Calbee comes to the US and opens their first store ever in San Francisco
Calbee Inc, the leading snack company in Japan, contacted btrax to help launch their US flagship store in San Francisco. btrax was called upon for design and brand elements for the Calbee Shop packaging, store signage, social media campaign and website.
What We Did |
|
Visit the websitewww.calbeeshop.com |
|---|
A Snack Giant
Calbee Foods Company, founded in 1949, has evolved into Japan’s leading snack producer. In 1995, Calbee America launched operations at a new plant in the United States for making its mainstay products "Kappa Ebisen" shrimp chips and "Saya-endo" or Snappea crisps in 2007. Their snacks are hugely popular in Asia, and are well known in the US.
Comprehensive Planning Process
We sat down with the Calbee marketing teams in both Japan and America to understand the store launch strategy. Calbee wanted to the branding to appeal to professional women and maintain a San Francisco theme to their flagship store. From there, we initiated the branding design for the store’s packaging (cups, boxes and bags) as well as the web site.
Complex Road Map Challenges
Starting March 2011 we started the planning process. The Opening of the store was targeted for July 2011. On March 11, Calbee makes it debut on the Tokyo Stock exchange, the same day the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.
To open the store we had to get past several physical hurdles. The earthquake caused a few unknowns to hinder the branding process like the snack lineup and the FDA approval of the snacks.
The branding / marketing challenge we faced:
- Implement U.S. Market branding for first store in North America
- Creating brand awareness in a new market
- Various design mediums required for Packaging, Print, Web and Digital Signage
- Introduce new Japanese Snacks into the American Market
Designing for Growth
This store was going to not be only the first of a kind hopefully a baseline for other stores to open. We strived to ensure that all package design and collateral print design was mass producible.
The Results
We hit the July 2011 opening date on time with all the branding / marketing plans in place and executed.
