Redefining a Private Label brief to get a bigger success
The Market
Our client, a major Private Label food manufacture in France, had dominated their domestic market but was not being considered by any of the UK retailers even though the quality of the products was good and the prices competitive.
Our Client’s Objective
To introduce the company to the major UK retailers and to develop Private Label business in a number of key grocery sectors.
What We Did
The first thing was to fully understand the UK market and to establish where our client may be able to gain a foothold by offering products that met the retailers’ development strategy but offered differentiation over those products in the UK.
We began by undertaking a full range analysis in each of the retailers to ascertain the strengths of the brands in each category, the ratio of brand versus private label, the number of SKUs in each retailer and the level of duplication. We also examined each retailer’s consumer profile and buying habits etc. From this, we were able to establish potential gaps in both the existing ranges and product development strategies.
Having presented to Sainsbury the findings of our analysis, we were included in a tender to produce a range of Taste the Difference condiments. The brief was comprehensive but was for relatively mainstream products, although of higher quality. Based on our analysis, we took the risk of modifying the brief and concentrated on developing products with flavours we felt would have greater appeal to core TTD consumers. The retailer’s initial reaction was that we had failed to respond to the brief, but having seen the rationale and tasted the products they were sufficiently convinced to include them in their brand panelling. The products scored higher than any of the other products submitted and were put forward for launch. Our client had not previously worked directly with any of the U.K retailers and thus we oversaw the whole to launch including:
- Managing our client through the retailer’s brand strategy including pre-auditing the factory and directly involved in the factory being approved as a Sainsbury Private Label producer.
- Completing all the New Line form’s, setting up EDI and completing all the product specifications in the retailer’s product library.
- The logistics of distributing to the retailer.
- Management of artwork and critical paths s that ensured the products were launched on time.
- Launching on time.
The Results
We launched two products which were featured in the Sainsbury’s PR and advertising campaigns and quickly established themselves with the consumers. Sales have grown steadily and range extensions are planned and other products are now in development for launch in 2012.