Profiles in Innovation: A&P's Non-Foods Are Positioned to Explode (Part 4 of 4)

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September 28, 2009

By Maureen Azzato

Editor’s Note: This is the last article in an exclusive four-part series on A&P’s revamped store brand’s program. The first part, “A&P’s Store Brands Transformation,” focused on the grocer’s overall strategy and plan. Part II, “A&P’s High Hopes for Premium,” highlighted Via Roma, Hartford Reserve and AC Gold. Last week’s Part III, “A&P’s ‘Green Way’ to Sustainability,” featured the new natural and organic brand.

Beauty may be only skin deep, but that’s what makes the beauty care category so difficult for retailers to tackle with store brands. Few women are willing to risk their skin, never mind their hair, to save a few dollars.

But given the right research, and the right products effectively marketed and merchandised, bold grocers like A&P can go where drug stores and specialty grocers like Whole Foods are playing.

“Market research told us that people that buy medicinal brands don’t necessarily translate that into a quality beauty brand,” said Doug Palmer, vice president of own brands for A&P. “You wouldn’t want a Tylenol shampoo, right? Despite that, the most common practice by retailers is to put the same brand on aspirin and body lotion.”

A&P, however, is taking the road less traveled. The grocer created Live Better as its health and remedies brand and Market Spa as its beauty care brand. Market Spa is the least developed of all the lines to date, but has extremely high potential, according to Palmer.

“We’re going to make tweaks to this, but we think Market Spa presents a huge opportunity and we plan on a complete marketing program to support the brand,” Palmer said. “We wanted to create high quality beauty care products that people can get at a value.“

Meanwhile, the Live Better brand name was picked up from a health education program A&P started in its pharmacy, which already has name recognition with the customer. “We decided to expand on the name and it is being received very well. We are competing on the shelf,” Palmer said.

The most recent segment of the Live Better line to roll out is the fast-growing vitamins and supplements category. “The Live Better Brand is getting instant consumer recognition as a high quality, ‘priced right’ alternative to the brands. We will continue to build on this success.”

Pet Care

Another product category that customers take extreme care in selecting is pet food and pet care products. Don’t mess with what goes in Bowser’s bowl.

For that reason, the A&P store brand team went to great pains redesigning the Preferred Pet product line. All the label and pet photos were re-shot and the signature heart around the pets’ necks on the label would pull at any pet owners’ heartstrings.

Standing in the A&P aisle looking at all the pet food choices, a customer wouldn’t even know that Preferred Pet is a store brand. “That’s the litmus test for me,” Palmer said.

Like most of its store brands, Preferred Pet is positioned as a national-brand-equivalent in both product and pricing.

“Most of the A&P program still follows national-brand-equivalency, with some variation by category where the spreads could be different,” Palmer said. “We think we’ve gone right at the national brands with our revamped program. We’ve done a great job on the packaging … and will continue to critique the design architecture to make sure it stays relevant to customers.”

A noticeable omission on all of the grocer’s store brands is the A&P name, or the name of any store banner, for that matter. Even the address on the label makes no mention of A&P.

“We intentionally don’t use store banners as brand names,” Palmer said. “We have so many different store formats that you really can’t get any kind of synergy and economies of scale if you have each banner having its own brand. We’ve created a little bit of simplicity so that as we grow and add more banners, we don’t have to make a change in any of the packaging.”

It also creates an opportunity for A&P to market some of its brands to other non-competing retailers. “We’ve got a few brands that would fit that mold perfectly and we’ve received some interest in doing that… but right now our priority is A&P and Pathmark first.”

Read These Related Articles:

• Profiles in Innovation: A&P's Store Brands Transformation (Part 1 of 4)
• Profiles in Innovation: A&P's 'Green Way' to Sustainability (Part 3 of 4)
• Profiles in Innovation: A&P's High Hopes for Premium Store Brands (Part 2 of 4)
• Supervalu Introduces WholeCare Pet Store Brand
• Consumers Not as Willing to Switch to Store Brands for Kids and Pet Products

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