Patrick Rodmell's Private Label Buyer Magazine Guest Commentary. The 10 Keys to Private Brand Success: Key No. 5: Process Engineering. Private Label Design, Private Label Strategy

1. PLBUYER MAY 2011 The Ten Keys to Private Brand Success
5 Guest Commentary
BY PATRICK RODMELL
THE 10 KEYS TO
PRIVATE BRAND SUCCESS:
KEY NO. 5: PROCESS ENGINEERING
It may not be sexy; but it’s critical to success.
I
f you ever want to break up a for a product or line within their
party, start talking about Process private brand range? Sales data and
Engineering. It’s just not sexy. industry benchmarking are great
Nor is it particularly exciting. starting-points, but this information
But it is one of the elements that only gets you the basics and is
separate successful businesses from available to every retailer, so it
followers, and can have a material won’t really deliver unique items
impact on the performance of a that can be tremendous assets in
private brand program. Speed to driving retailer differentiation.
market, workflow efficiencies and To achieve this, we encourage
quality of outcome are all directly our retail clients to include a
Photos Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/WattInternational
impacted by the journey taken to healthy dose of trend analysis
the destination. programmed into their
Over the past 18 years here at standardized development process.
Watt International, I’ve worked For example, smaller formats,
with dozens of retailers on the healthy alternatives, ethnic-
strategy, product range, branding oriented ranges and ergonomic
and packaging execution of physical packaging solutions are
their private brand programs. all opportunities we identified
At any given moment, it would through trend analysis.
be common for us to have more Development of the packaging Speed to market, workflow efficiencies and quality of outcome are all directly
than 500 SKUs at various stages artwork is another area where impacted by the journey taken to the destination
of development from as many as many retailers could benefit from
10 different retailers. And I can process engineering. When should
tell you one thing with absolute legal get involved? Who internally for short), which essentially assigns first time if they knew they only
certainty – no two retailers go should review/approve artwork? a financial penalty to anyone had one chance to get it right before
about developing their programs When should vendors get involved? involved in the process (excluding penalties kicked in!
the same way. And every one of What tends to be overlooked is the retailer) who completes It may not be as sexy as some
them could benefit from examining the business impact of getting it their task incorrectly or outside of the other Keys to Private Brand
and fine-tuning their process of right versus stumbling through the prescribed timelines. After all, it’s Success, but standardization,
private brand development from panics that inevitably occur when the retailer who stands to lose the documentation and regular
product development all the way to the right structure isn’t defined and most – why should they pay for evaluation of the private
replenishment. followed. third party inefficiencies? brand development process
A number of years ago, Watt Working with a large U.S. Working with an international (i.e. measurement) is critical to
mapped out the process and found supermarket chain a while mass merchant on private brand realizing efficiencies and getting
that there are 312 unique steps back, we calculated the margin development since 1986 also has the right solution on the shelf as
required to get the job done. We opportunity cost per day that taught us a thing or two about quickly as possible.
also found that the sequence of the resulted from the private brand process. Still awake?
steps was just as important as the product not being on the shelf For example, if you provide
rigor around completing them all. (assuming that the consumer anyone involved in the packaging Patrick Rodmell (prodmell@wattintl.com)
While it would take a lot more would select the national brand artwork development process with is president and CEO of Watt International,
room than this column to outline alternative if no private brand two circulations for review, the a Toronto-based integrated retail agency
the details of all 312 steps – and was available). We also looked at chances of things being complete with more than 40 years experience in more
would most likely put every reader the sales opportunity loss if the and correct the first time are than 40 countries around the world. The
to sleep – I’d like to highlight a few old packaging wasn’t replaced by slim. To reduce costs and improve company is well known for creating such
specific areas that are particularly the new one. The numbers were timelines, vendors were given landmark private brands as President’s
noteworthy. staggering. This led to increased one shot at providing content and Choice, Great Value and Safeway Select, and
The first step that requires attention to process and greater comments; anything beyond that more than 100 other private brands world-
specific attention is product attention to maintaining timelines. and they had to pay extra. It was wide. To read the first three of Patrick’s keys,
development. How should a It also formed the genesis of our amazing to see how many more go to privatelabelbuyer.com and look in the
retailer validate the opportunity Vendor Incentive Program (or VIP vendors and printers got it right the PLBuyer Voices section.