Good Things Can Come From Good Packaging

0

In the retail business, sometimes what’s on the outside matters just as much as what is inside. Dave Carlson, creative director of Thousand Oaks-based Vyant Group, is betting on it.


Carlson, whose company is a subsidiary of Marfred Industries, recently overhauled the brand, packaging, Web site and promotional materials for Hayward-based DermaQuest Skin Therapy. Sales of the skincare product line doubled following Carlson’s work.


“Their brand before really didn’t have any awareness at all,” said Carlson. “Their product was really high quality but their presentation wasn’t impressive.”


Carlson’s company was brought in after DermaQuest Skin Therapy had been working with other designers and branding companies for about a year. The company makes skincare products, for every variety of skin type and age group, targeted to dermatologists’ offices.


Carlson’s team worked for about four months, and the redesign was launched in January.


“It’s made a huge difference,” said Allyson Rogers, director of education at DermaQuest. “It’s helped us get into new doors that we weren’t in before. This is something that appeals to doctors. It’s clean, scientific and elegant-looking.”


Sanjay Sood, associate professor of marketing at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, said packaging generally isn’t a make-or-break issue in business-to-business sales.


“In ‘B2B’ you expect the decision-maker is thinking more carefully about product performance than anything like lower prices or packaging,” he said. “Those things will have less weight than product performance at least we would hope.”


While businesses might be generally less-swayed by packaging, it seems celebrities are not. Rogers wrote a press release about the new packaging and sent out samples in January, and two days later she got a call from the organizer of an Academy Awards gifting suite.


“She said the packaging had caught her eye,” Rogers said. “I had to look them up online to make sure they were on the level.” Gifting suites, particularly before the Oscars, are the Mecca of product placement because the events are crawling with celebrities armed with empty duffel bags.


These days, Rogers said gifting suites call her. She recently got requests for gift suites associated with Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards and the Emmys.


DermaQuest is owned by Allure Cosmetics Inc., which is also based in Hayward. Vyant got the referral for the job from its parent company.


Vyant has also updated the packaging of Oh Boy! Foods, which is owned by San Fernando-based First Street Food Group LLC. Since Oh Boy! is known for its frozen meatballs, company president John Labbett said it’s too soon to notice a sales jump, but he expects to see one come this fall.


“Our old packaging was clear plastic, and I don’t know if you’ve seen what frozen meatballs look like, but it’s not very appetizing,” The new package has a picture of the finished product with a clear panel in the back, so you can see the frozen meatballs.”


Sood said that packaging can make a difference in the supermarket at least for the first purchase.


“Packaging may provide consumers with some sort of interest or incentive that can help get customers to try it, but for repeat buys, that’s where the product will live or die on its own,” he said.


For Labbett, he was impressed enough with the new package to hire Vyant to update the look of its latest acquisition, Chris’ & Pitt’s BBQ sauce, a Southern California staple.

No posts to display