A referencing agreement doesn't guarantee sales, it grants an authorization: your product can now be ordered by the points of sale connected to that distributor. No point of sale is obliged to place an order, and none is obliged to keep placing one once they start.
Most new products don't survive their first year on shelf
Nielsen's Breakthrough Innovation Report (2014), based on more than 12,000 fast-moving consumer goods launches across Western Europe, found that 76% of new product launches fail within their first year. Two out of three new products never reach 10,000 units sold, and three out of four disappear from shelf before their first year is over.
Kantar's own innovation research (2016) puts the failure rate for new products and services in a similar range, 70 to 80%, depending on the methodology used.
A note on rigor: academic research published in the Journal of Marketing, and more recent meta-analyses covering four decades of data, puts the real figure closer to 35 to 46%. The headline number varies by study and definition of “failure.” What doesn't vary is the direction: a majority of listed products do not become permanent fixtures on the shelf.
What happens instead
When a product stops selling at the rate a distributor expects, it gets delisted. It happens to major brands, not just newcomers: Système U delisted Procter & Gamble in 2023, and in 2024, PepsiCo's delisting from Carrefour made headlines. If global brands with decades of retail history are exposed to this dynamic, a brand entering France or Europe for the first time has no reason to assume it will be exempt.
Does getting referenced guarantee your product will sell in France?
No. Referencing only grants the right to be ordered. Each point of sale still decides individually whether to place that first order, and whether to reorder based on how the product actually performs on shelf. A product can be nationally referenced and still disappear from every store within a year if it doesn't sell.
The real work starts after the signature
A referencing agreement opens a door. What happens on the other side of it, at store level, one buyer at a time, is a separate battle, and it's the one that actually decides whether your brand stays on the market.