manilife, nor did it have the sophisticated packaging it has now. It was almost a homemade preserve, with a handwritten label and the brand Stu’s Peanut Butter. When demand grew and everything became professionalized, the new brand Mani arrived (for the Argentine maní) and life because he wanted to turn it into a lifestyle.

In any case, he was clear that his product was one of the best on the market in terms of quality and, as such, he wanted it to have a premium positioning. In addition, while his competitors used European raw materials with lower production costs, he continued to bet on peanuts from Córdoba and from a specific farm. Competing on price was not an option.

And once again, chance crossed paths with the history of this brand. During the roasting process of a batch, someone got distracted. As a result, they ended up with a lot of kilos of “over-roasted” peanuts. But since that was what they had, they decided to continue with the process and see if the result met the minimum standards.

The surprise was that they did not obtain an acceptable peanut butter; in fact, they achieved an excellent result, with an intense flavor and a unique texture. This is Manilife’s flagship product right now. Its unique recipe has won countless awards (the most awarded in history, according to themselves).

After that, many achievements and milestones followed, especially in 2017 when they received a last-minute order of 9,000 mini jars for Gousto, which is an eCommerce that sells gourmet boxes under a subscription model.

Right now, they sell tons and have gone from that kitchen lent by a rugby club to their own factory and an industrial kitchen.

All of this is necessary to serve all their sales channels, since in addition to selling online through their own eCommerce, they are present in marketplaces such as Amazon, gourmet shops, physical supermarkets and specialized retailers.

They do not have bad domain authority, which is logical considering the link profile. They have more than 3,000 links from all kinds of sites (many from their niche and others from media as important as The Guardian).

But there is no very clear strategy. We see that they rank for brand terms, even with some issues in certain keyword combinations, and then for some products or merchandising, which, by the way, they also sell online.

In the case of SEM we will be even quicker, because, at least according to Semrush, they do not run campaigns or there is no record of them.

Why? Well, that answer should be given to us by the Manilife team, but we can infer that they simply do not need it.

Demand comes directly to the website organically or from any of their other distributors. Surely, having so many sellers and platforms within their commercial mix, it is not in their interest to bid on business keywords in search against them, and brand traffic, where they already rank naturally in top positions, is sufficient.

Here things change radically; it is very easy to see everything they are doing and how they have been using this channel for each objective.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that we love examples, so let’s look at the strategy through some of them, the ones that best summarize it.

Here they have joined the Spotify Wrapped trend, with a series of data about peanut consumption that are quite comical, so you can hardly stop reading them without realizing it.

They also do this type of games, which work very well on social networks, by reinforcing the idea of belonging to a community.

You have a product like this, which apparently has few use cases: toast and sandwiches. This limits business possibilities, unless you innovate and create new applications.