By Scott Lucas, Managing Director, Brandimage & Jen Bethke, Account Director, Brandimage Continue Reading

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By Christopher A. Durham: President & Chief Strategist, My Private Brand

Largest Worldwide Private Brand Competition is Changing Retail Owned Brand Design

Almost three years ago, the publisher of this magazine, Phillip Russo, and I sat in a little café in Amsterdam, discussing our publications, the opportunities for Private Brands, and PLMA’s World of Private Label international trade show we had just attended. A few drinks and a good cigar later, we had a handful of off-the-wall ideas we truly believed could change private brand. That conversation was the spark that ignited the Vertex Awards. And now, two years after its inception, the Vertex Awards are the largest worldwide competition devoted exclusively to the art of Private Brand package design. More than simply size, it has become a catalyst for change and opened the eyes of the world to the depth and breadth of Private Brand’s potential globally. Continue Reading

Segmenting shoppers who are most inclined to buy

By Perry Seelert, Co-Founder and Strategic Partner, Emerge Continue Reading

By Vasco Brinca, Senior Vice President, EMEA LA, Daymon Worldwide

Western Europe is well established as a Private Brand leader with the majority of EU-based consumers showing strong trust in Private Brands as good alternatives to leading brands. As Private Brand pioneers, Daymon Worldwide has long-encouraged our retailer and supplier partners around the world to treat their Private Brands as viable brands in their own right versus price-based alternatives to name brands.

Yet as consumer acceptance of Private Brands grows, particularly in the EU, a new battle is emerging as big retailers must now compete with the increasing proliferation of discounters for share of wallet. Aldi in the UK, for example, has captured enough share of the market to become the 6th largest grocer in the country, surpassing Waitrose.

Considering that leading brands in the marketplace can afford to significantly reduce their prices for special occasions or promotion periods, it’s important to note that building loyalty around the lowest price is not a strategic or sustainable means to combat discounters.

As retailers strategize how to keep their Private Brands relevant against discounter competition, we recommend the following considerations as a means to elevate offerings as “can’t get anywhere else” options. Continue Reading

By Vasco Brinca, senior Vice President, Emealae, DaymonWorldwide

Retailers around the globe today have more power in the value chain than ever before as many have become actual agents for change in the lives of their consumers. From a greater focus on health and wellness to introducing opportunities to access ethnic-inspired flavors and products, retailers often hold the key to a new world of better life experiences. Continue Reading

By / Perry Seelert

By / Richard Kohn

Winning in private label is driven by a few factors: Speed of response, flexibility, pricing and increasingly, based on my most recent experiences, solving simple problems for our clients.

Or perhaps they are just simple for us,because of our depth of knowledge and ability to perform.

Let me explain more. We know there are a number of operational models retailers use for private label. These range from extensive in house teams to totally outsourced supply. For those with less extensive a team, there’s a real opportunity (less so with bigger teams, but I believe it is still there). Middle management ranks in retailers having been culled in recent years. The result is a knowledge gap in those retailers that smart private labelers can exploit.

Managers working in major retailers today are very impressive characters. In most cases they have passed through the fast track management training courses as top performers. They are bright, intelligent and commercially very savvy. They also are responsible for multi million Euro/Dollar budgets. These are extremely busy people, used to success and used to wielding great power. Continue Reading

By Jean-Pierre Lacroix, President, Shikatani Lacroix

Retailers and marketers face a new set of opportunities thinly veiled as challenges. Looking at the glass half empty perspective – the challenges – today’s grocery shopper faces a complex (and confusing) retail environment with more than 60,000 supermarket products, and these numbers continue to grow along with the range of retail channels available. To amplify the issue, the number of weekly shopping trips in the U.S. dropped from a high of 2.2 in 2012 to 1.6 per week in 2014, and consumers are also more willing to accept living with less. Continue Reading