AUDIENCE-LED RETAIL & BRANDING STRATEGY
SCAD PROJECT (2024)
TAILORED BY JOE
This project leverages the potential of private label goods by flipping Trader Joe's sub-brand logic on its head, designing products around people, and not places.
is an American grocery store chain that primarily operates in densely populated, high-income and high-competition areas.
THE SECRET
1
Higher Profit Margins
The backbone of Trader Joe's strategy is private label products, which make up 85% of their offerings. While challenging in terms of manufacturing, branding, and R&D, the approach is highly beneficial
2
Smaller Inventory =
Lower Footprint Stores = Premium Locations for Cheaper
3
Freedom to explore branding and packaging from a user experience lens, instead of just sales.
THE SECRET
HOW IT WORKS NOW
85% of Trader Joe's products are private label, which allows them to keep a low SKU count and, therefore, operate in smaller footprint stores. This helps them secure premium locations in high income, densely populated, and culturally diverse urban areas. They have sub-brands within their private label to give a cultural flare to certain products, such as "Trader Giottos's" for Italian food, "Trader Ming's" for Asian Food, and "Trader José," for Mexican food.
MAKE IT A STRATEGY
Trader Joe's is known for keeping costs low with marketing and, especially, advertising. Opting, instead, to use that money for integral parts of their unique strategy, such as product selection and development. This campaign, however, doesn't really need to be a campaign, it can be integrated into their strategy. Keeping up with their culture of innovation, new product launches targeted at specific sub-cultures could help them reconnect with specific audiences whenever their customer demographics skew too much to any side. As more products are launched, with time, each sub-culture will build a sort of collection of products, and customers that align with those ideals will have an enhanced shopping experience as they'll know what to look for. Eg: "The stuff in the pink packaging: I know that's for me."