Retail Branding Advice

tacofries

Hi guys,

Just at the stage of creating the branding and packaging design for my products and am wondering would you have any advice for me with regards to how to create something which will ultimately become a brand.

The product is a clutter storage unit for bathrooms which will be sold in US stores such as 'Bed, Bath and Beyond' and 'The Home Depot' with an RRP of around $24.99. It is a mass market product with our target market being American women of average income who have 2 or more kids (although the product is not specifically for kids).

With regards to the market place, we have a lot of competitors all of whom sell products which fulfill the same purpose as our product just in a much less efficient and user-friendly way. All of these competitor products look exactly the same, whereas our product is totally innovative in design and so looks COMPLETELY different to anything else. Our product also has 2 major USP's and 2 minor USP's versus any other product on the market.

Pricewise, we sit at the slightly higher end of the middle-range selling prices.

Unfortunately the budget doesn't allow for a brand consultant and so we have to come up with the design ourselves and then bring it to a graphic designer.

Any tips on what strategy to use when coming up with the design?
Thanks for every bit of advice,
Taco

pedroeibar1

Taco,
Great to see that your project is progressing. I’ve no fix-all solution to propose other than you will not get the best answer here. You need US input. What I do know about any export market and the US specifically is in building a brand, product engineering is in the long term more critical than packaging.

The biggest mistake most exporters to the US make is to underestimate the importance of language(words/meaning) and distance. In terms of distance, Moscow is closer to London than Chicago is to LA. (Go on, you doubters, check if you want to, I’m right!) People talk about “the US Market” – there is no such thing, it is made up of many markets, East Coast, West Coast, Mid-West, Corn belt, Panhandle, whatever. It is just as segmented as the EU, not just in approach, but thinking, outlook, everything. What sells in NYC is a dog in parts of NJ or PA but might fly out the door in CA.

Talk to EI in NYC and make sure you have very good products liability insurance.

pedronomix

Have you got listed with the named store chains?

tacofries

tacofries wrote: »

.

Unfortunately the budget doesn't allow for a brand consultant and so we have to come up with the design ourselves and then bring it to a graphic designer.

I would say if you want to create a brand that stands out amongst a cluttered marketplace, you need to be hiring a very good designer to design the brand from scratch and make it consistent across the company and all the company materials. Even more so important since your at the higher end of the scale. If your product is more expensive, yet looks cheaper, you'll have a difficult time getting the price you want, thats if you got lucky enough to get it listed.

In terms of getting listed in these big US stores, your aware you need to have a serious wad of cash before you can even start that? Unless your going store by store one at a time, you'll have large listing fees, 60 days credit and a variety of penalties in the contract that can cripple you if you make any mistakes.

tacofries

pedronomix wrote: »

Have you got listed with the named store chains?

No, way too early a stage to even approach them. I have made a false product submission to each however so that I could get access to a lot of vendor information and criteria for packaging, manufacturing etc. Before you say it, I do know that Bed, Bath and Beyond are the toughest store for margins but their stores are very well suited to us in terms of target market!

Deleted User wrote: »

In terms of getting listed in these big US stores, your aware you need to have a serious wad of cash before you can even start that? Unless your going store by store one at a time, you'll have large listing fees, 60 days credit and a variety of penalties in the contract that can cripple you if you make any mistakes.

Agree with you EL Rifle. We will get an initial relatively small investment and then use the store by store approach until there is a strong proof of concept. At that stage we would look for further investment and if possible a line of credit in order to fund a speedy growth.

Regards building a brand from scratch with a professional, that is originally what I wanted to do although I knew it would always be out of our budget. I was quoted a minimum of €8,000 and that could rise depending on the amount of photos needed to be taken.

Any advice on what strategy to use, or what questions I need to ask myself and others when designing the branding?

Cheers for the replies!

tacofries

tacofries wrote: »

No, way too early a stage to even approach them. I have made a false product submission to each however so that I could get access to a lot of vendor information and criteria for packaging, manufacturing etc. Before you say it, I do know that Bed, Bath and Beyond are the toughest store for margins but their stores are very well suited to us in terms of target market!



Agree with you EL Rifle. We will get an initial relatively small investment and then use the store by store approach until there is a strong proof of concept. At that stage we would look for further investment and if possible a line of credit in order to fund a speedy growth.

Regards building a brand from scratch with a professional, that is originally what I wanted to do although I knew it would always be out of our budget. I was quoted a minimum of €8,000 and that could rise depending on the amount of photos needed to be taken.

Any advice on what strategy to use, or what questions I need to ask myself and others when designing the branding?

Cheers for the replies!

Ideally you would know a designer who would do it for you at a decent rate and not the standard corporate rate which is always extravagantly high.
Whoever designs the packaging needs to make sure that whatever dimensions they use it needs to be something fairly standard so you dont have difficulty finding existing moulds in factories, otherwise thats a big problem with big cost and time wasting with samples etc.

I know quite a lot about what your about to do. I implore you to understand the margins, and listing costs and have them locked down and know exactly what you need to give to the retailer, and also to talk to a real buying expert in that category and get opinions. There are so many reasons a product wont make it, and often its not because of anything to do with the quality of it.
Its very very risky to go into a business on the back of a product if you don't have proper finance in place to make it work if you get the orders.

Heres a story for you. In 2013 I shifted close to $1m of a product I had the rights on throughout major stores. In 2014 that stopped selling and I invested in another new brand which stacked up brilliantly as a product. A year later and 50k less in my pocket Im about to fold that side business because of that product and the holy amount of pain it brought me

One example of the pain, is that I sold it to 3 of the biggest companies in the UK, and had orders from the largest wholesaler in the country (that order required £5k per SKU as a listing fee upfront by the way). But they wont order big at the start, they want to test the product, and then my factory changed the goalposts on production, suddenly requiring 210,000 units as the MOQ because of packaging changes and also suddenly I had to pay upfront for product with no credit. I only had 30,000 units in sales orders. So I had to bridge the gap and no traditional finance people would take the risk on the extra units without the PO's in place and also because it working across different countries increasing their risk.
For someone who has been able to raise millions of dollars for various projects Ive done, I couldn't raise the 150K I needed for that, and ended up losing the 50K I invested in everything to get it going. Couldn't have been more frustrating.

protelos

Hi there,

In terms of the brand, I would concur about the US language thing, any correlation to organize will mean separate packaging

In terms of the brand you are focusing on the mother, rather than the connection with the mother and child, so try not to mimic J & J and Dove!!

Clutter free is trademarked but I guess play around with combinations of organizeMe, clutter buster etc.


For packaging I would go for white and be aware of shelf space and stacking ability. What is the condensed size of the product?

On that front facing bit you will want to have the full product displayed (these are usually on the right, so go with that), the brand and the two strongest value propositions highlighted with the benefits for the tired mother not the actual features.

I feel you on the cost of the agency and it highlights and interesting point! Can you approach one and sell them on the possibility of a reduced rate for initial work and you would send work their way in the future?

I have a half day today and will go to target and HD to look at some of your competitors and mail later. Also I am meeting a buyer from target later for a beer but I will ask him some questions relating to your product. He is in clothing but he knows more than I do!!

As posted above they are obviously killer on margin! Last time we chatted he made a comment that the best way to use being in Target is to treat it as marketing. So put as much effort to get it into smaller places than getting into the big ones.

Obviously not an easy task, but you’ll be grand!! EI NY are the ones that do consumer goods so I would be all over them!!

If you have a half hour to spare, check out my pillow and their growth, different scale etc but the numbers are impressive!

tacofries

protelos wrote: »

For packaging I would go for white and be aware of shelf space and stacking ability. What is the condensed size of the product?

I feel you on the cost of the agency and it highlights and interesting point! Can you approach one and sell them on the possibility of a reduced rate for initial work and you would send work their way in the future?

I have a half day today and will go to target and HD to look at some of your competitors and mail later. Also I am meeting a buyer from target later for a beer but I will ask him some questions relating to your product. He is in clothing but he knows more than I do!!

EI NY are the ones that do consumer goods so I would be all over them!!

If you have a half hour to spare, check out my pillow and their growth, different scale etc but the numbers are impressive!

Hi Protelos,

The product itself is 15 x 14 x 3.5 inches so although it is big, it is actually smaller than our competitors products. I have found a brand consultant whose work I absolutely love but there is no movement on the price unfortunately. In saying that I do have a good idea of what I want the packaging to be like but think I am overthinking the situation and hence doubting myself!

By EI NY do you mean Enterprise Ireland New York? And I am checking out MyPillow as we speak.

Thanks a million for spending some time looking at the competition and more particularly mentioning it to the buyer!

protelos

Yes indeed! Sorry about the lack of clarity, the New York office of Enterprise Ireland. Cool, i will be in touch!

pedroeibar1

tacofries wrote: »

No, way too early a stage to even approach them. I have made a false product submission to each however so that I could get access to a lot of vendor information and criteria for packaging, manufacturing etc. Before you say it, I do know that Bed, Bath and Beyond are the toughest store for margins but their stores are very well suited to us in terms of target market!

---

Agree with you EL Rifle. We will get an initial relatively small investment and then use the store by store approach until there is a strong proof of concept. At that stage we would look for further investment and if possible a line of credit in order to fund a speedy growth.

Regards building a brand from scratch with a professional, that is originally what I wanted to do although I knew it would always be out of our budget. I was quoted a minimum of €8,000 and that could rise depending on the amount of photos needed to be taken.

Any advice on what strategy to use, or what questions I need to ask myself and others when designing the branding?

Cheers for the replies!

Reading your additional info Taco, you are not asking about building a brand, you are asking about selling one product, which is quite different. The fact that you are trying a new product in a new market multiplies the odds of failure, because you have no known benchmarks to measure its performance (or lack thereof) and cannot ascertain what and why it is good or bad.

What way does the product stack? Does it maximize the use of shelf space height? Will it by high up or low down, due to weight? Orientation in stacking on shelves needs to be considered for print/design. What color schemes and packaging are the competitors using? What internet research have you done on competitors?

I've seen suppliers told they have to take a deep discount to help shift a product. Can you handle that? You also have serious currency issues to address, given what is happening in markets at the mom. Is the product being manufactured in the eurozone? If not, you have even more exposure.

I have serious doubts on your notion of aiming at the store chains you mention. Before you even get in the dooor of a multiple, the buyer will have checked you out financially. No retailer wants to have shelf space earmarked for a product that will fail to arrive and leave a gap that can be filled only with difficulty. As a start-up, one with no track record, one that cannot afford 8k for a product's critical aspect, IMO you've no hope with the big guys, you need to set your sights at a more realistic level.

I have seen just one or two exporters get lucky first time out purely on the basis that they were Irish and had a Yank importer/buyer with Irish ancestry well disposed to them, but that was very much the exception, out of hundreds.

tacofries

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Reading your additional info Taco, you are not asking about building a brand, you are asking about selling one product, which is quite different.

What color schemes and packaging are the competitors using? What internet research have you done on competitors?

Is the product being manufactured in the eurozone? If not, you have even more exposure.

IMO you've no hope with the big guys, you need to set your sights at a more realistic level.

The reason I am looking to build a brand is because we have three products to start of with and want to come up with a strategy that can be easily carried across from one product to the next. I think its better to start this process from the start instead of waiting to see whether the product actually works out or not. I could be wrong but just how I feel at this moment.

The currency situation actually suits us at the moment as our product will be manufactured in Ireland for the first year at least.

I would set my sights lower but protection is an issue and so I feel like I should hit the ground running and take my chances (obviously these chances will be evaluated properly first for risk vs reward).

I am only new to this process and it is something which I want to spend my life at so at the least it will be a learning process... I am pushing for it to be a lot more than that though.

Cianos

To answer your original question, come up with some existing brands that align with the look & feel you're aiming for.

What clothes brand would be a close match?
What big chain store would be a close match?
What perfume/cologne brand would be a close match?

A good graphic designer should be able to take these examples and determine what direction to drive the work.

The starting point should be the logo. Check out sites like www.dribbble.com and www.logopond.com for work from other designers and if you can provide a few (and I mean 3-4 max) very close examples you're a good bit of the way there.

Keep things simple and uncluttered, and make sure you hire someone you know to be talented as often with good design you have to take a bit of a leap of faith, especially if it's to stand out.

Post the work on sites for objective feedback (www.reddit.com/r/logodesign) - asking family and friends is effectively worthless.

Also don't send wordy briefs to designers - designers just want the visual references and that's about it. A pictures is definitely worth 1,000 words in this case.

tacofries

Great stuff Cianos,. Advice like that is exactly what I'm looking for! Thanks,

pedronomix

Take a look at this link and search other articles about DROP http://www.irishexaminer.com/business/recipe-app-represents-a-smart-move-343398.html. They will give some flavour of what is needed to get into US retail.

protelos

Hi,

So about my buddy in Target, it was social so didn’t want to kill him with questions, he said that they are always looking for products but did say they are getting even tougher on price. They are also trying to push their own brand in the home ware so this might limit ones opportunity to use target as a marketing opportunity.

Not exactly anything amazing but I play soccer with him twice a week and he is a great guy, so in terms of talking to him again that won’t be an issue!

He did mention that most of the home ware is now their own two brands. Room Essentials is the normal one and Threshold is their higher end one.(If there is such a thing in Targe!!)

I did have a look at the branding on these and they were simple yet effective.

The one most similar in size to yours stacked vertically and looked great!

Hope it helps!!

tacofries

protelos wrote: »

The one most similar in size to yours stacked vertically and looked great!

Hope it helps!!

Cheers Protelos for putting yourself out for me. Those store brands are getting more popular because of the price of them unfortunately. I'll need good branding in order to overcome their price competitiveness!

Black Jack 77

Hi tacofries,

I wad just wondering (and you probably have looked at this already) but did you ever consider direct marketing through pay-per-click, assuming that you have a website. If you haven't then maybe we should have a 5 minute chat, even if you are only curious and just want to explore your options.

Cheers
Adrian