By Jim Hollen
We recently designed and manufactured two point-of-purchase floor displays for Buddy Fruits. While probably not worthy of a POP design award, I think the displays were well designed, practical, and economical- a winning combination for most customers.
Buddy Fruits Situation
Buddy Fruits produces a line of healthy, convenient fruit and vegetable snacks in squeezable pouches. The company’s product line has experienced rapid growth over the last several years, as has the entire healthy snack food category. Buddy Fruits has benefitted from a strong inline presence in grocery stores, but in recent years the growth in the category has resulted in increased competition, including a number of large food companies with sizable promotional budgets. Knowing they could not outspend these larger competitors, Buddy Fruits has opted for off-shelf placement in grocery stores’ produce department. Getting out of the inline rat race and creating an upscale image through well-appointed freestanding fixtures is an excellent way to differentiate a product from its competition.
Going Off-Shelf Doesn’t Always Make Sense
Before I discuss the Buddy Fruits displays, I should say that going off-shelf is not always the right strategy. One of our customers, The Honest Kitchen, is pursuing precisely the opposite strategy for different reasons. The Honest Kitchen sells a distinctive line of natural dehydrated pet food. To help build their brand, we created an environmentally friendly, knock-down end cap display with a natural solid wood finish and colorful graphics that build nutritional awareness and brand recognition.
The wood floor shelf display we designed was placed primarily in independent pet stores and helped to fuel tremendous company growth for several years. However, over time the company felt that consumers might be overlooking them because they were not grouped in-line with the other natural pet foods. So, at least for now, the company has decided to become more integrated with their home category. Only time will tell if this is the right decision.
Buddy Fruits Dump Bin Display
But, let’s get back to Buddy Fruits. The first unit we designed and manufactured for them was a wood dump bin display. Unlike the cheap wire dump bins you see in many grocery stores, the Buddy Fruits dump bin was designed to create a premium image for their brand. This premium look was important because although they wanted a grab ‘n go display, they did not want shoppers to assume their product was a closeout or discount item.
The Buddy Fruits dump bin includes a number of features I like:
- Knock-down, natural pine wood construction with an oak stain finish
- An MDF box with a clean white melamine finish
- Dividers to create 4 sections within the dump bin
- Silk screened logo to help promote the brand and to prevent the display from being used for other products
- Interchangeable, digitally printed PVC graphic boards on 4 sides with a separate graphic header. The graphic boards were printed on two sides with different art work so that it would be easy to reconfigure the display for their adult FruitBreak brand. The branding on the display was strong, but importantly, it was not so loud as to compete with the environmental design of the store.
Buddy Fruits Floor Shelf Display
We also designed and fabricated a 5-shelf wooden floor display as part of Buddy Fruits family of retail fixtures. This display included the following features:
- Knock-down design with natural pine wood construction and an oak stained finish
- Removable framed wood header with a 2-sided PVC sign that could promote either the Buddy Fruits brand or the FruitBreak brand
- Shelf signs to identify different flavors
- Permanent logo silk screening to promote the brand and protect our customer’s investment in the display.
While neither of these displays fall into the “extraordinary” category, both represent smart, practical, effective and affordable POP displays that are likely to be useful examples for many of our customers.
Jim Hollen is the owner and President of RICH LTD. (www.richltd.com), a 35+ year-old California-based point-of-purchase display, retail store fixture, and merchandising solutions firm which has been named among the Top 50 U.S. POP display companies for 9 consecutive years. A former management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and graduate of Stanford Business School, Jim Hollen has served more than 3000 brands and retailers over more than 20 years and has authored nearly 500 blogs and e-Books on a wide range of topics related to POP displays, store fixtures, and retail merchandising.
Jim has been to China more than 50 times and has worked directly with more than 30 factories in Asia across a broad range of material categories, including metal, wood, acrylic, injection molded and vacuum formed plastic, corrugated, glass, LED lighting, digital media player, and more. Jim Hollen also oversees RICH LTD.’s domestic manufacturing operation and has experience manufacturing, sourcing, and importing from numerous Asian countries as well as Vietnam and Mexico.
His experience working with brands and retailers spans more than 25 industries such as food and beverage, apparel, consumer electronics, cosmetics/beauty, sporting goods, automotive, pet, gifts and souvenirs, toys, wine and spirits, home improvement, jewelry, eyewear, footwear, consumer products, mass market retail, specialty retail, convenience stores, and numerous other product/retailer categories.