Well, that's one way to deal with a guy who has spent the money proving the market for your product line. I think a better move would have been to take a page from Dave Thomas' (Wendy's) play book and open a Trader Joe's down the street.
Problem is it sounds like he was trying to rely on association to the Trader Joe's brand to make money, kind of a shadow franchise. That opens up the problem of brand dilution, and even the most ethical companies have to be ruthless about that, or they can lose their own brand and all the benefits they worked to build with it.
He should have realized the need, and done things like match their product mix with his own brands, work on making the store's own feel, and dampened direct association to Trader Joe's. He didn't and it bit him in the ass. No sympathy here.
> So while it’s not branded, the reputation is overall positive.
I agree. Trader Joes has a lot of white label stuff, I'd say I usually have a higher impression of their white labeled products than branded products at the same price range.
It's often not fair. Trader Joe's has a reputation for bringing in new and popular name brand items. Once they determine market fit with their customers and build demand they clone the items and replace with their own brand.
Excellent points: thanks for the cool splash of water on the article's subjectivity. Trader Joe's marketing is what causes the author to say saying something like "the lines and packed lots themselves can be reassuring, that you have come to the right place."
But it's Trader Joe's business model that makes it come across as a "low-priced gourmet-cum-health-foods store" (original owner's words). It doesn't seem to me that social media has anything to do with it.
On a side note, does anyone actually think Trader Joe's "Frequent Flier" handout is useful? It looks to me like an amateur, Microsoft Publisher-designed handout. They could use some modernism in that department. Unless it's ironically bad as the point?
>> consumers might actually be confused by the name
Only problem is those consumers are in a different country - one where Trader Joe's does not operate. I would bet Pirate Joe's would have happily closed down if Trader Joe's opened up a store in Vancouver, since that's all the Pirate Joe guy wanted in the first place.
I didn't mean to imply that it was bad. There is a lot of fights around organics, and made in the US, and such. Walmart tends to optimize for price rather than low environmental impact, or made in the US. Trader Joes tends to optimize differently.
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