Store Brand Tunnel Vision

To paraphrase the old saying: You can’t please all of the people all the time, but you can please some of the people some of the time. It is with that mindset that successful supermarkets are—or should be—approaching their nonfoods private label strategy, say industry observers. 

“Nonfoods has become so vast in the types and number of products that can be offered it is difficult for a supermarket to really pay attention to all of the products,” says Brian Sharoff, president of the New York-based Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA). “So the tendency—and this includes store brands—is to offer the SKUs that are popular.”

Those popular SKUs include products that fall into a few specific categories, which include self-diagnosis, such as glucose testing items; anti-aging products; cosmetics and detergents and cleaners. 

Those last two categories—cosmetics and detergent and cleaners—have something in common that retailers can focus on: Fragrance. Industry observers say that creatively designed fragrances reach the emotional heart of consumers and that with the right fragrance from certain products, retailers can establish loyal, lifetime store brand users. 

“A competitive and winning fragrance is particularly important in home care, laundry and personal care products,” says Lori Miller Burns, director, marketing relations and communications for Marietta, Ga.-based Arylessence, a flavor and fragrance development company. However, observers say that detergents and cleaners has been an area that has seen little movement on the private label side. Miller Burns suggests that if retailers want to make headway in that area, fragrance is the way to do it.  

“Private label manufacturers that pay attention to this key fragrance ingredient will significantly improve sales and capture the highest market share in the nonfoods private label product categories. 

“Arylessence knows store brands and we know how to strategically create beautiful fragrances that win in the highly competitive store brand market,” she adds.

Within the home care category, observers say private label household cleaning chemicals is a category that is faring quite well. “For many years the national brand was the only option,” says Anthony Albazi, national sales manager for Chase Products Co., based in Broadview, Ill. “Now that consumers are more educated, they are purchasing more private label cleaners and finding that they are equal to, or in some cases better than the national brand—at a lower price.” 

In addition to household cleaners, sales of private label hand protection and rain protection products are on the rise, says Tim Stapleton, president of Rome, Ga.-based Big Time Products.

However, there are opportunities to generate sales in a number of different categories; retailers simply need to better understand what their shoppers want and give it to them. 

“The consumer walking into your store has made a decision that you have what they need, and it is important for all of us, both retailer and supplier, to make sure we exceed this consumer’s expectations,” says Stapleton. “We have to try new ideas. The consumers of today have so much available information that we do not have a lot of chances to impress them. We have to take chances, and if they are not fully successful, both vendor and retailers review what worked, what did not, and move to better success next time. The commitment to partnership is the only way we all win.” 

Sharoff adds that when it comes to private label, if consumers like a particular retailer’s food products they can be “induced, perhaps seduced to try nonfoods products.”

However, if those products do not achieve the same specialness to the shopper that a food product does, they will not purchase again. 

“Consumers will try a nonfoods product based on name, but if it is not as good—or better—than they can get from a national brand, and that includes packaging, they are not going to stay with it,” say Sharoff.