Design Infusion

Somage Chamellia tea When premium beverage supplier Somage Fine Foods sought to refresh the brand and retail its product lines, Design Victoria’s Business Immersion Program came to the party. One year later, the partnership between designer and client shows success is in the bag.

Design Victoria’s Business Immersion Program is design best practice in its most active form.

Collaborative in nature, consultative by process, enlightening by default, the Program is structured to deliver practical, cost and time effective design solutions to SMEs that may otherwise overlook design propositions to innovate, improve competitive advantage and drive business and export performance in a volatile marketplace.

Somage website In 2008, the Program brought designers Darren Taylor and Grace Camobreco of Taylor & Grace together with Somage Fine Foods’ Directors Nathan Wakeford and Ben Kelly to explore how a design infusion could successfully impact on the packaging, presentation and promotion of a range of premium teas, tisanes and drinking chocolates. The results at each marker proved remarkable in terms of commercial productivity, enhanced brand awareness and penetration of new markets:

70% sold of 10,000 units across flavours in the first stock run in three months just in the initial prototype-testing phase
New showroom and increase in sales and support staff to comply with demand
Enhanced brand recognition, confidence and unprecedented customer feedback in regards to packaging aesthetics and sustainability
Online sales average one new client daily through refreshed web site
Retail brand now represented in all major Australian markets with new markets established in Dubai, New Zealand, Malaysia and the UK
Retail sales have increased by 70% overall
Increased media presence through magazine and newspaper features
Plans to launch four new products within the next three years and run PR/marketing driven campaigns annually.

We asked both client and designer to review their experiences at three major junctures:

Discovery/Immersion;
Six Month Mark; and
Twelve Month Outcome.

Facts at a glance

Challenge

To create a unique packaging concept and redesign of key marketing and communications collateral to strengthen the brand identity of the Somage Fine Foods range of organic beverages as it moves from wholesale supply of the café environment into the domestic retail and export markets.

Type of designer engaged

Graphic Designers: Taylor & Grace

Most important part of the immersion process

Both client and design teams emphasised the importance of working together in branding and packaging workshops.

Most difficult part of the immersion process

Negotiating creative differences and managing change. The designers had to present end design solutions that moved the product branding forward whilst taking into account the Somage Directors’ attachment to their older branding concepts.

Solution

Incorporation of existing concepts into a redesigned range of key marketing tools: finished art packaging, design prototypes, Point of Sale collateral and refreshed website, which consistently spoke to the story of the company, its product range and position within specialised markets.

Outcome

A mutually satisfying design result, which has achieved a quantifiably positive response both in the established local and emerging export marketplace.

Click here to download Design Infusion – Somage and Taylor & Grace Business Immersion case study 12 months on.