I am surprised that the article did not mention Costco's Kirkland brand.
In my mind, that is the inhouse brand to beat in terms of high quality and good value. And it is definitely driven by consumer data, since Costco has information on what every member bought and returned.
The Good Mythical Morning show often pits store brands against the name brand originals.. results vary a lot, but Kroger, for instance, tends to rank higher (for them) then Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s brand knock-offs.
> Of course, it was embarrassing to have a cart full of that stuff as everyone would know you were poor.
I don't mean this to pick on you personally, but this sentence sums up so many problems with consumerism, advertising and it's ability to make us overpay. You don't look poor because you get the white label, you look financially responsible, unwilling to pay a branding premium for essentially the same product. Especially with things like corn where no one could differentiate between the white label and name brands.
These days the off brand labels have there own special stores like ALDI, which is even better because you don't have to fight the distraction of a dozen brands of the same thing.
I don’t know what the odds are, but this generic-food thing has come up before on HN. I made a comment and, if I recall, was downvoted... but, I’m going to say it again. ;
Namely, when I was a kid, my sister and I were terrified to go into that aisle because our mother told us that food was for albinos... that’s why the labels lacked color. It truly scared the crap out of me. Haha! Anyway, I will now sit back and wait for HN’s albino members to downvote me for offending people of [non]color.
To give you some feedback (and I'm not an albino) :
- Mentioning downvotes is a sure way to get them, and there's even a mention in the guidelines[1] saying to avoid to do that : "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "
- Other than this, I don't know about the last time, but here your comment feels like a fun anecdote more than an actual discussion point. While this kind of comment goes well in a lot of communities (typically very well with Reddit), it tends to get less traction on HN, as HN is very much directed towards discussion and argumentation
> unwilling to pay a branding premium for essentially the same product.
For true commodities thats entirely reasonable. And these days when the same contract manufacturers develops and packages the product for Aldi, trader joes, kroger, and Annies its even more true. But dont let rose colored glasses obscure the differences that dis exist between the generics and name brands of previous times. Its ok to admit that Toasted Nut Os just werent as good on texture and flavor.
> You don't look poor because you get the white label, you look financially responsible, unwilling to pay a branding premium for essentially the same product. Especially with things like corn where no one could differentiate between the white label and name brands.
In many cases, it's not just that nobody can differentiate between them. They are literally the same product from the same factory, sometimes coming right off the same line. As in: Some of the cans of product go left for the "name brand" label and go right for the "store brand" label.
It's excellent price discrimination. Get consumers to spend as much as they can afford for the same product.
Is it training, or is it convenience? Personally, I don't like soaking beans 24 hours before cooking. In fact, any additional time is too much for me, as bad as that may be. A article in the NYT called The Tyranny of Convenience really crystalized this for me: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-co...
Home-cooked beans can taste a lot better, and they spare you the estrogen-mimicking chemicals in can linings. A pressure cooker makes quick work of them. We make a batch and freeze them in pint containers, ready to thaw when we need them.
They are not replacement for each other. Canned ones taste completely differently. You cook different foods from them.
Less important point is that you dont need to soak them 24 hours in advance, that is excessively long. A day before is primary convenient time when to do it for people who soak them for that long.
The pre-soaking is supposed to help with digestability (I can't find the exact name of the substance it removes) a pressure cooker of course cooks it faster but it is not very convenient (also you can cook them without a pressure cooker - pre-soaking helps with this as well)
But yeah canned beans are easier. There are also some vacuum packed ones
"Canned doesn't taste as good" you still have to season them
It's enough to soak overnight, rather than for 24 hours.
This lines up well with cooking the beans in a slow cooker, which in turn lines up well with working from home. Some evenings, i think "oh, i'll cook beans tomorrow", and put a pan on to soak (one minute's work). The next morning, i boil them for ten minutes to kill the PHA (if necessary for that variety), then load them in the slow cooker with whatever other ingredients seem good, and set it to run for eight hours.
It only involves a little bit of planning ahead, and very little actual work. In fact, it's nice to be able to front-load the work, so i do it in the morning when i'm still coming up to speed, rather than in the evening when i'm tired.
"Convenience" is such a funny way to put it. As if the time spent making food is worthless, and saving hours of labor is only useful because it provides this abstract property of "convenience".
But I was certainly trained to buy peanut butter instead of putting peanuts in a blender.
When the only source of food are giant super markets 95% filled with aisles of packaged processed products (be they generic or otherwise) then yes people are trained from birth to buy them.
That seems to be a cultural difference. Where I live there are some turkish supermarkets which stock that stuff bagwise. Similar for supermarkets catering mostly for russian/east-europeans. Apart from that their range of conventional products is just different but interesting! Been in a smaller turkish supermarket about a week ago and got nice stuff there, some 'Cheetoz' out of Iran https://dinafood.com/en/snack/ , several other snacks(roasted corn in hot and BBQ), Black Tea with Cardamom from https://www.ahmadtea.com/ , Turkish Honey/Delight with pistachios and pomegrenade (Yummie!), fruit juices, pickles, and so much more. All stuff that the normal markets don't have in stock. And interestingly the only acceptable Sri Racha is cheaper there, also! Also more varieties of that russian Kwas.
It's always a little adventure, to discover new things there. I guess I have a need to substitute for the lack of real hunting :-)
One Canadian brand has been leaning into their traditional bright yellow packaging with bold lettering and I would even say it almost feels trendy. See pictures on their Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/nonamebrands
When I was growing up in the 1960s, my dad (career Air Force) would buy low-priced booze at the "Class 6" store (the on-base PX liquor store that didn't use taxpayer funds). The beer came in pure-white cans, each of which had, in big black stenciled letters, "B E E R"; my dad said he'd been told it was Budweiser but Anheuser-Busch didn't want the brand associated with low prices.
When they started being huge money makers for the stores. Warren Buffett talks about how Kraft wasn't as good of in investment because private labels at into market share and profits of their non-superstar brands.
Trader Joe’s is fascinating. Their own products are unique and you develop a craving for them. That creates serious retention. And over time they’ve designed out more and more third party stuff, replacing it with their own (instead of selling both alongside each other). I’ve never read a business case about them but it seems like a killer strategy
Aldi was split into two groups in 1960, along geographical lines (Nord and Süd, serving resp. the North and the South of West Germany). Aldi Nord operates as Trader Joe's in the U.S., while Aldi Süd operates as Aldi.
Some more background on this because I find it really interesting:
Aldi was formed by 2 brothers and then split after a disagreement about whether or not to stock alcohol. The reason I find it interesting is actually because Aldi isn't the first big brand formed by two German brothers to split into two (big, recognizable) brands. That honor would go to Adidas and Puma.
Adidas and Puma are direct competitors though, but Aldi seems to have divvied up the countries between them so they don't compete with each other, with the exception of the USA.
Aldi owns Trader Joe's, but I wouldn't call them same chain. For instance, Kroger owns multiple chains with the store format, branding and products that differ a lot.
From my experience the US Aldi (which is part of an Aldi Sud) is a dimlit, bottom of the barrel discounter with a small selection of basics. Where Trader Joe's is a quirky "Hawaiian-themed" specialty grocer with a good selection of the unique-to-US products.
The newer/larger stores seem like they might have also helped with inventory/space management, at least in my experience the smaller stores would be more likely to have things on extreme clearance.
Marks & Spencer seem to be doing that as well. The vast majority of what they sell is their own brand, and apparently it is keeping them in business, COVID notwithstanding.
I won’t comment on the quality though, I very rarely shop with them.
Marksies' own brand is good quality, never subpar compared to mainstream brands.
In Northern Ireland it's still mocked gently as being a bit pretentious, where the 'ladies who lunch' from Malone do their shopping. But at the same time there is a great affection for the brand as it was the only mainland supermarket company to have a presence in NI throughout the Troubles.
Related to the poster's question. ... A former coworker had a father who packaged nuts to TJ specifications. He described Trader Joes as a generic food store with better packaging.
Unrelated to actual content:
if you visit the site with ad-blocker on, it does not load. Instead, you just have this icon of the eye looking at you and blinking. And the eye will just blink until you turn ad-blocker off.
I know the site is called "eye on design", but the associations of user tracking via ads and this blinking eye were amusing to me. Imagine having a blinking eye in the corner of each website for each tracker it has :)
Regardless of your stance on ad blockers, simply showing a mysterious eye without telling you you should stop your ad blocker sounds like awful design.
I think it's meant to be a placeholder animation that goes away when the content is available rather than a cryptic visual for users with an ad blocker. It's definitely a weird net effect.
Interesting design choice. When I load the site fresh with ublock origin I get through, but when I visit the page a second time I get the eye forever (confirmed by replicating on a private window).
I've got Firefox with strict privacy mode, uBlock Origin, uMatrix and Privacy Badger. I just got the eye and spent a couple of minutes tweaking settings until I gave up.
It pains me to go shopping where there are "well-known" brands on display. All that I see is their brand tax slapped onto each product whereas I go to Lidl/Aldi and I have no qualms in buying the knock off products. Same product, different labelling.
I have a slightly different approach. While I concur in parts with yours, there are products from established brands which I prefer because I like their taste and/or tolerate them better.
This isn't even organic vs. processed/industrial food. There is just no outlet which has it all, so I have to shop around in different locations. Just Aldilidl would be too limiting for my tastes and needs.
Some brands do offer a better product than generics. Just like there’s different quality of silicon chips that result in different quality electronics, I can imagine the same exists for food.
Whether or not the price different is worth it is obviously up to the buyer.
I'm desperately trying to find the source but discounters like Lidl/Aldi just use well known brands, signed with NDAs on both sides.
Imagine knowing that a discount chain is about to make a regular purchase of 300,000 tins of beans. You will happily rebrand, keep it hushed up and take the repeat large orders. It makes me wonder what the margins are on a single tin of Heinz beans.
Using the same manufacturers as well known brands might not mean it’s the same product. It’s possible the ingredients are of higher quality resulting in a higher quality product. It’s also possible it’s the same thing, or the quality isn’t worth the extra price.
I remember there was a whole thing a few years ago about fake olive oil and fake grated Parmesan cheese (or what was mostly wood pulp which was allowable per legal definition). I think Kirkland was one of the real olive oil products, but the point is there were differences and some of the expensive brands were real and some were fake.
I still make references to friends and family to the whole wood pulp issue (I should find some new references). I believe it's Hershey's chocolate that is basically 1% off the minimum amount of chocolate content to legally call it chocolate.
Bigger brands have bigger pockets to line with profits so we all know that the ingredients are probably the first to take a hit. Discounters do not have to deal with brand taxes.
I reloaded a few times with an ad-blocker on, with javascript on and off, and got the eye every time. It was only on disabling the ad blocker that i got the article.
Interestingly, in Australia, major supermarket chain Woolworths used to have two parallel home brands: the bargain-basement Homebrand in stark black & white packaging, and the slightly better but still "designed in the DDR in the 1970s" Essentials. They had to ditch Homebrand, because it looked too cheap and was driving people to discount grocer Aldi, where you could get similar goods in packaging you wouldn't be ashamed to show friends.
Tesco, in the UK, did this too but only recently. They used to have a 'basics' range with labelling that said nothing but 'cheap'!
Instead, they now have these wholesome-sounding brands such as Redmere Farms, Nightingale Farms, etc which imply you're buying from some twee family business instead.
They also have "Stockwell & Co" for the things which don't come from British farms, like jam and baked beans. That at least is a nod to history, because Tesco started out selling tea packaged by T. E. Stockwell.
Thanks for the correction. The branding obviously works since I would have never dreamed of buying 'basics' or 'value' in their original branding but do sometimes buy the 'farm-brand' veg and 'Stockwell' products.
Wairtrose also have an 'Essentials' range although the labelling is very similar to regular priced products. I buy these without a second thought.
They kind of still do the split home brands, the “Essentials” brand is the super budget stuff and their “Woolworths” brand is the better-packaging stuff. There’s definitely products I’ve noticed that have both versions too.
Then they have heaps of other brands that are owned by them but have “proper” sounding brand names to give more illusion of choice.
Same in NL, at least for a while; there was the semi-premium looking 'home brand', and there was the really shitty looking red-on-white Euroshopper brand, I believe that one actually showed up in a few grocery store chains. I haven't seen Euroshopper branded stuff in a while though.
Wal-Mart, Vons, and I'm sure a few others do this in the US. A super cheap brand, a mid-range brand, and sometimes even a high-end brand too. I can't remember their names off the top of my head but I think this tactic is common
Still the case in Kroger's in the US - there's a few home brands:
Private Selection (higher-end)
Simple Truth (organic and "natural" products)
Kroger (main home brand)
Pssst (discount/low-end brand)
It's funny how this turned out, because in Sydney (at least the part where I live), any generic supermarket brand is referred to as "homebrand" instead of "own brand".
Also, don't forget about "Woolworths select", which was no better than homebrand but the tubs oats came in made really good pantry containers, and so in my kitchen anything loose like rice or almonds goes in them.
I remember when it used to be called Black and Gold because those were the colours of the homebrand brand for Foodland.
As a kid I always hated having to buy that particular brand because it indicated to everyone that we weren’t able to afford “real” brands. (I’ve thankfully grown out of this mentality. Even now that I’m earning the most I ever have in my life I still try to stick to homebrand as much as possible)
It's not so much tech as understanding. 25 years ago Grocery CEO's may not have realized the power of brand to the same extent. Price/Quality product is it.
With the internet, photoshop, diversity in packaging, explosion of available artists and designers, better printers for test and packaging, more savvy PM's it's a natural progression.
They still are not that good frankly, there's a ways to go to improve.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned H-E-B, living in Austin I quickly grew to love the grocery store and they had some of the best generic items, often times better than the name brand competitor. After moving out west for a couple of years I miss that store.
Right! They have 11 house-brands at the moment, probably a few more they haven't bothered to update the website with. I don't recall any of it ever looking generic, but then again, it could've have years ago - but my buffers have flushed a few times since then.
I'd love to see what they think of the Aldi knockoffs of popular products. For example their cereal section has something like "Green Wizard with Marshmallows", "Fruit Rounds", and "Crispy Rices". Their inhouse brand name is something blatant like "Colonel Mills"
One of our largest chains here in Germany (REWE) has 4 house brands with many overlapping products in each.
"ja!" (yes!) is the cheapest and looks cheap. Next is "Beste Wahl" (best choice) which is more expensive and followed by "Bio" (Organic), again slightly more expensive and obviously organic. Finally, there is "Feine Welt" (Fine/Tasty World) which has the highest prices and more specialty items.
The designs of "Beste Wahl" and "Bio" look about equal, "ja!" clearly looks cheap and "Feine Welt" looks fancy: https://i.imgur.com/YA9VTyZ.png
edit: And before REWE bought them, we had a chain called SKY. When they introduced a new, very cheap, house brand the internal name was "Aldinative Produkte", a portmanteau of our discounter "Aldi" and "alternative" ;)
I honestly love the “ja!” brand, though. It looks basic, but not shameful, and with the bonus that I can go to REWE and buy myself a liter and a half of “YES!” (with or without bubbles!)
I pretty much mix and match ;) For example the ja! cream cheese and "Beste Wahl" soy sauce are the products with the lowest sugar & carb count of their type.
In Germany we have a generic brand called "ja!". The Products are simply named "ja!" with the descriptive product name, for example "ja! Sugar", "ja! Milk" etc.
The design of these products is not exactly good looking, but very recognizable. One designer applied this brand image to a whole appartment with a "ja! living room" and "ja! armchair", which I find hilarious.
The basics brand of Swedish supermarket ICA also looks minimal and honest. The packaging has a title and a description on the front, and it's unashamed to tell you "these beans are our cheapest"
The regional grocery chain I regularly shop at has two generic grocery brands. One is the traditional cheap generic in bland packaging and a funny name, e.g. "Crisp 6" cereal instead of Crispix.
The other is an upscale brand. I actually prefer it over most brand-name products. Over time I've become accustom to always seek out the store brand because it's such good quality, even if it's not always cheaper.
In the UK, until recently, supermarkets had three levels of own brand:
Tesco:
- Value
- Tesco
- Finest
Sainsburys:
- Basics
- Sainsburys
- Taste the Difference
The packaging for the lowest tier was simple and used minimal colour (I think deliberately). The packaging for the highest tier was fancy (e.g. more saturated colours, use of metallic lettering).
If you have one own-label brand, you want to make it attractive. If you have several own-label brands, you want them to look distinct, so that shoppers self-select into the higher tier (higher margin) brand when they care, rather than always defaulting to the cheapest. You have to make the cheapest one 'worse' in some way.
Notably Tesco started selling under the brand 'Stockwell & Co' for their super value items.
I was curious myself when I saw it and it is indeed a 'Tesco exclusive' manufacturer that essentially sells everything that would previously have gone under the 'value' brand.
That's taking a page from the discounters' book: they (mostly) only have own brands, so to keep things from becoming boring they merrily make up brands all over the place. ALDI for example has 23 listed here (https://www.aldi-sued.de/de/produkte/marken-bei-aldi-sued/ei...), but I'm not sure if that's really all...
Not only in the UK... in Germany, REWE (just an example) has eight (!) own brands for food (plus some others for non-food), some "niche", some general (https://www.rewe.de/marken/):
- "ja!" is the cheapest of the bunch, with very simple design (until quite recently the packaging was mostly white with blue and red print, no colour photos or other fancy design elements)
- "REWE Beste Wahl" ("Best Choice") is the "classier" own brand, with nicer design
- "REWE Regional" for regional products
- "REWE Bio" for organic foods
- "REWE Feine Welt" ("Delicious World") for own-brand delicacies
- "REWE to go" for "convenience" products
- "REWE frei von" ("free of") for lactose- and gluten-free products
I'm fairly sure (not an economist or insider etc) that the generic / own brand products actually have the highest profit margins for the shop, because there's not a big external brand like Unilever that wants their share of things.
Clasic economics would say therefore the lower profit margin + slotting fee should equal the higher margin of the house brands.
I wonder if that's roughly true? I could imagine both yes and no. Classic economics, sort of by definition, can't take real world edge effects into account.
I think it's 2 conflicting things going on. An owned brand/private label has higher % gross profit, but a name brand will often have a higher $ gross profit per unit. There's a balance for total profit between the whole set of products, because some people are brand loyal and others will switch depending on the price difference and options.
I expect one aspect of this is that fancy printing has gotten dirt cheap. You're not saving much money anymore slapping the black CORN on a white can vs. a full color full spread. It's a lot easier for an attractive design to pay for itself since it's cheaper to print.
It hasn't been much more expensive for a long time. I think it has more to do with the marketing idea that if it looks more plain, you will feel like it must be a good deal and good value since they didn't waste money on fancy colors.
Heh, up here in Canada the Loblaws grocery chain still sells the No Name generic brand. No Name products are about as simply presented as possible: black text on a yellow package, sometimes with a simple photo of the product. And yet they’re wildly popular (and, of course, cheap). Their website gives a pretty good indication of what their products look like: https://www.noname.ca/en_ca/
They actually experimented for a while in 2000-2008 with slightly nicer/fancier packaging, only to do a redesign in 2009 back to the simpler design. I think they might just be the brand that best epitomizes the xkcd comic (https://xkcd.com/993/), and their yellow packages probably stand out even more than white in a supermarket environment.
146 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 223 ms ] threadIn my mind, that is the inhouse brand to beat in terms of high quality and good value. And it is definitely driven by consumer data, since Costco has information on what every member bought and returned.
Walmart may be soul-sucking to shop at, but their Dr. Thunder and clone colas are really good and 67 cents a 2 liter.
Their yogurt is basically as good as yoplait (orange is great), and their generic salt and vinegar kettle chips and life cereal are all great.
Supermarket clones are still pretty bad, which is surprising given what Walmart and Costco have been able to do with their market strength.
It had its own special aisle.
Big cans with white labels that merely said “BEANS” or “CORN” in fat black letters.
Of course, it was embarrassing to have a cart full of that stuff as everyone would know you were poor.
I don't mean this to pick on you personally, but this sentence sums up so many problems with consumerism, advertising and it's ability to make us overpay. You don't look poor because you get the white label, you look financially responsible, unwilling to pay a branding premium for essentially the same product. Especially with things like corn where no one could differentiate between the white label and name brands.
These days the off brand labels have there own special stores like ALDI, which is even better because you don't have to fight the distraction of a dozen brands of the same thing.
Namely, when I was a kid, my sister and I were terrified to go into that aisle because our mother told us that food was for albinos... that’s why the labels lacked color. It truly scared the crap out of me. Haha! Anyway, I will now sit back and wait for HN’s albino members to downvote me for offending people of [non]color.
- Mentioning downvotes is a sure way to get them, and there's even a mention in the guidelines[1] saying to avoid to do that : "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "
- Other than this, I don't know about the last time, but here your comment feels like a fun anecdote more than an actual discussion point. While this kind of comment goes well in a lot of communities (typically very well with Reddit), it tends to get less traction on HN, as HN is very much directed towards discussion and argumentation
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For true commodities thats entirely reasonable. And these days when the same contract manufacturers develops and packages the product for Aldi, trader joes, kroger, and Annies its even more true. But dont let rose colored glasses obscure the differences that dis exist between the generics and name brands of previous times. Its ok to admit that Toasted Nut Os just werent as good on texture and flavor.
https://www.treehugger.com/which-food-companies-dont-use-bpa...
In many cases, it's not just that nobody can differentiate between them. They are literally the same product from the same factory, sometimes coming right off the same line. As in: Some of the cans of product go left for the "name brand" label and go right for the "store brand" label.
It's excellent price discrimination. Get consumers to spend as much as they can afford for the same product.
Less important point is that you dont need to soak them 24 hours in advance, that is excessively long. A day before is primary convenient time when to do it for people who soak them for that long.
But yeah canned beans are easier. There are also some vacuum packed ones
"Canned doesn't taste as good" you still have to season them
This lines up well with cooking the beans in a slow cooker, which in turn lines up well with working from home. Some evenings, i think "oh, i'll cook beans tomorrow", and put a pan on to soak (one minute's work). The next morning, i boil them for ten minutes to kill the PHA (if necessary for that variety), then load them in the slow cooker with whatever other ingredients seem good, and set it to run for eight hours.
It only involves a little bit of planning ahead, and very little actual work. In fact, it's nice to be able to front-load the work, so i do it in the morning when i'm still coming up to speed, rather than in the evening when i'm tired.
But I was certainly trained to buy peanut butter instead of putting peanuts in a blender.
When the only source of food are giant super markets 95% filled with aisles of packaged processed products (be they generic or otherwise) then yes people are trained from birth to buy them.
It's always a little adventure, to discover new things there. I guess I have a need to substitute for the lack of real hunting :-)
Aldi was formed by 2 brothers and then split after a disagreement about whether or not to stock alcohol. The reason I find it interesting is actually because Aldi isn't the first big brand formed by two German brothers to split into two (big, recognizable) brands. That honor would go to Adidas and Puma.
From my experience the US Aldi (which is part of an Aldi Sud) is a dimlit, bottom of the barrel discounter with a small selection of basics. Where Trader Joe's is a quirky "Hawaiian-themed" specialty grocer with a good selection of the unique-to-US products.
I won’t comment on the quality though, I very rarely shop with them.
In Northern Ireland it's still mocked gently as being a bit pretentious, where the 'ladies who lunch' from Malone do their shopping. But at the same time there is a great affection for the brand as it was the only mainland supermarket company to have a presence in NI throughout the Troubles.
> In Northern Ireland it's still mocked gently as being a bit pretentious
Waitrose seems to be filling that role in England.
I know the site is called "eye on design", but the associations of user tracking via ads and this blinking eye were amusing to me. Imagine having a blinking eye in the corner of each website for each tracker it has :)
Regardless of your stance on ad blockers, simply showing a mysterious eye without telling you you should stop your ad blocker sounds like awful design.
Correction: It just blinked at me.
This isn't even organic vs. processed/industrial food. There is just no outlet which has it all, so I have to shop around in different locations. Just Aldilidl would be too limiting for my tastes and needs.
Whether or not the price different is worth it is obviously up to the buyer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning
Imagine knowing that a discount chain is about to make a regular purchase of 300,000 tins of beans. You will happily rebrand, keep it hushed up and take the repeat large orders. It makes me wonder what the margins are on a single tin of Heinz beans.
I remember there was a whole thing a few years ago about fake olive oil and fake grated Parmesan cheese (or what was mostly wood pulp which was allowable per legal definition). I think Kirkland was one of the real olive oil products, but the point is there were differences and some of the expensive brands were real and some were fake.
Bigger brands have bigger pockets to line with profits so we all know that the ingredients are probably the first to take a hit. Discounters do not have to deal with brand taxes.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/woolworths-is-killing-off...
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/our-brands/essen...
Instead, they now have these wholesome-sounding brands such as Redmere Farms, Nightingale Farms, etc which imply you're buying from some twee family business instead.
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Tesco_Everyday_Value
They also have "Stockwell & Co" for the things which don't come from British farms, like jam and baked beans. That at least is a nod to history, because Tesco started out selling tea packaged by T. E. Stockwell.
They are entirely upfront about their brands:
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/zone/exclusively-at-te...
It amuses me that their dairy brand is 'Creamfields', both because that's too obvious, and also a house music festival:
https://creamfields.com/
Wairtrose also have an 'Essentials' range although the labelling is very similar to regular priced products. I buy these without a second thought.
Then they have heaps of other brands that are owned by them but have “proper” sounding brand names to give more illusion of choice.
It's the kind of design you would expect at a government facility lowest bid kinda thing.
Didn't last too long.
I think what people really want are "good enough" replacements for higher-priced brands, yet someone to take responsibility.
Also, don't forget about "Woolworths select", which was no better than homebrand but the tubs oats came in made really good pantry containers, and so in my kitchen anything loose like rice or almonds goes in them.
As a kid I always hated having to buy that particular brand because it indicated to everyone that we weren’t able to afford “real” brands. (I’ve thankfully grown out of this mentality. Even now that I’m earning the most I ever have in my life I still try to stick to homebrand as much as possible)
With the internet, photoshop, diversity in packaging, explosion of available artists and designers, better printers for test and packaging, more savvy PM's it's a natural progression.
They still are not that good frankly, there's a ways to go to improve.
https://www.heb.com/static-page/Our-Family-of-Brands
"ja!" (yes!) is the cheapest and looks cheap. Next is "Beste Wahl" (best choice) which is more expensive and followed by "Bio" (Organic), again slightly more expensive and obviously organic. Finally, there is "Feine Welt" (Fine/Tasty World) which has the highest prices and more specialty items.
The designs of "Beste Wahl" and "Bio" look about equal, "ja!" clearly looks cheap and "Feine Welt" looks fancy: https://i.imgur.com/YA9VTyZ.png
edit: And before REWE bought them, we had a chain called SKY. When they introduced a new, very cheap, house brand the internal name was "Aldinative Produkte", a portmanteau of our discounter "Aldi" and "alternative" ;)
The design of these products is not exactly good looking, but very recognizable. One designer applied this brand image to a whole appartment with a "ja! living room" and "ja! armchair", which I find hilarious.
http://www.danieldilger.de/portfolio/ja-wohnung/
Look at that "ja! disco ball" and the "ja! beer vending machine", isn't that just awesome?
https://www.ica.se/handla/sok/B%C3%B6nor/produkt/vita-bonor-...
http://www.billsbeercans.com/~billsbee/canstore/images/IMG_1...
The other is an upscale brand. I actually prefer it over most brand-name products. Over time I've become accustom to always seek out the store brand because it's such good quality, even if it's not always cheaper.
Tesco:
- Value
- Tesco
- Finest
Sainsburys:
- Basics
- Sainsburys
- Taste the Difference
The packaging for the lowest tier was simple and used minimal colour (I think deliberately). The packaging for the highest tier was fancy (e.g. more saturated colours, use of metallic lettering).
If you have one own-label brand, you want to make it attractive. If you have several own-label brands, you want them to look distinct, so that shoppers self-select into the higher tier (higher margin) brand when they care, rather than always defaulting to the cheapest. You have to make the cheapest one 'worse' in some way.
I was curious myself when I saw it and it is indeed a 'Tesco exclusive' manufacturer that essentially sells everything that would previously have gone under the 'value' brand.
- "ja!" is the cheapest of the bunch, with very simple design (until quite recently the packaging was mostly white with blue and red print, no colour photos or other fancy design elements)
- "REWE Beste Wahl" ("Best Choice") is the "classier" own brand, with nicer design
- "REWE Regional" for regional products
- "REWE Bio" for organic foods
- "REWE Feine Welt" ("Delicious World") for own-brand delicacies
- "REWE to go" for "convenience" products
- "REWE frei von" ("free of") for lactose- and gluten-free products
- "Wilhelm Brandenburg" for meat products
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee
I wonder if that's roughly true? I could imagine both yes and no. Classic economics, sort of by definition, can't take real world edge effects into account.
The true pioneer in this space is of course Trader Joe's.
They actually experimented for a while in 2000-2008 with slightly nicer/fancier packaging, only to do a redesign in 2009 back to the simpler design. I think they might just be the brand that best epitomizes the xkcd comic (https://xkcd.com/993/), and their yellow packages probably stand out even more than white in a supermarket environment.
https://twitter.com/NoNameBrands/status/1233358062116855808
https://twitter.com/NoNameBrands/status/1235917629669494784