Design cleans up product range for a 35 per cent sales rise
Background
Challs International is a small, Suffolk based business that began manufacturing cleaning products in the early 1990s.
The business owned several brands, the most successful of which was Buster.
Problem
Sales were satisfactory, but, says Challs MD Graham Burchell,
‘supermarkets cull brands because, if there are too many, customers get confused and don’t spend as much. New buyers tasked with cutting brands would delist us, often without even telling us why.’
There was nothing wrong with the product:
‘Every time we were delisted, people would write to us wanting to order Buster Sink Fresh by post.’
Response
Burchell joined Designing Demand in 2001. He recalls getting a lot more than he bargained for, including strategic help from the outset. Design Associate Evan Kitsell explains: ‘A product and brand mapping exercise showed the product portfolio wasn’t well structured and the on-shelf presence wasn’t as coherent as that of the competition.
Also, Challs was spending time on products that weren’t making much money.’
The Challs team decided to focus on their strongest product area – plughole and drain care – and strongest brand, Buster. All but four Buster products were either discontinued or moved into another Challs brand, leaving Buster concentrating solely on cleaning bathroom and kitchen plugholes and unblocking drains.
The design project was a significant risk. Burchell says:
‘We committed £40,000, a year’s profits (though subsequent work would take the design spend to over £80,000). If anything went wrong we wouldn’t get a second chance.’
The Designing Demand design team helped Challs clarify the brand’s personality and positioning. Then, following a paid pitch, branding and graphic designers Elmwood were hired. As well as packaging and graphic concepts to improve on-shelf stand-out, the designers contributed strategic ideas, says Burchell:
‘It was Elmwood’s idea to segment our offering into kitchen and bathroom products’.
Most significantly, the four-strong range became a coherent single offering. Design Associate Fiona Myles said:
‘The design emphasised that Buster was a product system and that was something none of the competition had.’
Tags: challs, designing demand, immerse
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