David Cooke, the incoming chief executive of UK wholesale buying group Unitas, has set a target of doubling own brand sales to £43m by 2030, announcing the figure at the group's annual conference as part of a strategy he says will reposition Unitas as "the largest wholesale alliance".

The own brand target is the sharpest number in a package of measures that also includes a complete reboot of the Plan for Profit retailer toolkit and an expansion of the One Week Special promotions, which Cooke said have delivered 50% retailer margin in depots across the membership. That margin figure, disclosed by the group itself, positions the promotion mechanics as a direct tool for independent retailers competing on gross margin rather than price alone.

The centre of the product strategy is Ignite, a new NPD accelerator launched at the event and now rolling out into a wider pilot scheme. Cooke claimed it will "make Unitas the launch partner of choice and unlock exclusivities that were previously not possible". The mechanics are concrete: Ignite analyses data from participating wholesalers in the 12 weeks after a product launch, showing where the initiative is working, where distribution is missing and where execution needs correcting. For suppliers, that promises measurable launch performance across the membership; for wholesalers, it converts distribution gaps into a checkable execution scorecard rather than an assertion.

A companion programme, Connected for Growth, will introduce live face-to-face and virtual Brand Ignition days. These bring key suppliers together with the Unitas wholesaler membership to align on "big bet" campaigns and NPD, and to ensure execution across the group.

Cooke framed the economics of the alliance in explicit terms. "Our scale creates opportunity, our knowledge tells us where to win and unlocks greater ROI for suppliers, and our members' commitment to execution turns opportunity into value," he said.

The incoming chief also signalled a pruning of central activity. To concentrate on what he called three "big rocks" — own brand, the NPD infrastructure and supplier alignment — the Unitas central team will step away from activity better handled directly between individual members and suppliers. "There are things every member should absolutely continue to do independently because that's what makes them agile and successful, but there are opportunities where none of us can individually match what we are capable of together," he said.

The distinction matters for how the group's channel power is measured. Own brand sales of £43m by 2030 is a disclosed, dated target against which progress can be tracked. The 50% retailer margin claim for One Week Specials covers depots across the membership but is a group-supplied figure rather than an audited average. Claims around Ignite — that it will unlock exclusivities "previously not possible" — remain, for now, asserted rather than measured; the 12-week data window gives Unitas a mechanism to substantiate them as the pilot widens.

Cooke takes over from current chief John Kinney, and the 2030 deadline gives him a full planning horizon to prove that a central team doing fewer things, backed by pooled wholesaler data, can move own brand from roughly £21-22m to £43m.