Home brands spread beyond the store

You might think it’s in the nature of home brands to only be sold within the store that created them, but apparently some US retailers are sending their home brands further afield.

You might think it’s in the nature of home brands to only be sold within the store that created them, but apparently some US retailers are sending their home brands further afield.

BrandWeek reports that the Safeway supermarket chain in the US has started to push two of its home brands, O Organics and Eating Right, into the broader market.

As well as placing the in-house, health-oriented brands in other retailers, including some as far away from home as Singapore and Taiwan, Safeway is also exploring selling through non-traditional sale channels such as US school cafeterias.

Safeway senior vice president James White told BrandWeek that his company has completely shifted its whole thought process around the role of so-called home brands.

“We don’t think about Eating Right or O Organics as private labels,” White says. “These brands are rooted in meeting consumers’ needs around different lifestyle solutions.”

Meredith Adler, a stock and equity analyst with Lehman Brothers, New York, believes the strategy is significant. “It’s breaking new ground,” she says. “[Safeway’s] saying that this is good enough to sell out in the marketplace as a consumer product. That’s pretty unique.”

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