The customer may want the product. The channel still has to move it.
Before anybody buys it, somebody has to stock it, order it, explain it or recommend it — and that person runs a business with its own customers, cash and shelf space. We plan trade activations around what the channel needs to understand and do next, then build the ground execution around that.
Already have a dealer or outlet list? See how →
What does the trade need to do differently after this?
Trusted with the briefs that matter.
Each caption states exactly what the photograph is. Where a frame is a consumer activation that happened in a trading environment rather than a trade activation, it says so. No dealer counts, outlet numbers, orders, volumes or results have been attached to any photograph, because none have been verified.
Pick a name. We’ll show you what happened.
DStv For Business stand, built for a business rather than a consumer audience. The caption states the environment and nothing else — no dealer numbers, orders or commercial outcomes have been attached to it.
This is Red Giant.
Commercial environments, honestly labelled. Each caption says exactly what the photograph is.
Trade photography now exists on this page. An order being written across an agrovet counter, branded field representatives at named dukas, point-of-sale going up on a shop door, a stocked trade gazebo, dealer shop fronts and route teams with their vehicles — that is manufacturer-to-trade activity, and it is captioned as exactly that. What is still missing is the quietest part of the job: a small-group dealer session, and a trade customer examining a product before deciding whether to stock it. Those happen across a counter, in a few minutes, with no spectacle, no crowd and no stage, and we hold no verified frame of either — so nothing here implies we do. Everything else above that is a B2B exhibition environment or consumer work that took place in a trading environment is captioned as exactly that. Labelling a consumer activation “trade” because it happened near shops is the specific dishonesty this page exists to avoid.
The trade will not move because we held an activation.
A consumer asks one question — do I want this — and answers it personally, with their own money. A trade customer is deciding whether to take on inventory risk, shelf space and their own customers’ questions on your behalf. The activation cannot make that decision for them. What it can do is make the next commercial step easier: understanding the product, stocking it, ordering it, recommending it, or continuing a conversation with your sales team.
A campaign that excites the channel and cannot tell them how to order is a campaign that wasted their time and yours.
What does the trade need to do next?
A different commercial action — or is a more specific planner the better route?+
What we would bias towardA programme direction, not a fixed catalogue. We propose specific formats once we know the team, the venue and the day.
Who in the channel needs to act?
A duka owner, a regional wholesaler, an appointed dealer and a national distributor have different ordering authority, different customers and completely different reasons to say yes. Treating them as one group produces a briefing that lands with none of them. What changes is the information, the format and how deliberate each engagement is — not a set of commercial rules we would be inventing.
Sells to the end customer, often decides quickly, and is constrained by cash and shelf space more than by strategy. Cares whether it moves and how fast the money comes back. The shortest conversation, and the one most affected by whether the product is genuinely available nearby — which usually points at outlet engagement rather than a gathering.
Sells to retailers, so the question is not whether consumers will buy it but whether their retailers will ask them for it. Volume-driven, price-sensitive and rarely persuaded by consumer messaging alone. Trading environments run on their own rhythm — early hours, loading, movement, and people who are working rather than browsing — and the useful window is often narrower than a plan drawn in an office expects.
Often carries fewer brands more deeply, sells with explanation, and may service or support what they sell. Product education matters more here than anywhere else, because they are the ones answering the customer’s technical question. A small group with the physical product and side-by-side comparison usually does more than a presentation.
Fewer, larger, more deliberate relationships, with commercial terms already negotiated somewhere above the field team. Engagement here is usually education, alignment and support rather than persuasion — and the terms are never ours to discuss. Senior participation from your side tends to matter more than anything we can build.
Represents the product without necessarily holding stock. Their currency is confidence and clarity: what to say, to whom, and what happens after somebody says yes. Materials they can keep and a named escalation route do more here than an event.
Common, and worth naming rather than averaging. A session built for the middle of a mixed room usually lands with nobody in it. Where the audience genuinely spans tiers, the plan is normally to separate the conversations rather than the invitations.
Fine at this stage. The channel structure behind a product is often clearer to your sales team than to anybody else, and it is a question worth answering before the format is chosen rather than after. It does not stop you pricing a scope below.
Whichever you pick changes the information, the format and how deliberate each engagement is. It does not move a price on its own — channel commercial rules are yours, and none have been invented here.
Three things decide whether the channel moves.
Trade audiences need a reason to care that makes sense in their world, not a consumer campaign presented to them with different branding. They decide what to stock, what to prioritise, what to recommend, what to reorder, what to display, what to explain, which supplier relationship gets attention and which product quietly gets forgotten. A campaign platform, a consumer insight and a beautifully art-directed toolkit are all useful, and none of them is what a wholesaler needs at eight in the morning.
What the partner actually needs, and where it comes from+
Which product and which SKU. Who buys it, and why. How it is supplied, and by whom. How to place an order today. What the approved offer is, if any. What support comes after. Six practical answers, and every commercial fact inside them — pricing, terms, margins, minimum orders, lead times, territory, who supplies whom — comes from your approved materials.
We do not set, infer or negotiate any of them. What we do is turn them into something a field team can deliver consistently at a counter, and make sure nobody improvises when a partner asks something the brief did not cover. A field team that improvises a margin has created a commitment you did not make.
Interest is not an order. Between the two sit product and SKU clarity, commercial information delivered accurately rather than improvised, an order route somebody can name in one sentence, the order actually requested, and the order verified by your system or your distributor’s. A trade activation usually owns three or four of those stages, and which ones get agreed before the campaign is the difference between two completely different reports.
What Red Giant does not build+
No ordering platform, no ERP or CRM integration, no distributor-management system, no lead-scoring engine and no dealer database. Red Giant operates inside whatever order route you already approve — a sales representative, an order form, your ordering platform, the distributor’s system, a call centre, a WhatsApp Business process — and records what passes through it.
Nothing on this page guarantees orders, sell-in, listings or dealer sign-up, and no expression of interest is ever reported as an order. Fulfilment is outside our control and almost always outside our scope: it is reported only where you or the distributor share the data.
Every good trade visit generates something unfinished: a question nobody could answer, information that was promised, an order request, an availability problem, a partner who wants a call from someone senior. That list is the actual output of the campaign, and it is usually where the value quietly evaporates. Captured, owner named, status tracked, next action dated, closed or escalated — a captured opportunity without an owner is just a note.
Nine numbers, and why they never merge+
Visited, engaged, educated, interested, qualified, order requested, order verified, fulfilled, reordered. A hundred retailers visited is not a hundred trained. A hundred trained is not a hundred interested. A hundred interested is not a hundred orders. A hundred orders requested is not a hundred fulfilled. And a hundred fulfilled is not a hundred repeat buyers.
Every collapse in that list is somebody making a campaign look better than it was, and it sets next year’s budget against a number that never existed. Whether Red Giant then chases the follow-up depends entirely on scope — and where it sits with your sales team or your distributor, the plan should name that person before the first visit, not discover it afterwards.
Everything underneath the trade+
Fifteen categories — the seven questions between your brand and their shelf, who is actually in the channel, translating a campaign into commercial answers, what is actually stopping the next action, product knowledge, the order path stage by stage, what is yours and what is ours, trade readiness before a launch, the formats we run, follow-up and who owns it, the nine measurement numbers, demand and availability, choosing outlets and territory, what changes the cost, and where this service stops. The full system, open when you want it.
The trade decision, in seven questions
Why should I care?
Relevance to their business, not to your brand strategy. The opening thirty seconds either establish that or waste the visit.
Who is it for?
Which of their customers buys this. If they cannot picture that person, they will not stock it and they certainly will not recommend it.
What makes it different?
One or two differences they can repeat, not eight features. They have to sell it in a sentence to somebody standing at a counter.
Can I get it?
Availability through the route they actually use. This is where most trade activations quietly fail.
How do I order?
The specific mechanism, in enough detail to act on today. “Talk to your distributor” is not an order route.
How do I sell it?
What to say, to whom, and what to do with the question they cannot answer.
What support exists?
Who they call when something goes wrong, and whether anybody comes back.
“Trade” is not one audience
And where each one already stands
Not personas — commercial states, which are observable rather than invented. New to the product and needs understanding. Knows it but does not stock it, which is a barrier to diagnose rather than assume. Stocks it but never recommends it, which is usually a confidence or relevance problem. Stocks it with low movement, which may need a different intervention entirely. Or previously active and now quiet, which needs a reason before it needs a campaign. We do not guess which one applies. We ask, and where you have the data, we start from it.
Sells to the end customer, often decides quickly, and is constrained by cash and shelf space more than by strategy. Cares whether it moves and how fast the money comes back. The shortest conversation, and the one most affected by whether the product is genuinely available nearby.
Sells to retailers, so their question is not “will consumers buy it” but “will my retailers ask me for it”. Volume-driven, price-sensitive, and rarely persuaded by consumer messaging alone.
Often carries fewer brands more deeply, sells with explanation, and may service or support what they sell. Product education matters more here than anywhere else, because they are the ones answering the customer’s technical question.
Fewer, larger, more deliberate relationships with commercial terms already negotiated somewhere above the field team. Engagement here is usually education, alignment and support rather than persuasion — and the terms are never ours to discuss.
Represents the product without necessarily holding stock. Their currency is confidence and clarity: what to say, to whom, and what happens after somebody says yes.
A broader category covering businesses that carry, bundle or recommend the product as part of their own offer. Engagement is usually about relevance to their customers rather than margin alone.
The campaign line is not a commercial answer
The proposition
A campaign platform, a consumer insight, a tagline and a beautifully art-directed toolkit. All of it useful, none of it what a wholesaler needs at eight in the morning.
The practical answers
- Which product, and which SKU
- Who buys it, and why
- How it is supplied, and by whom
- How to place an order today
- What the approved offer is, if any
- What support comes after
Where the answers come from
You. Every commercial fact on that list — pricing, terms, margins, minimum orders, lead times, territory, who supplies whom — comes from your approved materials, not from us. What we do is turn them into something a field team can deliver consistently at a counter, and make sure nobody improvises when a partner asks something the brief did not cover.
What is actually stopping the next action?
Each one leads somewhere different — and two of them are not marketing problems at all, which is worth finding out before you brief a campaign. Whichever you suspect, we would want to check it in the field before designing anything around it.
The simplest barrier and the most common after a launch that skipped the channel. It responds well to education, and it is worth confirming rather than assuming — sometimes they know it perfectly and have another reason.
They know it exists and consider it interchangeable with what they already sell. Description rarely fixes this; side-by-side comparison sometimes does.
What may be said about a competing product is set by your legal and brand teams.
A partner who cannot picture the customer will not recommend it, however good the margin. This is a positioning translation problem more than a training one.
Not a marketing problem. No amount of engagement fixes a supply route that does not reach these partners, and running a campaign anyway spends their goodwill as well as your money.
This usually needs solving before an activation, not through one. We will say so.
Frequently the whole problem, and cheap to fix. Partners are willing but nobody has told them precisely how, or the answer they were given was “contact your distributor”.
They cannot evaluate the opportunity without knowing what it costs them and what they make. This is a client-side gap that a field team must never fill by improvising.
All commercial information comes from your approved materials. We do not set or infer terms.
The most honest barrier, and it usually has a reason: better supply, longer relationship, better margin, or somebody who visits. Find out which before assuming it is a product argument.
Sometimes the answer is service consistency rather than a campaign.
Where the difference is physical, holding it does what a page cannot — and they will need to demonstrate it to their own customer afterwards.
Depressingly common, and the cheapest fix on this list. Interest was captured, the note went into a folder, and nobody owned it. The barrier is a process gap rather than a persuasion gap.
A captured opportunity without an owner is just a note.
The right answer more often than people admit. Diagnosis before design — a small structured round of visits will tell you which of the barriers above is real, and it is far cheaper than a campaign aimed at the wrong one.
This is what a pilot is for.
Product knowledge in the channel
The purpose of the product, the one or two differences that matter, which SKU is which and why, who the customer is, the approved claims, how it is supplied, how it is ordered, and where to send a question they cannot answer. Nine things, all of them supplied by you, none of them invented by us.
A partner who cannot tell two variants apart will stock whichever one they remember, recommend it to the wrong customer, and blame the product when it comes back. Physical side-by-side comparison beats any document, and a one-page reference beats a deck nobody opens twice.
A trader is losing money while sitting in a training session. Design for brevity, relevance, something they can hold, a couple of real questions and a clear next action. A ten-minute product station in their own environment usually outperforms an hour in a hotel meeting room.
The same discipline we apply to our own field teams applies to the channel: a partner who improvises a claim to close a sale creates a problem that lands back on your brand. Give them the boundary and a number to call, and they will use it.
Yes — small-group sessions, product clinics and demonstrations built around what the partner has to be able to say and do afterwards, using your approved product facts and claims. Short, close to where they work, and designed so somebody losing trading time still feels it was worth attending. We deliver the education; the commercial content is yours.
Yes, and for products where the difference is physical it is usually the most persuasive element available — particularly because the partner will have to demonstrate it to their own customer afterwards. Where the objective shifts to consumer trial rather than channel understanding, that is product sampling and it is a different scope.
The order path, stage by stage
Eight stages, and a trade activation usually owns three or four of them. Which ones get agreed before the campaign, because the difference between a campaign that owns “interest through order route” and one that owns “through fulfilment” is the difference between two completely different reports.
Interest
A partner said they were interested. Real, useful, and the most over-reported number in trade marketing.
Product and SKU clarity
They know precisely what they would be ordering. Without this, interest is about a category rather than a product.
Commercial information
Terms, pricing and minimums — supplied by you, delivered accurately by the team, never improvised in the field.
Order route
The specific mechanism they will use. If nobody can name it in one sentence, the path ends here regardless of enthusiasm.
Order placed
An order requested through the approved route. Countable where the route records it.
Order verified
Confirmed by your system or your distributor’s. Requested and verified are different numbers and will differ.
Fulfilled
Product actually delivered. Outside our control and almost always outside our scope — reported only where you or the distributor share it.
Reorder
The only stage that proves the product moved. Nothing else on this list does.
Expressions of interest are never reported as orders. Orders requested are never reported as sales. Nothing is reported as fulfilled unless fulfilment is verified. Nobody is described as a repeat customer unless a repeat order actually exists. Every one of those four substitutions is standard practice somewhere in this industry, and every one of them makes a brand plan on a number that was never real.
What is yours, and what is ours
Whatever mechanism you already use: a sales representative, an order form, your ordering platform, the distributor’s system, a call centre, a WhatsApp Business process, or something else you have approved. We operate inside it and record what passes through it. We do not build ordering systems, we have no integrations with anybody’s ERP, and we will not describe a spreadsheet of interested traders as an order pipeline.
Margins, discounts, incentives, credit periods, minimum order quantities, rebates, exclusivity, territory rights, delivery terms and commissions all come from your approved materials. A field team that improvises a margin has created a commitment you did not make. Where a partner asks something the brief does not cover, the trained answer is to escalate the same day, not to be helpful.
Creating demand a partner cannot satisfy costs more than doing nothing, because it spends their goodwill as well as your budget. Before execution we want to know the SKU, whether it is available through the route these partners use, who supplies them, and the lead time you expect. We do not guarantee stock, we do not carry commercial stock, and we do not own warehousing or distribution vehicles. What we build is an escalation route for the day availability turns out to be different from the plan.
We do not appoint distributors, negotiate retailer margins, set pricing, manage credit, guarantee listings, operate your distribution network, run van selling, or provide route-to-market strategy as a discipline. Several of those are real services; none of them are ours, and a brief that assumes otherwise is better corrected now than in week three.
No. Margins, discounts, incentives, credit periods, minimum order quantities, rebates, exclusivity, territory rights and delivery terms all come from your approved materials. A field team that improvises a commercial term has created a commitment you did not make, so anything outside the brief gets escalated the same day rather than answered helpfully at a counter.
No. We do not appoint distributors, design distribution networks, negotiate listings or provide route-to-market consultancy. Those are real disciplines and they are not ours. We work inside the structure you already have, engaging the partners within it.
We handle campaign product and materials where that sits inside the agreed scope, with the same stock discipline used across our activation work. We do not carry commercial stock, own warehousing or distribution vehicles, run van selling, or fulfil orders. Fulfilment is reported only where you or your distributor share the data.
Trade readiness before a launch
A consumer launch and a trade launch are not the same event, and running them in the wrong order is one of the more expensive mistakes available. Advertising creates a customer who walks into a shop where nobody has heard of the product, cannot order it, and recommends the competitor instead — which is worse than not advertising, because it also teaches the retailer that your campaigns do not translate.
What trade readiness usually means
Product knowledge in the channel, stock through the route these partners actually use, approved pricing and terms in the field, sales materials that answer the obvious questions, an order process somebody can name, timing that puts the channel ahead of the advertising, and a contact for the question nobody anticipated. We can execute most of that. Several of the dependencies — stock, terms, timing — sit with you, and the plan should say so out loud.
The formats we run
Representatives visiting trade partners where they work, on a defined routine, delivering the same conversation and capturing the same information at each stop. The workhorse format, and the one most affected by whether the outlet list is current.
Repeated across a universe over time? That is a field programme →
A small group, the physical product, side-by-side comparison and enough time for real questions. Works where the product needs explanation and the partners are worth gathering. Short, in their part of town, and built around what they need to be able to say afterwards.
Fewer people, more deliberate, usually alignment and education rather than persuasion. The commercial relationship already exists above this conversation; the job is making sure the people who handle the product day to day understand it.
Trading environments run on their own rhythm — early hours, loading, movement, noise, and people who are working rather than browsing. Demonstration space is negotiated, not assumed, and the useful window is often narrower than a plan drawn in an office expects.
The partner handles the product themselves. Most valuable where the difference is physical and a description will not carry it — and where they will have to demonstrate it to their own customer afterwards.
The same trade engagement, moved between markets and towns on a route. Stock, materials and consistency all have to travel with it.
A one-page SKU guide, a visual comparison, an order guide, a demo kit, an approved offer sheet. The test is whether it makes the commercial conversation easier at a counter — not whether it looks good in the deck. Production is scoped with you; we are not a print house.
Trade engagement asks for something different from a consumer promoter: commercial confidence, real product knowledge, the discipline to listen before pitching, an understanding of the order process, and the judgement to escalate rather than improvise.
Follow-up, and who owns it
A captured opportunity without an owner is just a note.
Who owns what
We capture it, structure it and hand it over on an agreed rhythm. Whether we then chase it depends entirely on scope — and if follow-up sits with your sales team or your distributor, the campaign plan should name that person before the first visit rather than discovering afterwards that four hundred notes went into a folder. Where nobody owns the follow-up, we would rather say so at the scoping stage than deliver a report full of dead ends.
They get structured and handed over on an agreed rhythm, each with an owner, a status and a next action. Whether we chase them depends on scope — and if follow-up sits with your sales team or distributor, that person should be named before the first visit. A captured opportunity without an owner is just a note, and we would rather flag that at scoping than deliver a folder of dead ends.
Measuring it — nine numbers, not one
Visited
Partners the team reached, against the plan. Includes the ones who were closed — that is data about your list.
Engaged
A real conversation happened with somebody who could act. Not the same as visited.
Educated
The product content was actually delivered. A partner who took a leaflet was not trained.
Interested
Expressed intent. Genuinely useful, entirely non-binding, and the number most often promoted to something it is not.
Qualified opportunity
Interest plus the ability and authority to act. The definition gets written before the campaign, not after.
Order requested
An order placed through the approved route. Countable where the route records it.
Order verified
Confirmed by your system or the distributor’s. Requested and verified will not match, and the gap is informative.
Fulfilled
Delivered. Reported only where you or the distributor share the data. We do not fulfil and will not claim to.
Reordered
The only number that proves the product moved through to a customer.
A hundred retailers visited is not a hundred trained. A hundred trained is not a hundred interested. A hundred interested is not a hundred orders. A hundred orders requested is not a hundred fulfilled. And a hundred fulfilled is not a hundred repeat buyers. Five sentences that decide whether next year’s plan is built on something real.
What the field hears, labelled as what it is
Repeated objections, competitor mentions, stock complaints, price concerns, product confusion, ordering friction, questions their customers keep asking. Genuinely valuable, and reported as field observation rather than research — the sample is wherever the campaign went, the conditions are uncontrolled, and nobody standardised the questions. We will not manufacture a percentage out of anecdotes, and where you need findings you can defend, that is formal research and should be scoped as such.
Against a funnel that adapts to what the campaign owns, with every rung reported separately: partners visited, engaged, educated, interested, qualified as an opportunity, orders requested, orders verified, fulfilled where you or the distributor share the data, and reordered. A hundred retailers visited is not a hundred trained, and a hundred interested is not a hundred orders. Plus field observations, labelled as observations rather than research.
They can be designed around an order objective, provided you have a commercial proposition the partner can act on and an ordering route that actually works. What we will not do is report expressions of interest as orders. Interest, qualified opportunity, order requested, order verified and order fulfilled are five separate numbers, and they will not match. Where no valid order mechanism exists, an order objective is not realistic and we would rather say so at scoping.
Demand and availability have to arrive together
Frustrating, and expensive
A consumer campaign that lands before the channel is ready sends people to shops that cannot supply them. They buy something else, and the retailer learns that your advertising does not convert.
Not automatically useful
Stock sitting in a channel nobody has asked for occupies shelf space and cash. Partners remember that too, and it makes the next listing conversation harder.
Working on the shopper side of the same product? Retail & in-store activations →. Creating trial? Product sampling →.
Choosing outlets and territory
What the partner is worth to you, from your data rather than our assumption.
Whether this product belongs in that kind of business at all.
Clustering that makes a route viable rather than theoretically complete.
Access, timing, who is actually there to talk to. The one that quietly removes names.
Your data beats our inference, every time
If you hold an outlet universe, dealer segmentation, historical sales by partner, distributor coverage or a priority list, we build from those. If you do not, we still build a list — and it gets labelled as reasoning rather than evidence, with a pilot to test it. Segmentation like priority, active, inactive, new or growth opportunity is only meaningful when it comes from your commercial reality; inventing our own tiers would be theatre.
Once the same routine repeats across that universe week after week, it stops being an activation — that is a field programme →
Where the channel is unfamiliar, the proposition is new or the scale is large, one real market teaches more than a plan does — it tests the trade proposition, the training, the objections, the order path, the materials and the reporting before you multiply the assumptions. A familiar product going to a familiar channel usually does not need one.
What actually changes the cost
- Audience type and how deliberate each engagement isThe first variable
- Number of partners or outletsHigh
- Territory spread and travelOften the largest hidden line
- Duration and frequencyHigh
- Field team size and calibreHigher for technical products
- SupervisionRises with spread
- Demonstration equipment and productCategory-dependent
- Trade materials and sales aidsScope-dependent
- Venue or site costs for sessionsFormat-dependent
- Product handling where in scopeVaries
- Reporting depth and follow-up structureMedium
Commercial terms, incentives and any trade offer are your cost, not ours — and never something we design.
The principle
Trade activation is cheap relative to consumer media and expensive relative to doing nothing, and its value depends almost entirely on whether the commercial conditions behind it are real. Spending on channel education for a product with no reliable supply route is the most efficient way to waste money in this discipline.
Where trade budgets leak
Outlet lists nobody verified, so teams travel to businesses that closed. Coverage bought for completeness rather than commercial reason. Materials produced before the commercial facts were settled. Follow-up with no owner. And the big one: interest reported as orders, which means next year’s budget is set against a number that never existed.
Where the boundaries of this service are
Trade activation answers what commercial engagement you are trying to create with the channel. Field marketing answers how a defined activity happens repeatedly across people, territories and time. In practice a trade activation often becomes a field programme once it needs to run continuously across an outlet universe — the thinking on this page designs it, and field marketing operates it.
The audience has customers of their own. A consumer decides whether they want something; a trade partner decides whether their customers will want it, whether they understand it well enough to explain it, whether they can get it reliably and what it costs them to carry it. Excitement is not the currency — clarity, availability and a workable order route are.
No, and the distinction matters commercially. Trade marketing as a discipline spans pricing, category strategy, retailer negotiation, merchandising, promotions and channel planning — much of which is a client-side or consultancy function. Trade activation is the engagement and execution layer within it: getting the right conversation to the right partner and making the next commercial action possible. We do the second, not the first.
Get an instant trade activation estimate.
A dealer session and a twenty-town trade roadshow are not one formula, so this engine runs a different set of commercial modules for each format. Answer a few quick questions to see a very tentative planning cost, built from published Kenyan conference, print, stand, transport and accommodation rates plus a clearly labelled staff benchmark. Campaign setup and trade materials are charged once, never per day. Your commercial terms, your incentive mechanic and your product are never priced here — they are yours.
Tell us the number and we will show you what we would protect, what we could simplify, and what still needs a conversation.
Not a formal quotation. Ask for a formal quote →
The part we could say ourselves, but it’s better coming from clients.
“They blend creativity and precision flawlessly. Our event was an unforgettable masterpiece, thanks to their innovative touch.”
Philip Barasa
“Their attention to detail and creativity in every aspect, from décor to audiovisuals, was flawless. What sets them apart is their ability to truly understand your vision.”
Anne Kibunya
“From start to finish, they flawlessly manage every detail. Highly recommend them for any event management needs.”
Collins Nyachoti
These are public Google reviews of Red Giant as a company. They are reproduced word for word and are not attributed to any specific trade activation on this page.
Your channel strategy. A Kenya execution layer.
Route-to-market strategy, distributor appointment, pricing architecture and commercial terms are yours or your local partner’s. What Red Giant owns is the engagement with the channel once those exist: designing the conversation, training the team, executing in the field, capturing what happened and reporting it honestly. We do not negotiate on your behalf and we do not appoint anybody.
Channel structures that do not map onto another market’s. Trade materials built for a modern-retail environment being used in general trade. Ordering assumptions that presume connectivity or credit that is not there. Session formats that assume a partner will leave their business for three hours. And language — a trade conversation happens in whichever language the counter actually uses.
No dealer database, no standing retailer relationships, no distributor directory, no distribution network, no warehousing or vehicles, no trade platform, no system integrations, and no guaranteed listings or orders. We claim no customs, import or regulatory capability and we do not give legal advice. Where a channel or a region is genuinely hard to reach at your timeline, you hear it during planning rather than afterwards.
Against the nine rungs with each one kept separate, per partner and per territory, at an agreed rhythm from a named person. Requested and verified orders are different numbers and will differ; the gap is informative. Fulfilment and reorder are reported only where you or your distributor share the data, because we do not fulfil and will not claim to. Structured reports rather than a live dashboard — we do not own trade software and will not imply we do.
Trade and channel execution delivered here to your specification, with your client relationship untouched. You keep the idea, the commercial thinking and the relationship; what gets added is a Kenya ground team, the field execution and reporting you can put your own name on.
Before the brief.
A trade activation is a marketing or commercial engagement designed for the businesses inside the route to market — retailers, wholesalers, dealers, distributors, agents and other channel partners — around a specific commercial or product objective. Depending on that objective it can help them understand a product, support a launch, place an order, or improve how they present it to their own customers. Its audience is a business making a commercial decision, not a consumer making a personal one.
It depends on the format, how many trade contacts or outlets are involved, how many campaign days, the geography, the people on the ground and whether a venue, refreshments, a demonstration or a roadshow platform are part of it. A fifty-person dealer session in Nairobi and a twenty-town trade roadshow are different orders of cost and different commercial structures, which is why the estimator above runs a separate module for each rather than one formula. It builds a tentative range from published Kenyan conference, print, stand, transport and accommodation rates plus a clearly labelled staff benchmark, charges campaign setup and trade materials once rather than per day, and marks site access, trade rewards and anything else genuinely unknown as to be confirmed. There is no trade activation rate card, and we do not publish one.
The trade engagement as one system: the commercial objective, the trade audience, the format, turning your approved product and commercial facts into a conversation a field team can deliver consistently, the people, the materials, the locations, what gets captured, the reporting and the handover back to your sales team — depending on the agreed scope. What it does not handle is your commercial terms, your incentive mechanics, your stock or your fulfilment. Those are yours, and an agency that offers to invent them is inventing a commitment you did not make.
Retail activation influences the shopper in the last few metres before a purchase decision. Trade activation influences the business that stocks, recommends or sells the product in the first place. One talks to the person with the basket; the other talks to the person who decided whether the product would be on the shelf at all. Many products need both, and they are commissioned, executed and measured differently.
Yes. Multiple towns change real things — transport, accommodation, the number of campaign days, supervision and how the outlet list is built — and the estimator moves those lines rather than applying an upcountry multiplier. Where the programme becomes a moving campaign across a route, it is a trade roadshow and the estimator reuses the same commercial modules as the Roadshows planner rather than quoting it twice. Where the same routine has to repeat across an outlet universe week after week, that is a field programme and Field Marketing is the better planner. Red Giant holds no dealer database and no standing outlet contacts: where you have a list we build from it, and where you do not, the list we build is labelled reasoning rather than evidence. Spread costs more than partner count does — multiple regions change travel, supervision, briefing consistency and reporting comparability before anybody counts people — and we publish no coverage claims implying standing teams anywhere, because teams are built where the campaign needs them.
Yes. Send the channel objective, the trade audience, the commercial mechanics and what must stay fixed, and the Kenya ground execution gets built around them, reported at an agreed rhythm from a named person. Route-to-market strategy, distributor appointment, pricing and commercial terms stay with you or your local partner. We claim no distributor relationships, no customs or regulatory capability and no guaranteed listings.
We already have the trade plan so far.
Who should we send the formal next step to? If you already hold a dealer or outlet list, commercial terms, product training material, a trade brief or an RFP, send that instead — the outlet list changes more of the plan than anything else you can give us.
Tell us about it.
No finished plan required.
No finished plan required
Got it. Your scope is with us — a Red Giant lead will come back to you on it.
Send the messy version. hey@redgiant.co.ke →
Whatever exists already — a deck, a floor plan, a spec, a date, or half the idea. Send what you have.
Build the scope first.
The estimator carries straight into this form. Start there →
- 1We receive your scope exactly as you built it.
- 2Red Giant reviews the commercial and operational requirements.
- 3We come back to confirm anything missing.
- 4You receive a formal quotation against that scope.
What does the channel need to do next?
The product, the trade audience, the commercial objective and roughly where is enough to start. What happens next: Red Giant receives the trade scope and whatever channel information already exists, reviews the audience, the activation format and what the ground execution actually requires, confirms the venue, logistics, trade-mechanic and third-party costs that are not ours to set, and comes back with the formal commercial next step.