<strong>All Too Often Retailers and Manufacturers Tussle Over the Costs of Store-Brand Packaging Rather Than Viewing It as a Wise Investment That Will Benefit Both, Writes Branding Veteran Todd Maute</strong>
In today's retail marketplace, beating the competition increasingly requires savvy approaches to building and leveraging store brands. And yet retailers and manufacturers often squabble over the cost of store-brand packaging rather than seeing it as a valuable marketing tool worth investing in, writes Todd Maute, a partner at brand agency CBX, in a July 29 column for Store Brands magazine.

"Building your brand is clearly about much more than containing costs," writes Maute in the publication's Expert Insights column ("Reconsider packaging design: Get results through a more nuanced approach to cost containment"). "In fact, going to market with best-in-class private brands is really a wise long-term investment."

Indeed, when retailers, manufacturers and design firms put a priority on creating best-in-class store brand programs, all are more likely to benefit, Maute observes. Toward that end, he encourages retailers to evolve their store brands further by ramping up the quality and design standards of the packaging. "It's the primary -- if not the only -- marketing tool store brands get," he notes.

Nor, Maute writes, would taking this step be particularly unrealistic: Over the past 20 years, leading retail chains have steadily embraced more sophisticated approaches to store brands, especially when it comes to research and testing. "Instead of battling over costs, focus on the impact of the first moment of truth at shelf on customers," he writes. "Skimping on design costs hinders the retailer's ability to get the product perception right."

Using the example of a $1 billion store brand with 20 percent market penetration, he points out that a minimum 2 percent lift in sales from a packaging redesign would translate into $20 million in growth -- "and the design expense would be a fraction of that."

The full column is available <a href="http://www.storebrands.info/store-brand-insights/experts-insights/reconsider-packaging-design?cc=28" target="_blank">here</a>.