The Invasion of Europe by the Brewbot.

by chee Leng (on coffee makers)
(Singapore)

Brewbot is the name of the brewing robot for Tassimo. And they are marching into Europe, the stronghold of another single serve coffee machine company -Nespresso.

After doing a series of promotion including changing any old coffee machines for a new Tassimo in US, Kraft is bring the war into Europe by expanding their distribution channels into 20 new European countries.

They would be selling in Denmark, Norway, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Russia and a few other European countries.

This is setting the stage for the year end Christmas shopping where coffee maker is always one of the hottest item around.

My $0.02.

If Tassimo launches a series of promotion similar to what they did in US, then the impact would be felt immediately by Nespresso.

The latter is not known to do discounts and promotions, they rely more on savvy marketing and shrewd positioning.

With Tassimo in Europe, Nespresso is facing a double whammy of lost of capsules sales to OEM companies such as ECC and Sara Lee and now new machines sales to Tassimo.

In addition, it is still not clear if Starbucks would be selling Keurig in Europe and if they did -the competition escalates.

With Starbucks distribution channels, it is bound to dent the sales of Nespresso further.

That being said, it is also reported that the product placement for Nestle Dolce Gusto is working well in UK, with a hike of 20% -so they already have a first mover and might worked further to capitalize on this advantage.

Regardless what the next move is, you can be sure that consumers would be benefiting from the slew of goodies that these companies would come out with when they "fight".

2011 again remains to be the year of the Single serve coffee maker, now all eyes are on who would emerge the winner at the end of this year.