Spotlight On: Daymon Worldwide

Daymon Worldwide wants retailers to know that it has their backs. In fact, Jim Holbrook, CEO of the Stamford, Conn.-based company, is quite proud to talk about Damon’s ability to provide merchants with a bevy of services and products, all designed to help them build greater sales and profits from their private label offerings. 

The proof is in the pudding for Daymon, which has been in business for about 45 years. From humble beginnings, the company now counts more than 150 retail partners across the globe, including about 80 merchants in the U.S. In addition, the company works with more than 6,000 suppliers to ensure that it has the ability to develop, design and produce just about any type of private label product necessary. 

“We are all about value and making the cash register ring for our customers,” says Holbrook, who joined Daymon about seven months ago, after a stint with Post Foods. “We can handle product development from the point that the new product is just a glimmer in the eye of the retailer to marketing the item and getting it on to retailers’ shelves. Then we make sure it stays on the shelves so consumers can easily find it.”

Holbrook is quick to note that retailers that utilize Daymon’s private label development programs have, on average, a two to three point higher share penetration than those merchants that do not use Daymon’s services. Merchants that use all of Daymon’s products, including its strategy and branding, sourcing and logistics and marketing platforms have, on average, a four percent higher share than other retailers in private label sales. 

Private label has clearly become a big part of merchandising for supermarkets, thanks to a large degree to an intense focus on improving the quality of products over the last decade or so. Today, about 21 percent of a typical supermarket’s sales come from private label or store brand merchandise, compared to about 14 percent in the early 1990s. While still a far cry from the estimated 40 percent of sales in many European countries, many retailers say that their private label strategies have added millions of dollars to their bottom lines and have enhanced and differentiated their image in the marketplace. 

“What we are best at is showing our retail partners that we can help them develop differentiation in the industry, and in the end, that will help them survive and thrive,” Holbrook adds. “With all of the resources we offer, we can help retailers build out their private label offerings and create an environment where shoppers believe they are simply purchasing another brand.”

Holbrook says the opportunity for private label products is only going to get better as more eccentric and harder-to-define Millennials become a larger part of the consumer market. “They don’t care about name brands,” he says, predicting that sales of private label products could hit 30 percent of total store sales at many domestic retailers in a reasonable amount of time. “So now retailers have to come up with strategies that will allow them to market their own products. They can do that in two ways: By themselves or with a company like Daymon that has the experience and ability to come up with the products and services to maximize profits.”

​Daymon is investing in the future as well. Holbrook says the company is spending a great deal of money on training its own workers, including utilizing “Daymon University” to educate the staff. The company is also investing to ensure that it has the most sophisticated tools in the industry. Expanding into other countries is helping too, adds Holbrook, noting that as Daymon expands its footprint further into Europe and Asia the company is learning what works and what does not work in other parts of the world and bringing that knowledge back home. 

“Cross-pollination is critical in this business,” he says. “We are a service-minded, value-creating company that is strictly focused on what we can do for our retailer and manufacturing partners. Our job is to spot the trends around the world and offer them to our retail partners.”

The company focuses on three areas to help retailers build sales from private label. Analytics is designed to give retailers the right data and the right people to correctly analyze that information, while in-store demos are used to showcase the product and create demand with consumers. The “speed to shelf” aspect is designed to ensure that products reach retail shelves in record time, helping to drive incremental sales and profits for the merchant. 

To that end, Daymon offers an in-house design firm, market research team and analytics group. It also offers a service company to ensure that products are correctly placed on shelves and what Holbrook says is the world’s largest product demonstration service. “Everything under one roof and all designed to help retailers get the most from their private label products,” he says. 

Milt Sender and Peter Schwartz founded Daymon in 1970, hoping to maximize the potential of private brand products. It was not the best of times for the segment, plagued by a lethal combination of poor quality, unattractive packaging and consumer malaise towards the products. Lower price points were simply not enough to get shoppers to consider private label items. 

“To say that private label had a bad name at that time is an understatement,” says Holbrook. “Private label meant inferior quality, knock-offs and cheap. Milt and Peter embarked on a mission to upgrade the quality of private brands and to challenge the status quo, where national brands dominated the category and retailers really did not have much say.”

Today, the company, now an employee-owned ESOP with about 200 offices in 51 countries on six continents, has taken the founders’ mission miles ahead. “The DNA of Daymon now is one of a very entrepreneurial, service-oriented company,” Holbrook says. “Our goal is to help retailers with all of our tools build their private label sales and to help them gain more share and more profits from private label. It is why we are here. It is why I come to work everyday.”