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Case Study

Food Storage Containers: Quality in Private Label

Our Acadian Crossing Consumer Product team thrives in the challenge and the appeal in pushing past assumptions of stagnant categories and products to innovate and improve, where there was thought to be little opportunity to do so. This is what gets us excited and this is where we excel.

Situation

In a category that was stagnant with one supplier, our client came to Acadian Crossing with a challenge to make a better product for private label food containers. With our proven product development process as the foundation, our team approached solution development with an open mind and innovation at the forefront. Having a deep partnership with our supplier, understanding of their capabilities and knowing the requirements to produce a superior product was also key. A general trend in private label is to choose price at the expense of quality, but our proposed solution would offer both performance and value.

Challenge

Brands controlled two-thirds of the food container category and there had been little innovation for several years. Our challenge was not only to source a product but to design a better product than any that existed on the shelf. 

Solution

As part of our process, we set out to learn. Not only about product features, benefits and materials but also about suppliers, adjacent categories and food storage options outside of retail. We also utilized syndicated data to understand consumer purchasing trends in the category. We facilitated consumer panels to understand what they liked, didn’t like and thought would make a great product. A deep internal and external assessment is core to our process at ArchPoint to understand the broader picture and find insights from outside of the current category.

Armed with information, we developed a product framework for our supplier partner in Asia. Engineering developed a design that incorporated the key features and functions identified through our assessment. Because of our partnership, we collaborated on prototypes culminating in a sample model that, ultimately, produced five SKUs.

During product testing, the new design outperformed both national brands and the incumbent private label product. And at the founding customer, Private Label went from a 35 percent share of category to now being the only brand available in the category (100 percent) and our annual compound growth is 40 percent in its ninth year of sales.

It’s a credit to our product development process at Acadian Crossing that a consumer-preferred product was developed and is now known for being the strongest product in the category and having the premier closure. Our innovative product design and usage for the containers is now the industry standard in performance and structure.

 

Results

  • Lineup is now 14 different SKUS available in more than 4,000 retail stores across the US.
  • We now have multiple specs depending on customers’ needs but all still perform to our high standards.
  • In several retailers, one or both national brands have been discontinued while we continue to identify opportunities for innovation.